Comment concilier le relatif et l’universel? C’est à cette délicate tâche que s’était attelée il y a déjà quelques années Madame Delmas-Marty, spécialement dans le domaine des droits de l’homme. Le présent ouvrage envisage une difficulté supplémentaire en croisant les interrogations sur le pluralisme juridique avec la question de l’effectivité du droit économique. La prise en compte des pluralismes, notamment du pluralisme juridique, contribue-t-elle à une meilleure effectivité du droit économique? Ou bien, au contraire, le pluralisme juridique est-il un facteur (...) d’ineffectivité du droit économique? Dans cette recherche, les auteurs se sont attachés au pluralisme aussi bien dans la production du droit économique que dans le règlement des différends. C’est ainsi que le lecteur est appelé à cheminer dans la diversité des formes nouvelles qu’empruntent les régulations juridiques pour partir à la recherche des multiples intérêts que peut prendre en charge le droit économique, qu’ils soient individuels, collectifs ou même futurs. Le voyage se poursuit, là encore dans les mondes aussi bien des formes que de la substance. L'ouvrage, après avoir cherché à cerner la notion d’effectivité au regard de notions voisines comme l’efficacité ou l’efficience, s’interroge in fine sur l’éventualité des voies d’un dépassement de la notion de pluralisme juridique. (shrink)

Introduction: Adolescence is the most critical life period for the development of eating disorder symptomatology. Although problems in identity functioning and emotion dysregulation have been proven important risk and maintaining factors of ED symptomatology, they have never been integrated in a longitudinal study.Methods: The present study is part of the Longitudinal Identity research in Adolescence -study and aimed to uncover the temporal interplay between identity functioning, cognitive emotion regulation, and ED symptomatology in adolescence. A total of 2,162 community adolescents participated (...) at three measurement points with 1-year intervals. They reported on identity functioning, cognitive emotion regulation, and ED symptomatology.Results: Cross-lagged paths could be fixed for boys and girls and showed bidirectional associations between both dimensions of identity functioning and both rumination and catastrophizing over time. Similarly, these maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies were bidirectionally related to ED symptomatology over time. Finally, indirect pathways pointed to bidirectional associations between both dimensions of identity functioning and bulimia symptoms through rumination and catastrophizing. Only unidirectional associations emerged for drive for thinness and almost no cross-lagged associations were found with positive reappraisal.Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that identity confusion may contribute to the development of ED symptomatology in adolescence through cognitive emotion dysregulation. It also reveals that these ED symptoms hamper identity development through emotion dysregulation. These results stress the importance of targeting both identity functioning and cognitive emotion regulation in the prevention and intervention of ED symptoms. (shrink)

A comprehensive defence of the rationalist view that insight independent of experience is a genuine basis for knowledge.

The concept of the axial age, initially proposed by the philosopher Karl Jaspers to refer to a period in the first millennium BCE that saw the rise of major religious and philosophical figures and ideas throughout Eurasia, has gained an established position in a number of fields, including historical sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of religion. We explore whether the notion of an “axial age” has historical and intellectual cogency, or whether the authors who use the label of a (...) more free-floating “axiality” to connote varied “breakthroughs” in human experience may have a more compelling case. Throughout, we draw attention to ways in which uses of the axial age concept in contemporary social science vary in these and other respects. In the conclusion, we reflect on the value of the concept and its current uses and their utility in making sense of human experience. (shrink)

One of the many problems that would have t o be solved by a satisfactory theory of empirical knowledge, perhaps the most central is a general structural problem which I shall call the epistemic regress problem: the problem of how to avoid an in- finite and presumably vicious regress of justification in ones account of the justifica- tion of empirical beliefs. Foundationalist theories of empirical knowledge, as we shall see further below, attempt t o avoid the regress by locating a (...) class of empirical beliefs whose justification does not depend on that of other empirical beliefs. Extemalist theories, the topic of the present paper, represent one species of foundationalism. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Moral Character and Moral Theories Social interaction is the thread from which the fabric of moral character is woven.1 For it is social ...

Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) is a rare lysosomal storage disorder treated with bone marrow transplantation or enzyme replacement therapy with laronidase, a high-cost orphan drug. Laronidase was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency in 2003 and by the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency in 2005. Many Brazilian MPS I patients have been receiving laronidase despite the absence of a governmental policy regulating access to the drug. Epidemiological and treatment data concerning MPS I (...) are scarce. This study aims to present a demographic profile of Brazilian patients with MPS I, describe the routes of access to laronidase in Brazil, and discuss associated ethical issues relating to public funding of orphan drugs. (shrink)

Outlines a tenable version of a traditional foundationalist account\nof empirical justification and its implications for the justification\nof beliefs about physical or material objects. Presupposing the acceptability\nof other beliefs about physical objects; Concept of a basic belief;\nMetabeliefs about one's own occurrent beliefs; Beliefs about sensory\nexperience.

This essay discusss (1) the differences and commonalities between romantic love and friendship and (2) the differences and commonalities between parental love of friendship.

This essay is a commentary upon "Race and Kant" by Thomas Hill, Jr and Bernard Boxill. They argue that although Kant in his anthropological writings took blacks to be inferior, his moral theory requires that they be shown the proper moral respect since blacks are persons nonetheless. I argue that this argument is sound, because the conception of inferiority that Kant attributed to blacks does not permit showing them the proper moral respect. Imagine a defective Mercedes Benz and a Ford (...) Pinto. These two cars are not inferior in the same sort of way. For Kant, I argue, the inferiority of blacks is more akin to that of a Ford Pinto; for he undoubtedly took blacks to be perpetual children. Chilren are persons, too; however, no one has ever supposed that moral theory applies to children in the full way that it applies to adults. (shrink)

Two kinds of sources are available to the historian to reconstruct the first centuries of the history of Mithradates' antidote: biographical information on Mithradates' interests in medicine, and a series of recipes. In this paper I argue that we cannot reconstruct the original recipe of Mithridatium from our existing sources. Instead, I examine how the Romans remodelled the history of the King's death and used the royal name to create a "Roman" drug. This drug enjoyed a huge popularity in the (...) first centuries of the Roman Empire. An Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, consumed it as well as members of the upper class; and many highly literate physicians recommended it notwithstanding the medical sect they were belonging to. With all its expensive ingredients, and its claim to work as a panacea, Mithridatium responded to a real demand in a Roman Empire at its commercial and political apogee. (shrink)

Several approaches to clinical ethics consultation (CEC) exist in medical practice and are widely discussed in the clinical ethics literature; different models of CECs are classified according to their methods, goals, and consultant’s attitude. Although the “facilitation” model has been endorsed by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and is described in an influential manual, alternative approaches, such as advocacy, moral expertise, mediation, and engagement are practiced and defended in the clinical ethics field. Our Clinical Ethics Center in (...) Paris was founded in 2002 in the wake of the Patients’ Rights Act, and to date it is the largest center that provides consultation services in France. In this article we shall describe and defend our own approach to clinical ethics consultation, which we call the “Commitment Model,” in comparison with other existing models. Indeed commitment implies, among other meanings, continuity through time, a series of coherent actions, and the realization of important social goals. By drawing on a recent consultation case, we shall describe the main steps of our consultation procedure: interviews with major stakeholders, including patients and proxies; case conferences; and follow up. We shall show why we have chosen the term “commitment” to represent our approach at three different but interrelated levels: commitment towards patients, within the case conference group, and towards society as a whole. (shrink)

Summary The article discusses the decline of Aristotelian physics at the University of Paris in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A course of physics remained essentially Aristotelian until the final decade of the seventeenth century, when it came under the influence of Descartes. But the history of physics teaching over this period cannot be properly appreciated if it is simply seen in terms of the replacement of one physical philosophy by another. Long before the 1690s, the traditional Aristotelianism of (...) the Schools had been forced to come to terms with the New Science to some degree, while the Cartesianism of the early eighteenth century was always alive to the challenges to Descartes's particular physical theories. Except in the early seventeenth century the physics course at Paris was always in a state of change. The replacement of Aristotelian by Cartesian physics too involved the development of a novel epistemology. Although both Aristotelian and Cartesian professors believed that natural philosophy was a science of causes based upon a priori principles, the latter had a far more probabilist conception of physics. (shrink)

This essay looks at the impact that technology is having upon friendship. For as we all know, it is nothing at all to see friends at a restaurant table all engaged in texting rather than talking to one another.

The article traces the changes that occurred in the teaching of theoretical medicine at the University of Paris in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as the Faculty came under the influence of new medical ideas and discoveries. As a result it is essentially a study in the history of the transmission of ideas; the article illustrates how quickly and in what form these new ideas and discoveries became part of the common medical inheritance of one region of Europe. At (...) Paris, it is shown, the Faculty of Medicine was completely under the influence of the theories of Galen and Hippocrates at the beginning of the period, and rival ideas were greeted with hostility for much of the seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, however, the Faculty was completely abreast of contemporary developments and no longer wedded to a particular ‘school’. This change, it is emphasised, was associated with and closely influenced by, the growth of a more humble and discerning attitude among the Faculty's doctors with regards to the limits and the objectivity of their medical knowledge. The article is largely based on a hitherto unused source: the collection of abstracts of theses sustained in the period, to be found in the present-day Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine at Paris. (shrink)

In this important and engaging volume, international scholars present opposing viewpoints to debate ten of the most important issues in contemporary social philosophy. Provides an original analysis of some of society’s most pressing issues Written by an outstanding cast of international scholars Issues covered include the nature of freedom, the limits of religious tolerance, affirmative action, parenting, the death penalty, privacy, violence, world hunger, social diversity, homosexuality, and abortion Invites the reader to participate in the exchange of arguments.

Aristotelianism remained the dominant influence on the course of natural philosophy taught at the University of Paris until the 1690s, when it was swiftly replaced by Cartesianism. The change was not one wanted by church or state and it can only be understood by developments within the wider University. On the one hand, the opening of a new college, the Collège de Mazarin, provided an environment in which the mechanical philosophy could flourish. On the other, divisions within the French Catholic (...) Church between Austinians and Molinists led to Cartesianism finding support within an important section of the faculty of theology, which was the traditional guardian of philosophical orthodoxy. The conversion of the University of Paris to Cartesianism had important consequences. It encouraged similar changes to the natural philosophical curriculum throughout France and affected the structure and raison d'être of the Académie des Sciences. (shrink)

This essay discusses the character of many atrocities that have occurred throughout human history.

UTONOMY IS VERY HIGHLY PRAISED as something that it is always good to have, and always good to have more of rather than less of.1 The idea seems to be that persons should be autonomous whatever else they might be, and that should act autonomously whatever else it is that they might do. Kantians are fond of saying that a person is autonomous if she or he chooses to live in accordance with the dictates of reason. This, in turn, directly (...) links autonomy to morality, which for Kantians is an ineliminable aspect of reason. I shall discuss this view in Section II. Of course, it is also the case that autonomy is widely heralded as a good by those who do not accept Kant’s philosophical moorings. For instance, to say that women should be more autonomous is not thereby to say that they should be more embracing of this or that moral set of principles. In fact, it is not clear that this assertion pertains to acting morally at all. Autonomy, like liberty, seems to be regarded as a good whatever the philosophical leanings of people might be. In either case, the more the better. (shrink)

In this paper, I have assessed Marx's criticism of capitalism, and the practice of divided labor, from the standpoint of two important senses of worth which persons can have, namely self-respect and self-esteem. I have tried to show that in either case, Communism, as Marx envisioned it, is not the superior to capitalism he might have supposed. Along the way, I hope to have also shown the importance of distinguishing between two concepts, namely self-respect and self-esteem.