Cultural difference has been largely ignored within bioethics, particularly within the end-of-life discourses and practices that have developed over the past two decades in the U.S. healthcare system. Yet how should culturebe taken into account?

The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals (...) for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?"Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment," examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment," address more specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment," contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag. (shrink)

There is converging evidence from developmental and cognitive psychology, as well as from neuroscience, to suggest that the self is both special and social, and that self-other interaction is the driving force behind self-development. We review experimental findings which demonstrate that human infants are motivated for social interactions and suggest that the development of an awareness of other minds is rooted in the implicit notion that others are like the self. We then marshal evidence from functional neuroimaging explorations of the (...) neurophysiological substrate of shared representations between the self and others, using various ecological paradigms such as mentally representing one's own actions versus others' actions, watching the actions executed by others, imitating the others' actions versus being imitated by others. We suggest that within this shared neural network the inferior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex in the right hemisphere play a special role in the essential ability to distinguish the self from others, and in the way the self represents the other. Interestingly, the right hemisphere develops its functions earlier than the left. (shrink)

This book marks an important evolution in Jean Baudrillard's thought as he leavesbehind his older and better-known concept of the "simulacrum" and tackles the new problem of digitaltechnology acquiring organicity. The resulting world of cold communication and its indifferentalterity, seduction, metamorphoses, metastases, and transparency requires a new form of response.Writing in the shadow of Marshall McLuhan, Baudrillard insists that the content of communication iscompletely without meaning: the only thing that is communicated is communication itself. He sees themasses writhing (...) in an orgiastic ecstasy of communications. Baudrillard navigates the Object'smaelstrom with the euphoria of the astronaut reentering Earth's atmosphere with no possibility ofassistance from Mission Control. (shrink)

In reviewing the Belgian policy towards Zaïre for the last two decades, one is struck by a certain politica! as well as economic withdrawal which has become more obvious since the end of the sixties. In the context of the «Mobutu Plan», the Marshall Plan for Zaïre, or in that of the two Shaba upheavals, Belgium, unlike France with respect to its former colonies, has choosen to align itself with big powers policies and international organizations, and to avoid taking (...) too strong stands in the rather confuse situation which prevails in Zaïre today. Although unanimity does no langer exist among the various Belgian pressures groups about what is tobe done in Zaïre, the official policy of the government is entrenched in a «wait and see» attitude which points to the deepening contradictions within Western states towards Africa in general and Zaïre in particular. (shrink)

Through readings of works by Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley, David Marshall provides a new interpretation of the eighteenth-century preoccupation with theatricality and sympathy. Sympathy is seen not as an instance of sensibility or natural benevolence but rather as an aesthetic and epistemological problem that must be understood in relation to the problem of theatricality. Placing novels in the context of eighteenth-century writing about theater, fiction, and painting, Marshall argues that an unusual variety of authors and texts (...) were concerned with the possibility of entering into someone else's thoughts and feelings. He shows how key eighteenth-century works reflect on the problem of how to move, touch, and secure the sympathy of readers and beholders in the realm of both "art" and "life." Marshall discusses the demands placed upon novels to achieve certain effects, the ambivalence of writers and readers about those effects, and the ways in which these texts can be read as philosophical meditations on the differences and analogies between the experiences of reading a novel, watching a play, beholding a painting, and witnessing the spectacle of someone suffering. The Surprising Effects of Sympathy traces the interaction of sympathy and theater and the artistic and philosophical problems that these terms represent in dialogues about aesthetics, moral philosophy, epistemology, psychology, autobiography, the novel, and society. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Imaginary as a text which changes the direction of philosophical thinking regarding the image. Historically depreciated as a mere “copy” or “appearance” of a “reality” grasped through perception, the image is reconceived in Sartre’s text, which culminates in a revaluation of imagination as the condition of possibility for a human consciousness that always already transcends its situation towards something entirely other – what he calls “the imaginary.” Despite the metaphysical bias (...) that clearly operates on Sartre’s thinking throughout The Imaginary and leads him to privilege perception over imagination, his work ultimately succeeds in nihilating the traditional thing-image binary. In effect, he imagines something other than his situatedness within the philosophical reality of his time, ushering in a thought of the imaginary through a creative encounter with nothingness. This thought could only occur spontaneously, for the advent of the imaginary is not produced in an act of will. Accordingly, this essay attempts to trace the movements of Sartre’s project in its transformative process. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillard _Fatal Strategies_ Translated by Philip Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski Edited by Jim Fleming London: Pluto Press, 1999 ISBN 0-7453-1453-8 191 pp.

Postmodernism was not launched by the development of Warholesque pop art in the 1960s, nor was it initiated by the explosive destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe modern housing project of St Louis, Missouri in 1972, or by the commissioning of Jean-Francois Lyotard's work on knowledge in advanced societies by the Quebec government in the late 1970s. Postmodernism began with the publication of a paper entitled `The individualistic concept of plant the association' in 1926 by the plant ecologist Henry Gleason. If (...) we dare to characterize postmodernism, emphases on ideas such as heterogeneity, ephemerality, anti-foundationalism, pluralism, fragmentation, indeterminacy, schizophrenia, chaos, antiformalism, discontinuity, absence, playfulness, irony, localism, anarchy and ontological meaninglessness are the ones that tend to abound. The Gleasonian theory of plant associations can be said to reflect such ideas in the ecological arena. Certainly there is room for, and an expanding professional commitment to, a fully-fledged neo-Gleasonian postmodern approach to natural history in which ecological phenomena are examined using non-determinist, pluralist and local perspectives that reject the foundationalism and unifying approach of modernist science and which posits a view of the Earth's biota highlighting fragmentation, anarchism and non-interaction. Community ecology, as opposed to the unifying and totalizing tendencies of ecosystems ecology, might rightly claim to be the intellectual site of such a postmodern natural history. Often, postmodern studies not only attempt to describe a postmodern phenomenon but act to forge new varieties of postmodernism. It is in this vein that this paper seeks to present a non-anthropocentric form of postmodernism; not by dissolving the dualistic barrier that separates humanity from nature (as many environmentalisms would advocate) but by dissolving humanity and nature. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. This essay is a defense of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Imaginary as a text which changes the direction of philosophical thinking regarding the image. Historically depreciated as a mere “copy” or “appearance” of a “reality” grasped through perception, the image is reconceived in Sartre’s text, which culminates in a revaluation of imagination as the condition of possibility for a human consciousness that always already transcends its situation (...) towards something entirely other – what he calls “the imaginary.” Despite the metaphysical bias that clearly operates on Sartre’s thinking throughout The Imaginary and leads him to privilege perception over imagination, his work ultimately succeeds in nihilating the traditional thing-image binary. In effect, he imagines something other than his situatedness within the philosophical reality of his time, ushering in a thought of the imaginary through a creative encounter with nothingness. This thought could only occur spontaneously, for the advent of the imaginary is not produced in an act of will. Accordingly, this essay attempts to trace the movements of Sartre’s project in its transformative process. (shrink)

Le Canada a engendré deux tendances opposées dans la pratique et l'étude de la communication. D'une part, la pensée structuraliste et déterministe de Marshall Mc Luhan à Toronto pour qui la technique est une forme organisationnelle de la communication entre les hommes. D'autre part, la communication sociale, véritable laboratoire des médias, qui naquit pendant la Révolution tranquille des années 1960 et s'articula autour du Vidéographe de Montréal.Canada has spawned two opposing trends in the practice and study of communication. On (...) the one hand, the structuralist thought and deterministic Marshall McLuhan in Toronto that the technique is an organizational form of communication between people. On the other hand, social communication, real media lab, who was born during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and revolved around Videographer Montreal. (shrink)

A well-ingrained and recommended engineering practice in safety-critical software systems is to separate safety concerns from other aspects of the system. Along these lines, there have been calls for operating systems that implement ethical controls in an ethical layer separate from, and not amenable to tampering by, developers and modules in higher-level intelligence or cognition layers. There have been no implementations that demonstrate such a marshalling of ethical principles into an ethical layer. To address this, we present three different tracks (...) for implementing such systems, and offer a prototype implementation of the third track. We end by addressing objections to our approach. (shrink)

Notice --- Hobbes and Adams as Thucydideans --- Ancient Greece --- Alternative Concepts of the Human Condition --- Medieval Monarchy --- Renaissance Republics --- Founding Fathers --- The Moral Recuperation of Self-Interest --- Other Human Worlds --- Now is the Whimper of Our Self-Contempt --- Culture is the Human Nature.

Different cultures, different lenses -- Various approaches to risk in the legal system -- Institutional background -- Regulation -- Tort law generally -- Information about risk and assumption of risk -- Medical malocurrences -- The duty/proximite cause problem -- Scientific evidence -- Tort reform -- Statutory compensation systems.

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin’s Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history’s most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker’s art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.

The New World reveals a warning of the great change coming to our world and a prophetic vision of a future world for which we must prepare. It is a warning from God about humanity's rapid depletion and degradation of the Earth and the urgent action we must take, individually and collectively, to both restore our planet and prepare for the future.

Dan Marshall and Josh Parsons note, correctly. that the property of being either a cube or accompanied by a cube is incorrectly classified as intrinsic under the definition we have given unless it turns out to be disjunctive. Whether it is disjunctive, under the definition we gave, turns on certain judgements of the relative naturalness of properties. They doubt the judgements of relative naturalness that would classify their property as disjunctive. We disagree. They also suggest that the whole idea (...) of judging relative naturalness is a dubious business. We reply that, like them or not, such judgements cannot easily be avoided. (shrink)

Contents include a note on the translation, introduction by Peter Gay, and a bibliography.

Discourse on the sciences and the arts -- Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among men -- Discourse on political economy -- On the social contract -- The state of war.

Les douze etudes reunies ici sur Jean Scot Erigene, philosophe irlandais du IXe siecle qui redecouvrit plusieurs intuitions originales du neoplatonisme, constituent les derniers travaux de Jean Trouillard. Apres sa these sur la procession et la purification plotinienne, et a la suite de ses traductions et commentaires de Proclus, il preparait un ouvrage sur Jean Scot qui ne vit jamais le jour. Or, ce que la lecture des esquisses de cette oeuvre laissee en suspens nous apprend, c'est (...) que ce passage a Erigene a ete aussi decisif que celui qui l'avait conduit de Plotin a Proclus. La ou il etait possible de craindre une fixation du mouvement de la pensee neoplatonicienne dans les divisions steriles d'une theologie apologetique, Trouillard nous montre qu'il est au contraire impossible de reduire Jean Scot a la seule problematique categoriale qui ouvre le Periphyseon. Erigene constitue un jalon essentiel dans la latinisation du neoplatonisme ou se manifeste avec une force nouvelle la rigueur systematique d'un courant encore trop ignore, porteur d'un paradigme metaphysique qui n'a pourtant jamais ete aussi necessaire qu'aujourd'hui. (shrink)

In Made for Happiness, Jean Vanier examines the basis for modern moral philosophy and its role in our lives today. Having discovered through his work with the intellectually disabled the degree to which our society is divided, and our values misplaced, Vanier invites us to read with fresh eyes theories of happiness written 2,400 years ago.

This book, the last one written by Piaget, presents a new line of empirical studies based on a revised formulation of his theory of the development of logical reasoning. The amended theory overcomes many problems and criticisms of his earlier formulations by providing a fresh explanation for the origin of mental operations and mental organization based on the concept of meaning. It also offers a more elegant vision of the continuity in mental development from birth to adulthood. As the final (...) revision of Piaget's theory -- and one that opens up new areas of inquiry -- this book calls for a reinterpretation of his earlier work -- a task which will occupy scholars for decades to come. (shrink)

Polygraphe insaisissable, Jean-Jacques Rousseau a été tout ensemble romancier, polémiste, philosophe politique, auteur de confessions sulfureuses, pédagogue, métaphysicien. Diverse, complexe, logée dans une prose dont l'éclat fascine et dissimule parfois la délicate architecture conceptuelle, sa pensée - essentielle pour notre temps - est cependant souvent caricaturée ; les idées les plus étranges lui ont été parfois attribuées - revenir à l'état de nature, bâtir un Etat de forme totalitaire, tenir les enfants à l'écart de tous les livres - et (...) il a dû endosser, au fil du temps, les paternités les plus lourdes, du romantisme au socialisme et de la révolution française au stalinisme. Le présent ouvrage cherche à écarter les interprétations fondées sur les préjugés pour revenir aux textes et tenter de saisir les principes de ce que Rousseau concevait comme un «système» conceptuel destiné à penser l'époque moderne avec ses contradictions, ses progrès matériels et ses connaissances inédites, mais aussi ses effets moraux sur une nature humaine dont le caractère plastique permet la déformation par les institutions sociales et les formes politiques dans lesquelles elle est insérée. Il tente en particulier de prendre pour fil conducteur l'intuition majeure du philosophe de Genève : sans la justice et l'égalité, la liberté et le bonheur sont de véritables chimères. (shrink)

In this acclaimed exploration of the search for "authentic" individual identity, Marshall Berman explores the historical experiences and needs out of which this new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a time and place in which a distinctively modern form of society was just coming into its own, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity—of a self that could organize the individual's energy and direct it toward his own happiness—articulated eighteenth-century man's deepest responses to this brave new world, and (...) his most ardent hope for a new life in it. Exploring in particular the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity was radically opposed to the bourgeois, capitalistic idea of "self-interest.". (shrink)

Un temps, Michel Foucault a été lu comme un archéologue du savoir et un homme d'archives, abandonnant par instants sa réserve pour répondre à l'urgence des luttes. La lecture des cours au Collège de France suggère pourtant que sa politique ne peut être réduite au désordre des circonstances. Elle appartient de plein droit à l'histoire de la vérité quand elle rencontre celle du gouvernement de soi-même et des autres. Comment sommes-nous gouvernés? Quel est en nous le ressort caché de la (...) servitude? Pouvons-nous être gouvernés et nous gouverner autrement? Rechercher et dire la vérité peut-il nous altérer et, avec nous, le monde auquel nous appartenons? Pour répondre à ces questions, Foucault se déplace de l'époque moderne à l'Antiquité et privilégie tour à tour les rapports de pouvoir disséminés dans toute la société, les stratégies politiques qui les organisent et le travail éthique qui permet l'" inservitude " volontaire. Au terme de ce voyage que la mort a interrompu, la volonté de vérité devient le courage de se transformer et de transformer le monde, le principe d'une expérience spirituelle dont la politique est la pierre de touche. Ces déplacements dessinent un nouveau paysage politique dont ce livre établit la cartographie, pour que d'autres, après Foucault, puissent reprendre le voyage. (shrink)

The purposes of writing -- The itinerary of a thought -- Vietnam : imperialism and genocide -- Czechoslovakia : the socialism that came in from the cold -- France : masses, spontaneity, party -- Kierkegaard : the singular universal -- Mallarmé : the poetry of suicide -- Tintoretto : St. George and the dragon -- The man with the tape-recorder -- Psychoanalytic dialogue -- Reply to Sartre--Pontalis -- Reply to Sartre--Pingaud -- A plea for intellectuals -- A friend of the (...) people. (shrink)

Dans son ouvrage Décadence, Michel Onfray s'en prend avec virulence au christianisme antique et à son héritage. Selon le philosophe, la personne de Jésus n'est qu'un mythe sans consistance historique et la religion chrétienne se trouve à l'origine des violences et de l'intolérance qui obscurcissent, jusqu'à nos jours, le devenir de l'Occident, à travers son lien étroit au pouvoir politique. Il revient ici à Jean-Marie Salamito de répondre point par point à ces affirmations aussi définitives que contestables : non, (...) le christianisme n'est pas un obscurantisme bon à jeter aux poubelles de l'histoire. L'existence et le message de Jésus sont bel et bien attestés. Saint Paul n'est pas l'inventeur d'une religion obscurantiste qui manie le glaive. Et l'on ne peut réduire la relation Eglise/politique au seul épisode de Constantin. Et si le christianisme décrit par Michel Onfray n'était, au fond, qu'un mythe, une vision réinventée et caricaturée, sans plus de réalité que les personnages fantasques de Lewis Carroll? (shrink)

Depuis la pensée des Lumières, on pouvait croire que la raison triomphante avait définitivement dévalorisé la pensée mythique, renvoyée du côté "des fables et des superstitions" : il importait donc de la considérer comme un âge révolu de la pensée humaine. Or, depuis l'époque romantique et surtout depuis les acquis des sciences humaines du 20e siècle, nous avons assisté à une redécouverte de l'importance et de la pérennité de cette pensée mythique à l'oeuvre depuis les âges les plus reculés de (...) l'humanité. C'est à cette redécouverte que Jean-Pierre Sironneau a voulu contribuer en évoquant quelques auteurs qui en avaient été les principaux artisans et en proposant, à l'occasion, ses propres interprétations. Si on peut parler à ce propos d'herméneutique, c'est que les mythes ont toujours donné lieu à de multiples interprétations, que ce soit en art, en littérature, en histoire, en philosophie ou en anthropologie."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

RésuméCet article explore les liens entre le recours à la véracité de Dieu et les notions de certitude «métaphysique» et «morale» chez Descartes. Pour cela, je montre le rôle qu'elles jouent dans sa preuve de l'existence du monde extérieur, sa position sur l'existence d'autres esprits et celle sur l'«animal-machine». Descartes se sert de la véracité de Dieu dans le premier cas, maispas dans le deuxième ni le troisième. Je suggere que c'est parce que faire à nouveau appel à la véracité (...) de Dieu dans le cas des autres esprits aurait mis en péril sa doctrine de l'animal-machine. Je conclus en me penchant sur des passages de Descartes qui pourraient sembler incompatibles avec l'inter prétation que je fais du rôle important quejoue la certitude morale dans sa philosophic. (shrink)

RésuméCet article explore les liens entre le recours à la véracité de Dieu et les notions de certitude «métaphysique» et «morale» chez Descartes. Pour cela, je montre le rôle qu'elles jouent dans sa preuve de l'existence du monde extérieur, sa position sur l'existence d'autres esprits et celle sur l'«animal-machine». Descartes se sert de la véracité de Dieu dans le premier cas, maispas dans le deuxième ni le troisième. Je suggere que c'est parce que faire à nouveau appel à la véracité (...) de Dieu dans le cas des autres esprits aurait mis en péril sa doctrine de l'animal-machine. Je conclus en me penchant sur des passages de Descartes qui pourraient sembler incompatibles avec l'inter prétation que je fais du rôle important quejoue la certitude morale dans sa philosophic. (shrink)

Nouvelle édition critique et traduction française annotée de la _Lettre à Marcella_ de Porphyre. Le philosophe néoplatonicien Porphyre (234-305) y adresse à sa femme un témoignage unique sur la manière dont une vie philosophique peut être conduite et se préserver. This book presents a new annotated and translated edition of neoplatonist 3rd-century Greek philosopher Porphyrius’ _Letter to Marcella_. This letter, adressed to his wife, gives a unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led (...) so as to perpetuate itself. (shrink)

Ce livre pose un diagnostic sur notre epoque - presentee comme celle du crepuscule du theorique. A ce titre, il ose une grande fresque decrivant la situation actuelle des activites liees au theorique dans le contexte politique, social et d'abord economique qui est le notre aujourd'hui, en particulier en France. Il evoque des faits et des evenements concrets (la reforme de l'Universite, l'evolution des choix de filiere des etudiants, les changements d'orientation des programmes de l'enseignement secondaire, etc.) tout en degageant (...) du meme mouvement la signification profonde du theorique comme valeur (en mathematiques, en philosophie, en litterature, etc.) grace, precisement, aux outils forges dans les oeuvres anterieures de l'auteur. Une telle demarche porte celui-ci a plaider, apres Lyotard et Levinas, pour la prise en compte de la dette et de l'obligation envers quelque chose d'immemorial et de plus grand que nous et a examiner du meme mouvement la tension entre une telle dette et une politique de l'emancipation des individus. Au bout du compte, l'hypothese de depart est que nous pourrions avoir une inquietude radicale, ne portant pas sur le sort des lettres et sciences humaines, ou sur celui de la poesie, mais sur celui de l'attitude theorique elle-meme, dans sa purete et sa generalite. L'auteur veut, pour ainsi dire une derniere fois, faire entendre que la cause du theorique est, a sa maniere propre, la cause de l'humanite, une des manieres de vouloir pour les humains la vie la plus humaine. (shrink)