Les frontières de la philosophie Européenne

Massimo Cacciari, Geofilosofia dell'Europa, Milan, Adelphi, 1994, 170 p., ISBN 97–88–84591031–9.     

Les Théoriciens Italiens de la Raison D’État Carrières et Motivations

The article tries to shed light on the careers and the motivations of Italian authors who wrote on reason of State in the period of 1550 to 1650. Half of them were clergymen in very different positions, joined by lawyers, physicians and men of letters. Especially many clergymen were teaching at universities in the hope of getting a position at a court. Apart from this endeavour to become a secretary or councillor of a prince or a cardinal, the main motivations of writing the treatises were the refutation of the machiavellian ideas and the desire to open new areas of action for the prince, but also the defence of republican liberties. As the treatises and collections of maxims were to a great extent literary, the influence on rationalisation of the State is judged with scepticism.     

L’eugénisme et la protection de l’espèce humaine dans les lois bioéthiques Vers une nouvelle construction juridique de l’homme

The aim of this study is to bring to the fore some issues concerning human rights unleashed by the bioethical laws of July 1994, regarding the application of biotechnologies to reproduction. To achieve this aim, an analysis is offered of the legal arrangements, set by law in order to determine the procedures related to the selection of embryos and the transformation of their genetic characteristics. These analyses are then compared to the eugenic procedures instituted in the West during the first half of the xxth century. As a result, the idea is challenged, that eugenics is a category fit for the characterizing the biopolitical project contained in the bioethical laws. To conclude, the aim is made that what is a stake, as far as human rights are concerned, is the fate of the idea of man and of the subject of rights that is involved in these laws.     

Les critères de la radicalité en question : Le cas Poulain de la Barre

Early modern radicalism and its criteria are described and defined by Jonathan Israel in various works. Poulain de la Barre, one of the first modern feminist thinkers, first is used by Israel as an example of the so-called radical Enlightenment and finally is rejected as such. This case study exhibed the necessity of questionning the coherence of the required criteria for defining a « radical » thinker, especially when examinating carefully the last paragraph of Spinoza’s Political Treatise.     

Les «Faits scientifiques» et leur public: l’histoire de la détection de la syphilis

In the 1910's and 1920', thanks to the conjunction of scientific views concerning the specificity of anti-bacterial antibodies, of lay ideas about the existence of anti-bacterial antibodies and of the perceived importance of developing a syphilis test for public health officials, the community of serologists collectively transformed a relatively inefficient diagnostic test described by Wassermann in 1906 into an "incontestable scientific fact". This "scientific fact" established the equivalence: Wassermann positive individual=person infected with the germ Treponema pallidum, the etiological agent of syphilis. It modified the boundaries of the nosologic entity "syphilis", medical practices, professional attitudes, lay perceptions of syphilis, and health policies. In the 1950's, however, discrepancies between Wassermann test data and epidemiological data and, on the other hand, the development of specific anti-treponemal tests, destabilized the previously stabilized "scientific fact". A high percentage of Wassermann positive individuals were redefined as "biological false positifs", that is persons who suffered from chronic affections able to induce positive results of the Wassermann test. The equivalence Wassermann positive person=individual infected by Treponema pallidum was replaced by the equation: Wassermann positive person=individual infected by Treponema pallidum or biological false positive. The new perception of the Wassermann test again changed scientific views, professional practices and lay beliefs. The history of the Wassermann reaction illustrates the complicated interaction between "scientific facts" and "social facts", and the mutual shaping of both.     

Le scepticisme et les hypothèses de la physique

The History of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza is often called upon to support three theses: first, that Descartes had a dogmatic notion of systematic knowledge, and therefore of physics; second, that the hypothetical epistemology of physics which spread during the xviith century was the result of a general sceptical crisis; third, that this epistemology was more successful in England than in France. I reject these three theses: I point first to the tension in Descartes’ works between the ideal of a completely certain science and a physics replete with hypotheses; further, I argue that the use of hypotheses by mechanical philosophers cannot be separated from their conception of physics; finally I show that, at the end of the xviith century, physicists in France as well as in England spoke through hypotheses and I examine different ways of explaining this shared practice. Richard H. Popkin’s book serves therefore as a starting point for insights into the general problem: to what extent and for what reasons some propositions in physics have been presented as hypotheses in the xviith century?     

Onze thèses sur les archives de la recherche pour une nouvelle politique patrimoniale et scientifique

Abstracting the main content of a recent report on the bad state of the archives of scientific research, this paper puts forward eleven thesis likely to feed, in this time of numeric transition to a new documentary regime and to a new patrimonial policy. The recent numeric conditions impose to set new archival pratices, more proactive, anticipative and prospective. Archives of scientific research must be thought in a double memorial and scientific dimension, and not only as a patrimonial or historical one.     

L’enfance comme figure compassionnelle: étude transversale de l’iconographie de la famine aux dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles

Despite the growing interest in the use of child images in humanitarian contexts in the last few years, there has been no transverse study of the iconography of famines in contemporary times. On the contrary, this iconography has been analysed in a scattered way, in disciplinary boundaries that prevent a more global understanding of the birth and use of these images. By comparing the approaches of the history of humanitarianism and childhood, as well as of social photography and media analysis, the purpose of this article is to show that visuals of starving children eventually find their roots at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when charitable organisations are using photography as a tool to mobilise civil society and governments as well as to internationalise the humanitarian response. This analysis of Western visual strategies and media mobilisations throughout the twentieth century helps to put into perspective the so-called rupture between a first and a second age of humanitarianism. It shows first how young generations have become a privileged form of representation since the nineteenth century, using an aesthetic universe that is morally compelling; then, later, how the depoliticisation of the victim’s figure engages a political message.