Eco-ethica

The task of this paper is to derive an ethics of governance from the teachings of Mencius that may be applicable to our present time. Mencius follows Confucius in the three important elements of the state: security, basic necessities, and the confidence of the people in their ruler. Mencius specifies these in terms of avoiding unjust wars, providing a sound and inclusive economic program, and adding justice to humanity in parenting the people.

As is well known, Kant finds the subjective condition of morally motivated actions in the feeling of respect for duty, and defines it as an a priori affect caused only by reason, an affect to be distinguished from all psychological inclinations. In Confucian ethics, one can find such a transcendentalized affect explaining the origin of authentic moral actions. The author analyzes and compares two privileged moral feelings not only in the perspective of contemporary debates between duty ethics and virtue ethics, but also in the perspective of contemporary Korean experiences of moral crisis.

La France compte au XVIIe siècle de grands analystes de la société. Servis par une prose précise, fluide et inventive, ces anthropologues sont aussi des métaphysiciens. Parmi eux, citons Bossuet, Fénelon et La Bruyère, puis, à cheval sur le XVIIe et le XVIIIe siècles, le duc de Saint-Simon. La Bruyère et Saint-Simon nous peignent la fin du règne de Louis XIV. Elle est marquée par le début d’une période glaciaire dévastatrice pour les paysans et par la révocation de l’édit de Nantes qui appauvrit la France. Leur liberté de ton et leur sévérité, quand ils écrivent au roi, rendent leur tableau vrai, poignant et plein d’utiles leçons pour notre temps.

What does it mean to call the so-called second Arab awakening a liberal revolution? In this article, the author tries to answer that question by first framing it in the larger historical context by reference to the origins of the liberal narrative. Second, he attempts to probe the question of why and how the recent events of the Middle East can be put in the context of that narrative. Finally, he turns to evolutionary theory to see what kind of paradigm can be prescriptive for the second Arab awakening.

This essay attempts to outline a genealogical approach to the question of why political reasoning and moral reasoning have parted company, highlighting the contributions of Aristotle, Aquinas, Geulincx, Kant, Garve, Hegel, and Schmitt. In the author’s conclusion he looks in particular at the work of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, the former largely associated with political philosophy and the latter almost exclusively associated with ethics, to show that these readings are both one-sided understandings of their work and that, writing in the aftermath of the Holocaust, neither accept the standard account of the relation of ethics and politics.

This article seeks to show that multiple modalities uncovered in the phenomenology of recognition is the basis for understanding how social and political phenomena can manifest itself variously in amoral social conflict, moral struggles for recognition as well as peaceful experiences of mutual recognition. Conceived in this light, the moral task for individuals is to move beyond the recognition of others as things and instead towards the recognition of the others as persons worthy of respect and sympathy. And the political task of institutions is to teach and cultivate moral forms of mutual recognition even as they regulate and constrain the amoral Hobbesian tendencies for social conflict.

Paul Ricœur is rarely considered as a political thinker by his commentators. However, the question of power is constantly present in his thinking. The paper aims at retracing the main lines of Ricœur’s political project. Being instructed by the twentieth century totalitarianisms, he attacks systematicism in politics with “systematicity”, relying on the strength of political paradoxes. This argumentative form invites us to renounce claiming a knowledge and to connect politics with ethics through a practical wisdom. Ricœur’s reflection gives us keys for understanding today’s politics. His criticism of “minimal policies” may in particular be addressed to neoliberalism.

Cet article s’efforce de montrer quelles sont les ressources anthropologiques de la philosophie ricœurienne de l’acte pour penser une articulation vivante de l’éthique et du politique qui évite l’impasse que représente l’idée d’un divorce complet entre idéalisme moral et réalisme politique. Pour ce faire, il tente de définir la démarche centrale de l’herméneutique de Ricœur comme celle d’une réappropriation réflexive et critique de l’affirmation éthique originaire dont le but ultime est de redéployer le parcours entier de la liberté et des institutions.

This paper tries to answer the question: why did Paul Ricœur keep a nearly total silence after 1963 about Soren Kierkegaard, and was there from the beginning a reticence with regard to Kierkegaard? An answer can be found in the beginning of Ricœur’s work, in his first book written with Mikel Dufrenne on Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de I ’existence. This book that is full of references to Kierkegaard also shows that it was Jaspers’ particular appropriation of the Danish thinker that affected him. But, like Jaspers, Ricœur became too preoccupied with external historical, social and political life to be a true disciple of Kierkegaard.