Search

Community as a Form of Thinking. How One Turns Kant Towards Social Philosophy with Fink, Nancy, and Esposito - In the times of nihilism, it is necessary to recall, with Roberto Esposito, the fact that, strictly speaking, in philosophy and its history, there is no other subject than community, insofar as everything that becomes the subject of philosophy can only become so because of the fact that there is community. That communality is a form of thinking or that the latter is constitutively communal, is another way of expressing what Emmanuel Levinas once put in the more succinct phrase that in consciousness one is always in two, even if one is alone. In order to explain the implications of this, I draw a line in my essay from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (specifically, its “positive” definition of being as “merely the position of a thing” [B 626], which receives much less attention than its negative aspect emphasized in the same passage, according to which being is not a real predicate) to the readings of Kant by Eugen Fink, Jean-Luc Nancy, and the aforementioned Roberto Esposito, in order to arrive at an understanding of being as an exposition of the disposition of things in us, i.e., as community.

Copyright of Anthropologica is the property of CASCA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Urban regeneration policy transforms spatiality and implies new norms of mobility in old central neighbourhoods of Brussels. This paper highlights the impact of these transformations on the relations between atmospheres and mobility experiences in these neighbourhoods. Based on two case studies, it shows how it affects “felt mobility” for old and new owners, and how these feelings allow new owners not to be absorbed in constraints of copresence. Firstly, the concept of atmospheres is used to question the impacts of these transformations on perceived spatiality (Thibaud, 2002) in these neighbourhoods – meanings of boundaries, density and spatial connectors. This data was collected during interviews and commented itineraries (parcours commentés). Secondly, the paper argues that “felt mobility” is an unequal resource to manage the proximity to others in these neighbourhood, and emphasises the role of social dispositions to mobility in this managment.

According to Eugen Fink, a German phenomenologist and student of Martin Heidegger, „metaphysics of death“ is one of the most important tasks of philosophy. However, metaphysics, as the queen of philosophical disciplines, finds itself in the sharpest marginal situation because its concepts of illuminating and determining being seem to be fragmented. The relationship between metaphysics and death should be perceived as such that death is not the subject of metaphysical thought, but rather its existential motive. Fink looks at the phenomenon of death from a different perspective than his mentor Martin Heidegger. Like other of his existentials, by which the human existence is defined, he complements it by an aspect of intersubjectivity, which fundamentally revises the strongly individualistic concept.

All innovation in agriculture constitutes a significant and complex ecological disturbance, even if limited to a single and simple action. Indeed, whatever the nature and objective of the action, a large number of ecological processes are affected and numerous discontinuities may occur within the agro-ecosystem, in both time and space. As the GMO example illustrates, it is not sufficient to focus on direct effect of innovation, it is necessary to forecast mid- and long-term impacts of innovation with respect to the environment. Modelling phenomena appear then to be a key element to achieve this goal.

Abstract: This article aims at reviewing the theoretical and experimental data published in 562 publications referring to genetically modified (GM) maize dispersal. Our choice was limited to this since in the European Union (EU), GM maize is the only GM crop currently grown commercially. The pollen dispersal of transgenic maize is due to two factors: (i) pollen-mediated gene flow; (ii) seed admixture during harvest and post-harvest processes. The pollen dispersal decreases rapidly with the distance from GM plots. Climatic and topographic factors and factors of relative density between GM and non-GM maize plots impact on the pollen dispersal. The combination of both isolation distance and flowering date between source plots and sink plots limits the adventitious presence of transgenes in non-GM plots. All publications we reviewed demonstrate that the EU 0.9% threshold is technically manageable if the measures of isolation distances as well as harvesting and post harvesting processes and fully synchronous flowering are implemented. To cite this article: A. Ricroch et al., C. R. Biologies 332 (2009). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]