Do we own our genetic characteristics?

Abstract: An abyss separates Westerners who consider themselves owners of their genetic characteristics and Melanesians who already have almost no sense of personal property, much less genetic property. Who is ethically positioned correctly? It all depends on the importance given to the collective. The Western posture shows to what extent collectivism has deteriorated in our … Read more

Equality of places vs equality of opportunities

Abstract: The contradiction between equality of places and equality of opportunities has never found a satisfactory political solution. It is managed empirically by the presence of social circles. Places are privileged in privacy and opportunities in global society. The internal difficulties currently encountered by democracies come from the collapse of our social circles and an … Read more

Do without hierarchy?

Abstract: The etymology of ‘hierarchy’, the sacred order, remains relevant: there are always laws to which one must submit, if only the natural, new sacraments. I show that the collapse of hierarchies is natural, too, but that this disappearance is disastrous. It is not the hierarchical principle that poses the problem but its dysfunctions, its … Read more

How do you really assess animal suffering?

Abstract: Between the sterile positions of the denigration of animal suffering and the human-animal analogism, the truth is that the experience of suffering is strictly individual and connoted “atrocious” according to moral rather than physical criteria. Exacerbated animal suffering is our neglected human suffering. Pain sensors are universal, not what feels them How do you … Read more

Sensitivity readers or new breed of inquisitors?

Abstract: Authors write about people, not for them. Essential nuance and yet misunderstood by editors assisted by ‘sensitivity readers’. A misunderstanding caused by a misconception of the collective? Bram Stoker redacted by Dracula Dracula, hired as Bram Stoker’s sensitive reader, rewrote his vampire classic. How did this author of the Barbarian Ages have the audacity … Read more

When science takes its ease with racial symbolism

Abstract: Some authors use biology to interpret questions of psychology and sociology. This is the reductionist tradition —our behaviors would emanate from our physical constitution. Cultural symbolism is sought in biology, and if it is not found there, it would be illusory. I deliberately take a polemical example, the concept of race, to show that: … Read more

Can we do morality without morality?

How to renew ethics? Almost all ethical discussions start from an established morality. That is, every new moral rule is born in a circular way from laws set in stone. This conservatism protects our essential ideals. But the new rules seem exposed to the risk of inbreeding. Do they really adapt best to the frenetic … Read more

Explaining evil is not justifying it

Thinking about evil is not just about burning yourself in it With ‘Evil in modern thought‘, essayist Susan Neiman revisits Nietzsche and Arendt to condemn a resignation from contemporary philosophy about evil. She sees the Holocaust as such an exorbitant evil that it requires a complete overhaul of ethics, not just deconstructing world history. An … Read more