Marc Maesschalck

Democracy, Law and Governance

This book concerns the transformation of the modes of governance of contemporary developed democracies and aims to define the conditions required for the promotion of the public interest in these democracies public policy. It has two goals- firstly to show why a sound theoretical approach to the concept of law results in opening up the theory oif law to the debate on governance in the social sciences. Secondly, it reconstructs the underpinnings of recent debates on governance, focusing on the pragmatist turn that has marked efforts to overcome the inadequacies of both the economic and the deliberative approaches. In fulfilling this second goal, it examines the advances yielded by the pragmatist turn as well as its limitations and concludes by proposing a theoretical approach to dealing with its limitations. This illuminating book illuminating book applies recent research in both theory of law and theory of governance and it seeks to deepen the analytic impact of the recent pragmatist revival.

La réduction du contexte chez Bourdieu et Habermas

In Bourdieu, as in Habermas, the relations between the theory of social action and a comprehensive sociology of the world as it is experienced play a decisive role in understanding the transformation of forms of life. Hence it is possible to compare these two authors from the point of view of the operations they mobilize, ir order to describe these relations. Apart from the known differences, there results a degree of epistemological proximity in the manner of mobilising the schematism of representation, in order to explain the pragmatic competence to follow the rules. The hypothesis put forward by the A. is that this explanation reduces the context of action to a function of a semantic background.

Un sujet pour l’éthique ? Le pouvoir sur la vie nue de Agamben à Levinas

Notre these dans cette contribution est qu’un defi majeur de l’ethique actuelle reside dans sa conception de l’identite d’acteur, c’est-a-dire dans sa croyance au sujet ethique. Viser l’eveil, l’education ou l’accompagnement d’un acteur ethique, c’est attendre une forme de processus de subjectivation a travers lequel l’action ethique parvient a s’engendrer et a s’orienter de maniere specifique et autonome dans des contextes donnes. L’apport d’un cadre institutionnel sera toujours relatif a l’effet qu’il peut induire sur un tel processus sans jamais pouvoir se substituer a lui. Or si un tel processus depend lui-meme de certaines conditions d’eveil ou de stimulation, comment faut-il envisager celles-ci ? N’y a-t-il pas d’emblee aujourd’hui un double risque qui consisterait a compter sur une spontaneite de l’eveil en fonction des contextes de vie et des experiences ?

Pour un point de vue d'immanence en sciences humaines

Cet article montre comment fonder a partir de Schelling et de Henry une critique radicale des biais d’objectivation et de subjectivation en sciences humaines. Cette critique ouvre la voie a la construction d’un point de vue d’immanence qui se caracterise par l’experimentation d’une constitution d’affect dans un processus dont procede la subjectivite. Ce point de vue d’immanence remet en question les attitudes admises dans la production des relations sociales et des normes qui les encadrent de maniere a accroitre l’attention en meme temps a la vulnerabilite de ces processus et a leur pouvoir de transformation des affects.

La religion comme miroir de la philosophie ? Confrontation de Fichte et Schelling en 1804

Alors que la querelle de l’atheisme a amene Fichte a dissocier le caractere necessairement abstrait de son projet de « theorie de la religion » du caractere concret du sentiment religieux eprouve par le croyant, Schelling cherche au contraire a associer la reflexion theologique a l’accomplissement du savoir philosophique comme intuition de l’univers. C’est en 1804 que ces deux positions atteignent leur point definitif de rupture, Schelling poursuit jusqu’au bout dans la logique du miroir, Fichte la depassant grâce a sa conception genetique de la religion.

Phenomenology and self-organisation

The current development of cognitivist sciences borrowed to phenomenology the notion of intentionality; with some adjustments, it allows formalizing what is meant by “intelligent behavior” and, therefore, it gives a formal model against which it is possible to determine whether an automaton or an expert computer behaves with intelligence. The idea of such a borrowing comes from Searle. “As the conditions of satisfaction are interior to the act of speaking, the satisfaction conditions of the intentional state are interior to the intentional state”. In a comment to this quotation, Dreyfus says that “in the light of this theory of intentionality, the phenomenological reduction takes the central importance attributed to it by Husserl.

Entre règle de reconnaissance et autorité sociale : la reconstruction du jugement téléologique

Pour saisir l’importance dans le domaine de la theorie du droit, aujourd’hui, de la question du tiers posee par Marco Olivetti, il faut preter attention au lien qui existe historiquement entre l’ordre du tiers et le defi de la justification de l’autorite sociale. Le principe fondamental d’auto-limitation reciproque des libertes suppose, en effet, la possibilite de renvoyer a un ordre capable de garantir, au-dela de son utilite immediate, l’equilibre des volontes de maniere a rendre stable le lien social, c’est-a-dire a donner du sens a l’execution d’une promesse, au remboursement d’une dette, a la realisation d’une activite conjointe…

Philosophie et révélation chez Schelling (Première partie)

. ; So as to be able to study the concept of Revelation in the philosophical thought of Schelling, one has to use a method which is at the same time diachronic and synchronie. ; From the diachronic point of view one considers the intellectual horizon where Schelling s first philosophy as well as his structure of the concept of Revelation was formed. Next one examines the evolution of this concept in a dialogue and a critique of the sources. Considered as a transcendental process, Revelation is defined as an historie act, following a reflection on the explicative value of the natural process. ; From the synchronie point of view, one studies again ail the elements encountered ail along the speculative process in elaborating a new natural theology centered on the positive concept of Revelation. ; Taking his distance from the questions of the proofs of the existence of God as well as Kants agnosticism, Schelling proposes, thanks to his positive method, a natural theology based on the acknowledgement of the historical value of the Christ event through religious consciousness. Schelling seems, contrary to Barth and Bultmann to whom he is nevertheless close, to anticipate a theology of the Christ event similar to the one of Rahner, whilst keeping in mind his philosophical preoccupation to situate for mon the meaning of a radical salvation in his tory. To read the event, one has to learn to be reborn because he signais the All-other, the unforeseeable.