Laurent Jaffro

On the three-hundredth anniversary of Adam Smith’s birth, The Theory of Moral Sentiments still captivates readers with its virtuosity and systematic approach. The originality of the text is not confined to the role of the ‘impartial spectator’. Smith uses sentimentalism as a method for exploring the realm of social and moral values. Drawing on the research presented in La Couleur du goût (Vrin, 2019), this book demonstrates how Smith discovered the principles of self- and other-evaluation by exploring the dynamics of various emotions. Adam Smith has much to teach us about the relationships between values, emotions, and behaviour.

How can one aesthetic preference be considered more valid than another? Eighteenth-century Anglophone philosophers debated the 'standard of taste', the subject of a seminal essay by Hume. The empiricist and Platonic traditions are pitted against one another. Combining a broad overview with an analysis of the arguments, this book traces the history of this debate and takes it further. Are values analogous to colours? Are they fantasies or realities? Is psychology alone sufficient to shed light on taste? Is taste akin to a sensory organ or an emotion? Is it pleasure or judgement? One hypothesis is that the spread of conceptions of the universe brought about by the scientific revolution alters our perspective on the beauties of nature and the meaning of artistic activity. The book argues that sound theory lies at the intersection of Hume's reasonable subjectivism and Reid's moderate cognitivism. It reconciles the unduly overlooked Platonic influence on Anglophone aesthetics with the psychological approach.

We need a concept for the neglected practice of overcoming gratitude in ambiguous situations where it has bad effects, despite being appropriate. This concept can be found in the philosophy and psychology of forgiveness. Several cases illustrate how gratitude may be bad, mixed with a feeling of dependence, and how overcoming it may be important. There are also reasons for thinking that gratitude can be excessive without being inappropriate. If this is accurate, the question arises as to whether anything can be done about it without abandoning appropriate gratitude; whether there is some practice that allows us to overcome troubled gratitude while remaining grateful as we should be, but without the bad effects. We refer to this as ‘forgiving’ benefits, drawing attention to the analogy with another technique of indirect action on oneself and others, and distinguishing it from renouncing gratitude. We apply a process account tailored to the forgiveness of wrongs to the ‘forgiveness’ of benefits, answer possible objections and take a normative stance on the significance of that nameless practice.

The chapter deals mainly with the ‘Essay on Taste’, situates Reid’s position in the debate opened up by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, and makes three points: the first about the nature of aesthetic perception; the second about its object, ‘excellence’; and the third about the location of beauty in the forms of nature or works of art, where excellence is expressed. Taste should be viewed as a social operation of the mind. In some cases, it involves a communication from God to human beings. The psychological approach to aesthetic perceptionmust be complemented by a metaphysical account of what makes us feel the beautiful or the grand.

The chapter concentrates on Stair’s understanding of laws, whether human-made or divine. Scots law is a particular application of a rational legislation, which ultimately rests upon God’s perfections. However, positive law cannot be entirely derived from natural law, mainly because of the Fall and also for pragmatic reasons. One important aspect of Stair’s contribution to legal and moral philosophy is his distinction between conventional and obediential obligations (from the will of God only), and his account of the principle of ‘engagement’ at work in conventional obligations. Also, Stair’s view that a promise is binding per se, without acceptance by the promisee, deserves attention.

Why is contempt seen as potentially lacking in the respect for persons and therefore prima facie subject to negative moral evaluation? This paper starts by looking at a distinctive feature of contempt in the context of thick relationships, such as those of friendship, close professional collaboration, or romantic love: there is an irreversibility effect attached to the experience of contempt. Once contempt occurs in a thick relationship, it seems very difficult to return to non-contemptuous reactive attitudes. The second part argues that the irreversibility effect is due to the fact that contempt is an affective attitude which tends to invisibilize the person who is the object of contempt. The tendency to invisibilize is inscribed in the intentional structure of contempt as well as in its motivational dimension. The final part explores some consequences of this hypothesis, and in particular argues that it also explains why contempt motivated by abject wrongdoing, as opposed to resentment, anger, or hatred, tends to block any process of forgiveness.

L'ensemble que forment ces contributions porte sur les différentes périodes et questions dont Jean Salem était lui-même spécialiste, ou les aborde par des biais inattendus : l'atomisme et l'épicurisme de l'Antiquité, la philosophie classique et le matérialisme des Lumières, le matérialisme moderne et ses critiques, la tradition marxiste, le pragmatisme, la pensée économique, la philosophie du vin ou encore la lecture philosophique des œuvres littéraires. Ce volume propose ainsi un aperçu de l'état des recherches sur le matérialisme, sous ses différentes formes et dans ses interactions avec les autres traditions philosophiques."--Page 4 of cover.

The third Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson considered laughter as a passion in its own right. The hilarious response is not reducible, as Hobbes believed, to the facial expression of the sudden awareness of our own superiority. Ridicule is however an important kind of laughter; it is also an action, part of a strategy against the seriousness of fanaticism. Shaftesbury gives much importance to the politics of laughter and to the caustic power of ridicule, but also to the capacity to laugh at one’s laughter, which is crucial to what he calls good humour. Hutcheson and Shaftesbury interestingly disagree on the question of how to regulate laughter and limit its abuse.

The chapter claims that in order to understand Locke’s doctrine of assent, his philosophy of mind needs to be seen in conjunction with his philosophy of language, which in turn gains from being compared with Port-Royal’s logic and grammar. It points out two conflicting facts in Locke’s account of affirmation and negation in the _Essay_. First, Locke entrusts affirmation and negation with the task of signifying both the assertion by which we manifest our assent to a proposition and the junction or separation of the ideas constituting the proposition. The other fact is that Locke accepts a great variety of ways of considering a proposition. This diversity of ‘postures’ is poorly expressed by the limited number of syncategorematic terms, ‘particles’. The first fact fosters a one-act view of the assent we give to propositions. The second opens the way to a multiple-act view.

Quelles sont les opinions spéculatives de John Locke sur la nature de l’esprit et des idées et sur les conditions métaphysiques de la pensée et de la conscience? Faut-il en rester à la vision traditionnelle d’un Locke qui reste agnostique à propos de telles questions, au prétexte que leur traitement excède la méthode adoptée dans l’ Essai? Philippe Hamou a affronté ce problème et a entrepris de réévaluer la philosophie de l’esprit lockienne, dans une série de travaux qui illustrent l’intérêt contemporain pour la métaphysique qui convient à cette épistémologie. La présente discussion situe la contribution de P. Hamou au sein des études récentes et propose quelques objections.

Le probleme theologico-politique comprend une diversite de questions qui trouvent cependant leur unite dans la necessite, ou la contrainte, dont la philosophie dans son histoire ne s'est pas defaite: celle de se confronter au religieux, a l'ecclesial et au theologique. Cette confrontation du philosophique et du religieux emprunte plusieurs voies, selon qu'il s'agit pour la philosophie d'examiner la fondation religieuse du politique et plus generalement les relations du pouvoir et du sacre, ou bien de recommander ou de contester l'usage politique du religieux, ou encore d'affirmer la liberte de la croyance contre toute censure. Les etudes ici reunies portent sur les pythagoriciens, Thomas d'Aquin, Jacques 1er d'Angleterre, Milton, Spinoza, Bayle, Toland, Hume, Kant et Rosenzweig, et proposent une perspective traversiere sur les transformations d'une question qui, tout en etant encore la notre, est indissociable d'une histoire.

La leçon de la main de Thomas Reid (1710-1796) qui est ici traduite et présentée date de ses années d’enseignement dans la chaire de philosophie morale à Glasgow. Elle consiste en la discussion intransigeante de la « théorie » du titulaire précédent, Adam Smith (1723-1790). Le « système de la sympathie » exposé dans The theory of moral sentiments est l’objet de plusieurs objections, puisées dans l’arsenal que Reid emploie dans son attaque générale contre toutes les formes de sentimentalisme moral qui s’appuient unilatéralement sur la composante affective des évaluations. Le texte montre que Francis Hutcheson et David Hume n’étaient pas les seules cibles de cette critique et met en lumière certaines difficultés et certaines audaces de la « théorie de la morale » d’Adam Smith.

Little attention has been paid to the fact that Thomas Reid's epistemology applies to ‘political reasoning’ as well as to various operations of the mind. Reid was interested in identifying the ‘first principles’ of political science as he did with other domains of human knowledge. This raises the question of the extent to which the study of human action falls within the competence of ‘common sense’. Our aim is to reconstruct and assess Reid's epistemology of the sciences of social action and to determine how it connects with the fundamental tenets of his general epistemology. In the first part, we portray Reid as a methodological individualist and focus on the status of the first principles of political reasoning. The second part examines Reid's views on the explanatory power of the principles of human action. Finally, we draw a parallel between Reid's epistemology and the methodology of Weberian sociology.

Parfit emprunte à Tim Scanlon son fondamentalisme des raisons, à savoir la conception selon laquelle le rôle que jouent les valeurs aux yeux d’un partisan du réalisme des valeurs doit être réattribué aux raisons. En distinguant avec Parfit entre les faits normatifs que sont les raisons et les faits normativement importants qui donnent ces raisons, on ne peut manquer de soulever une question : de quelle manière des faits peuvent-ils fournir des raisons? Faut-il entendre que les raisons surviennent sur des faits naturels ou qu’elles sont fondées sur des propriétés non évaluatives? Ou faut-il entendre autrement cette relation? Afin de remédier aux silences de Parfit sur la métaphysique de la morale, l’article aborde la question sous un angle plus épistémologique qu’ontologique.

This paper, at the crossroads of practical and epistemological questions, puts forward a non-standard approach to the study of a set of trust phenomena (trust, trustworthiness, distrust, self-trust, self-distrust…) and their interconnectedness. Two paradigmatic approaches to trust – harmonic and disharmonic – are unpacked and shown to be complementary. In contexts where the harmonic view applies, trust phenomena are mutually reinforcing. When the disharmonic view is appropriate, instead, they counterbalance one another. An analysis of Augustine’s De fide rerum quae non videntur helps introducing the former. Each view carries its own conception of the role of institutions in trust. For the harmonic approach, institutions are contexts that reinforce trust silently, whereas for the disharmonic view they are salient objects of trust. The need for an over-arching articulation of these limited views is further highlighted by appeal to another distinction, between background and decision-based forms of trust. This paves the way to what is here termed a metaharmonic theory of trust, a theory sensitive to the difference between the contexts where trust phenomena reinforce or counterbalance one another.

This article examines and discusses the presuppositions behind the answer that Paul Ricœur brought to the question “What is practical reason?” in a series of studies that led to the “little ethics” of Oneself as Another .  The conception defended by Ricœur is presented as a sort of reconciliation, or composition, of Aristotelian ethics and Kantian morality. Two problems in particular are raised: the first is raised by the questionable nature of Ricœur’s interpretation of the positions that he synthesizes; the second concerns the model - dialectic or eclectic – of this synthesis