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To Fill or Not to Fill Individual Responsibility Gaps?In Wil Waluchow & Stefan Sciaraffa (eds.), The Legacy of Ronald Dworkin, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.This chapter analyzes Dworkin’s view that there can be morally unsettling individual responsibility gaps in cases of collectively generated bad outcomes. I focus on two of the more provocative aspects of Dworkin’s discussion. First, I challenge Dworkin’s view that group responsibility is indispensable for comprehensive moral evaluations. Second, I assess the related contention that those confronting IRGs can realize significant expressive value by conceiving of some group as a responsible entity…Read more
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Rhétorique philosophique et fondement de la dialectiquePhilosophie Antique 6 (6): 137-161. 2006.The commentary of Plato’s Gorgias by Olympiodorus of Alexandria (ca. 505-after 565) is the only ancient commentary of the dialogue that has survived. This little-known and neglected commentary is truly of historical and hermeneutical interest. Beyond its value for our understanding of late Neoplatonism, Olympiodorus’ interpretation can renew in some respects our reading of the Platonic text and can contribute to current methodological debates, as presuppositions traditionally dominant in Plato s…Read more
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33Classical Otherness: Critical Reflections on the Place of Philology in Gadamer's HermeneuticsRevista Portuguesa de Filosofia 56 (3/4): 361-388. 2000.Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics rests largely on the concept of the classical. According to Gadamer, the classical stands for the continuity and the truth claim of the tradition, as transmitted by the written word. The normative character of the classical is directed against the neutrality and relativism of historicism: understanding does not occur primarily through distancing or methodological reconstruction but through belongingness to, and participation in, the past. The article shows ho…Read more
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142Desert and Avoidability in Self-DefenseEthics 122 (1): 111-134. 2011.Jeff McMahan rejects the relevance of desert to the morality of self-defense. In Killing in War he restates his rejection and adds to his reasons. We argue that the reasons are not decisive and that the rejection calls for further attention, which we provide. Although we end up agreeing with McMahan that the limits of morally acceptable self-defense are not determined by anyone’s deserts, we try to show that deserts may have some subsidiary roles in the morality of self-defense. We suggest that …Read more
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6Die Resokratisierung Platons: die platonische Hermeneutik Hans-Georg GadamersAcademia Verlag. 1999.
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26Hermeneutic philosophy and Plato: Gadamer's response to the Philebus (edited book)Academia. 2010.This volume of new essays by an international group of scholars examines the response of Hans-Georg Gadamer to Plato, especially to the Philebus. The book studies Gadamer's interpretative approach to the dialogues and unwritten doctrines of Plato. It also shows how, for Gadamer, reading Plato was intimately interconnected with formulating his own philosophical views. The volume also brings out how Gadamer influenced Donald Davidson in his reading of Plato and his philosophical thought. The volum…Read more
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910 Humbling as Upbringing: The Ethical Dimension of the Elenchus in the LysisIn Scott Gary Alan (ed.), Does Socrates Have a Method?: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato's Dialogues and Beyond, Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 183-198. 2002.
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112Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from socrates to Foucault,Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (4): 637-640. 1997.
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20Between dialect and rhetoric. New research on Platon's' Gorgias'Philosophische Rundschau 55 (1). 2008.
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9Yelena Baraz, A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical PoliticsPhilosophie Antique 14 355-359. 2014.Dans la foulée des publications récentes sur Cicéron philosophe, cette excellente étude explore à nouveaux frais son projet « encyclopédique » (sous la dictature de César, 46-44) par le biais d’un examen des prologues. Yelena Baraz (désormais Y.B.) justifie dans son introduction cette approche méthodologique. Cicéron possédait un cahier de prologues (volumen prohoemiorum) et écrivait des prologues indépendamment de l’ouvrage (ad Att. XVI, 6, 4). Cela signifie, explique-t-elle, qu’il conceva...
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3The twofold requirements of truth and justice in the GorgiasPlato Journal 16 95-108. 2017.This paper examines Plato’s views about the unity of argument and drama, and asks why Plato never made his views on this unity fully explicit. Taking the Gorgias as a case study it is argued that unity rests on the conception of refutative dialectic as justice and on the principle of self-consistency of thought and desire. As compared to the treatise, the dialogue form has the advantage of being able to defend these substantive views in action and thus to demonstrate the performative contradicti…Read more
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22The twofold requirements of truth and justice in the GorgiasPlato Journal 16 95-108. 2016.This paper examines Plato’s views about the unity of argument and drama, and asks why Plato never made his views on this unity fully explicit. Taking the Gorgias as a case study it is argued that unity rests on the conception of refutative dialectic as justice and on the principle of self-consistency of thought and desire. As compared to the treatise, the dialogue form has the advantage of being able to defend these substantive views in action and thus to demonstrate the performative contradicti…Read more
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577Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity (edited book)Brill. 2017.31 chapters covering the Old Academy to Late Antiquity. See attached TOC
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26Host manipulation by cancer cells: Expectations, facts, and therapeutic implicationsBioessays 38 (3): 276-285. 2016.Similar to parasites, cancer cells depend on their hosts for sustenance, proliferation and reproduction, exploiting the hosts for energy and resources, and thereby impairing their health and fitness. Because of this lifestyle similarity, it is predicted that cancer cells could, like numerous parasitic organisms, evolve the capacity to manipulate the phenotype of their hosts to increase their own fitness. We claim that the extent of this phenomenon and its therapeutic implications are, however, u…Read more
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18Cancer adaptations: Atavism, de novo selection, or something in between?Bioessays 39 (8): 1700039. 2017.From an evolutionary perspective, both atavism and somatic evolution/convergent evolution theories can account for the consistent occurrence, and astounding attributes of cancers: being able to evolve from a single cell to a complex organized system, and malignant transformations showing significant similarities across organs, individuals, and species. Here, we first provide an overview of these two hypotheses, including the possibility of them not being mutually exclusive, but rather potentiall…Read more
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8The Platonic Alcibiades I: The Dialogue and its Ancient ReceptionCambridge University Press. 2015.Although it was influential for several hundred years after it first appeared, doubts about the authenticity of the Platonic Alcibiades I have unnecessarily impeded its interpretation ever since. It positions itself firmly within the Platonic and Socratic traditions, and should therefore be approached in the same way as most other Platonic dialogues. It paints a vivid portrait of a Socrates in his late thirties tackling the unrealistic ambitions of the youthful Alcibiades, urging him to come to …Read more
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16Chapter 8. The Elenctic Strategies of Socrates: The Alcibiades I and the Commentary of OlympiodorusIn Harold Tarrant & Danielle A. Layne (eds.), The Neoplatonic Socrates, University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 118-126. 2014.
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6Tradition et critique : lecture jumelée de Platon et Aristote chez OlympiodoreLaval Théologique et Philosophique 64 (1): 89-104. 2008.What authority do Plato and Aristotle possess in Late Antiquity, specifically for Olympiodorus of Alexandria? According to a current widespread view, the relationship of all Neoplatonists to the two Greek philosophers can be captured by two assumptions : the harmony between the two thinkers and the superiority, even the infallibility, of Plato. The present study first clarifies this notion of harmony in the light of the pedagogical context of the late commentaries and the principle of truth as u…Read more
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11Zwischen Dialektik und Rhetorik. Neuere Forschungen zu Platons Gorgias (review)Philosophische Rundschau 55 (1): 66. 2018.
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16Harold Tarrant, Plato's First Interpreters. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2000, viii-263 p.Harold Tarrant, Plato's First Interpreters. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2000, viii-263 p (review)Laval Théologique et Philosophique 59 (2): 405-408. 2003.
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15Le commentaire philosophique dans l'Antiquité et ses prolongements : méthodes exégétiques (II)Laval Théologique et Philosophique 64 (3). 2008.
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16Le commentaire philosophique dans l'Antiquité et ses prolongements : méthodes exégétiques (I) (review)Laval Théologique et Philosophique 64 (1). 2008.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |