Postmodernités européennes. Ethos et polis de fin de siècle

Philosophes, éthiciens, essayistes et dissidents politiques ont profondément modifié les directions des postmodernités occidentales au cours des années quatre-vingt. Ethos et polis sont les deux loci sur lesquels se sont ancrées ces problématiques. Des intellectuels d'Europe centrale exilés à l'ouest (Bauman, Kolakowski, Fehér et Heller), des philosophes et sociologues allemands et hollandais (Kamper, Wellmer, Van Reijen), soucieux de scruter les responsabilités des postmodernités européennes, apporteront une inflexion différente, quoique complémentaire, de celle amorcée par Lyotard dans les années quatre-vingt. Plutôt que l'acceptation de l'effondrement des grands récits, ou le diagnostic d'une totale délitescence de la modernité, ils proposeront une distanciation patiente et méthodique par rapport aux Lumières et une écologie de la modernité.Philosophers, ethicists, essayists and political dissidents did much to modify the direction of Western Postmodernities throughout the eighties. Ethos and Polis became the two loci of Postmodern problematics. Central European intellectuals who had chosen exile (Bauman, Kolakowski, Fehér and Heller), as well as German and Dutch philosophers and social theorists (Kamper, Wellmer, Van Reijen) also brought a complementary inflexion to the directions signalled by Lyotard in the eighties. Without unconditionally accepting the demise of master narratives, they proposed a patient, methodical distantiation from Enlightenment ideals, as well as an ecological reading of Modernity

Rapid detection of snakes modulates spatial orienting in infancy

Recent evidence for an evolved fear module in the brain comes from studies showing that adults, children and infants detect evolutionarily threatening stimuli such as snakes faster than non-threatening ones. A decisive argument for a threat detection system efficient early in life would come from data showing, in young infants, a functional threat-detection mechanism in terms of “what” and “where” visual pathways. The present study used a variant of Posner’s cuing paradigm, adapted to 7–11-month-olds. On each trial, a threat-irrelevant or a threat-relevant cue was presented (a flower or a snake, i.e., “what”). We measured how fast infants detected these cues and the extent to which they further influenced the spatial allocation of attention (“where”). In line with previous findings, we observed that infants oriented faster towards snake than flower cues. Importantly, a facilitation effect was found at the cued location for flowers but not for snakes, suggesting that these latter cues elicit a broadening of attention and arguing in favour of sophisticated “what–where” connections. These results strongly support the claim that humans have an early propensity to detect evolutionarily threat-relevant stimuli