This paper deals with the role and task of intellectual groups in current muslim societies, with a particular outlook on algeria. It discusses the social and educational impact of their action, and the internal and external limits to their action. democratization and arabization are considered as two dialectical poles of the ongoing process of modernization of those societies.

Is it possible to be a socio-biologist and a feminist? Socio-biology has been accused of being a macho ideological arsenal, which seems to exclude in advance any possibility of amending it. However that was the project of several female researchers (in particular S. B. Hrdy and P. A. Gowaty), who suggested adopting the science's theoretical framework in order to change it from within. This has been expressed in a change of focus: an appeal to take account of female strategies and their evolution as well as the “sex war” at work in process of reproduction. This opening out of socio-biology's theoretical framework has not been undertaken in the name of the privilege of a “female perspective” but it has without a doubt been nourished by the researchers’ marginal position in their discipline as well as their political involvement. “Male” contributions, such as W. G. Eberhard's work on the “female's cryptic choice”, are also part of this movement though they do not claim allegiance to it. Similarly, a critical study has been carried out on the vocabulary of socio-biology: not in order to exercise a “politically correct” ideological tyranny but to improve the efficiency of the conceptual tools introduced by the science. Today some feminists think feminism should incorporate socio-biology's results but resistance still remains strong. Though many feminists think feminism has more to bring to biology than the reverse, many biologists consider that feminism is just an ideology that should remain apart from scientific work.

The idea of the political state as a cluster of stability amidst chaos entails an inflation of legal ties that bind the immoderation of the chaos through an immoderate set of laws. This paper suggests an examination of the opposite approach, one attempted by Alexandre Kojève during the Second World War: an investigation of the practice of disassociation. By presenting four loose figures (the judge, the leader, the father, the master) in his book La notion d’autorité, Kojève pursued his quest for a disinterested operator in Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit, where he described its emergence out of the void created by anthropogenic desire in the natural world. As an outcome of this approach, history-laden figures such as the judge, leader, father or master, are replaced by the admission and promotion of the random human being. The quest for other figures starts here: the paper evokes, for example, the case of the misanthrope.

In my paper, I will try to renew the public philosophy. As a result of specialization and professionalization of academic disciplines since the late 19th centuries, a rather unsound academic situation prevails at many universities in the world; social sciences without any philosophical foundation on the one hand and an academic philosophy without any concern about social theory on the other hand. In order to break out of such deadlock, the public philosophy that has a long tradition since Aristotle to Smith and Hegel must be renewed as a comprehensive trans-discipline now. The public philosophy in this sense is an attempt in the “time of post-specialization of sciences.” What I mean by the time of post-specialization is the academic environment in which social sciences, humanities and natural sciences cooperate with one another to tackle serious problems of our time such as human rights, peace building, dialogue among religions and so on.

Paolo Parrini discusses here the links between science and philosophy from an epistemological viewpoint, addressing the problem by distinguishing between its historical and theoretical dimensions. He discusses the necessary link between formal epistemology and history, and in this frame identifies different areas of intersection between science and philosophy.

Since the 1960s the bio/technosciences have occupied a central place in philosophical thinking. The paper sets out three theoretical configurations embodying major challenges for today's gender studies in philosophy, since they raise an obstacle, each in its own way, to the discussion on implications of the bio/technosciences in the political field and the area of gender theory: firstly naturalism in the field of the philosophy of science; secondly the paradigm of applied ethics; and thirdly the discourse of philosophical anthropology that has been reactivated in philosophical debates about the bio/technosciences. To conclude, some of the future tasks will be mentioned which fall to gender studies in philosophy.

This paper invites reflection on the gap between law and facts about the equality of women and men as to effective enjoyment of civil liberties. It discusses the question whether the universality of human rights is translatable into real life without referring back to social gender identity. It mainly focuses on West African case studies, particularly Benin, to examine different experiences of gendered civil liberties, and the way how constitutional legislation and other kinds of legal instruments are applied differently according to gender.

The notion of gender, introduced into France by queens and drags in the late 20th century (the glorious period of the “drag-queens”) and revitalized by American “queer”, follows a traditionally feminist path where homosexual and particularly male issues are once again being hidden away. Having played a big part in popularizing that first version, Patrick Cardon proposes, in order to avoid any misunderstanding and escape once for all from any attempts at reification, to use the term and the universal notion of transgender, which would cover the deconstructivist notions of queer, post-colonial and cultural studies, in order to give a place intelligently to ALL diversities beyond any binarism and with a foresight of future hybridity.

Nowadays it's difficult to ignore the increasing importance of women artists on the international art scene. The majority of art students are female and women artists are gradually making a name for themselves in an art market till recently dominated by men. Museums are beginning, very hesitantly, to recognize women's work (monographs, exhibits of feminist art, etc.); academic studies have focused on them more and more, and recently a comprehensive study published by Elisabeth Lebovici and Catherine Gonnard has brought a number of women artists out of the shadows.

In this paper, Nicole G. Albert presents a critical portrait of Anglo-French writer Renée Vivien (1877-1909), a major figure of the so-called feminine literature of the turn of the century. By analyzing several of her poems, Albert argues that Renée Vivien’s work is marked by a sometimes fatal conception of love, a view of sexual pleasure that is always Sapphic in nature, and a very unconventional idea of the feminine condition. Her homosexuality, her condemnation of marriage, her scorn for family and her absolute refusal of motherhood distinguish her from her contemporaries, and make of her an author worth being rediscovered and studied.