Fraud : the world of ona'ah / Henri Atlan ; translated by Nils F. Schott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Atlan, Henri, author.

Series:

Cultural memory in the present

Standardized Title:

De la fraude. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Jewish ethics.

Fraud (Jewish law).

Interpersonal relations--Religious aspects--Judaism.

Interpersonal relations.

Physical Description:

pages cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

We can calculate financial fraud, but how do we measure bad faith? How can we evaluate the words of the pharmaceutical industry or of eco-scientific ideologies, or the subtle deception found in political scheming? Henri Atlan sheds light on these questions through the concept ona'ah, which in Hebrew refers to both Fraud in financial transactions and the verbal injury inflicted by speech. The world of ona'ah is a world of an "in-between," where [he impossible purity of absolute Platonic truth gives way to a more relative notion-the near-theft, the quasi-lie. Today it seems that no discourse is safe from fraudulent excesses, be they intentional or no. As both philosopher and biologist, Atlan works on several registers. He forges links between the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and the big questions of our time, multiplying the bridges between science, philosophy, and current ethical dilemmas. In a context of financial and moral crises that appear to be weakening our democracies, Henri Allans work allows us to rethink the status of fraud in the contemporary world. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Circle of Value 6

A false paradox 10

The circle of value 10

The true good and the supreme good 11

The philosopher's truth 14

The powers of speech 22

2 Suffering and Doing Evil 25

On evil and its banality 25

Fraudulent words: Verbal fraud and injury 33

3 Language and Money 43

The words to express it 43

Cancellation of debts, loans without interest 45

Dematerialized circulation 53

Without limits? 57

The sacred 59

The "Thucydidean moment" of verbal fraud 62

Under different skies 65

A guilty conscience and shame 66

4 Technical Objects 69

Objects of exchange, objects of desire 69

Open machines: The information age 71

The autonomy and the repose of technical objects 80

Use value and intrinsic value 82

5 The Strange Story of an Oven 85

The snake oven 85

Verbal injuries: Words, of life and of death 93

6 More or Less than One-Sixth 98

A threshold 98

Why a threshold? And why one-sixth?

One-eighteenth of being 106

Circumcision, of the heart and of the flesh 109

Measures and values 114

7 The Crystallized Sacred 121

The nature, function, and genealogy of experiences of the sacred 121

Between two extremes 126

Athens and Jerusalem

The world of oracles and prophecy

Plutarch and the Pythia 136

Prosaic truths and monetary metaphors of desacralized language

Rabbi Eliezer 144

Eliezer, Christianizing?

Magic and cucurbit plants

Holy or sacred?

8 Dissolution 157

Propaganda: Half-truths and total falsehood 159

International public opinion: Systemic falsehood in current affairs 175

Contaminated science 185

The complexity of the real and the underdetermination of scientific theory

Big science: Scientific information and public relations

Lobbying in biomedicine

Political ecology and the uncertainties of scientific ecology.

Notes:

"Originally published in French under the title De la fraude: Le monde de l'onaa, Éditions du Seuil, 2010."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804777094

0804777098

9780804777100

0804777101

OCLC:

835619796