In this paper it is argued that Grotius views on customary law are compatible with the concept of a ‘Grotian Moment’. However, the idea of accelerated customary international law is developed by Van Vollenhoven, who interpreted Grotius in a questionable way. Whereas Grotius qualifies as a thinker in the tradition of natural law, Van Vollenhoven should be seen as an interactionist. This is especially visible in his publications on adat law, in which he visibly belongs to a romantic, Germanist, and (...) rather pluralist tradition of law. The idea of a Grotian Moment also fits better with this starting point than with natural law. For this reason, the ‘Grotian Moment’ should be renamed ‘Van Vollenhoven’s Moment’. It is argued that this legal theoretical position explains some of Van Vollenhoven’s rather peculiar interpretations of Grotius. (shrink)

This book compares the respective concepts of the law of nations put forward by the Spanish theologian Francisco Suárez and by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. This comparison is based on the fact that both thinkers developed quite similar notions and were the first to depart from the Roman conception, which persisted throughout the entire Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. In Rome, jus gentium was a law that applied to foreigners within the Empire, and one which was often mistaken (...) for Natural Law itself. These two features can be found even in the works of writers such as Francisco de Vitória and Alberico Gentili. In Suárez and Grotius, the law of nations is applicable to an extra-national domain and inarguably becomes positive law. Yet, it also contains an ethical element that prevents it from transforming into a mere reflection of state interests. This work argues that this resemblance is hardly a coincidence: Grotius has read Suárez, and that influence has modified the foundations of his early thoughts on jus gentium. This should not be taken to imply that the Dutch jurist wasn't original: in both authors, the definition of the law of nations pursues his own internal logic. Nevertheless, Suárez's oeuvre allowed Grotius to solve a fundamental problem touched on in his early writings that had remained unanswered. Accordingly, his oeuvre promises to clarify one of the most significant moments in the History of International Law. (shrink)

In light of recent reevaluations of the work of Hugo Grotius, this essay analyzes the respective roles of Francisco de Vitoria and Grotius in the construction of the “Grotian tradition” of international law and human rights. In contrast to conventional accounts which understand the two within a progression, this essay argues that Vitoria and Grotius can alternatively be understood as representing two distinct strains of international law and ethics, forms of which persist to this day. The first is that strain (...) which privileges local governance based on the natural law and which insists that international law must have a moral or equitable valence (represented today by liberal internationalism). The second, competing strain which, with its focus on “neutral” rules of commerce and international order, presumes that it need not have such a valence (essentially, neoliberalism). In the process, this essay examines the role of the natural law in Vitoria’s thought, which for him was most often a reason against interference or intervention, not for. The essay also highlights the role of the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch United Provinces and Spain in the development of Grotius’s understanding of sovereignty, in contrast to the Thirty Years’ War which is given more prominence in conventional accounts. (shrink)

This chapter would have liked to invite its readers on an exciting but breath-taking journey through the historical landscapes of international law, since ‘time immemorial’ a male-centred and, until the 1990s, almost exclusively male intellectual tradition and professional practice – at least in the eyes of the currently dominating historiography. Helas, the ambition had to be downscaled into a few rapid zooms, touristic snapshots in an impressionistic mode, on seven contexts in time and space in a hasty timeline from the (...) eighteenth century to 2021. They reflect, merely as examples, women’s status in international law in diverse political, social and legal transformations or crisis. Some are representing moments of codification or the break-through of certain interpretations of women’s rights. Others are selected for their role in enabling women’s participation in decision-making or entry to international legal positions, or because they provide an example of women’s international activism for women’s rights. All of them might have preceded, followed, or in fact themselves constituted ‘Grotian Moments’ for ‘women’s rights’ – did they, and if not, why? Should they have? If yes, which ones and how, to what effect for ‘women’? (shrink)

The legal order of the oceans has seen rapid developments and paradigm shifts. At least one of them has been described as a textbook example of a Grotian Moment: the emergence of the customary international law on the continental shelf, stemming from increased demand for oil and gas, coupled with technological advances and the Truman Proclamation of 1945. Now, eighty years later, the law of the sea is again faced with fundamental changes as the basis for maritime limits is eroded (...) by sea level rise. State practice, going back at least a century, has demonstrated that maritime limits normally fluctuate with physical changes to the coast. This understanding has not caused significant changes to the extent or location of maritime entitlements in a historical context. However, sea level rise stands to have catastrophic impacts as the submergence of individual coastal features can cause the loss of maritime areas spanning hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. This realisation has ignited a movement to change the law on maritime limits. Around 2010, the first States began to declare that their maritime limits would be stable, notwithstanding subsequent sea level rise. Several States and a coalition of States have since made similar declarations and the study of the ila Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise indicates that the practice is in a phase of crystallisation. That suggests that new customary international law may be developing and the events leading to these developments might justify the use of the term Grotian Moment, leading to accelerated formation of customary international law or revised interpretation of the current law. The traditional requirements of State practice and opinio juris are not satisfied at present. However, the impacts of sea level rise on maritime limits may represent a moment of discovery that unveils a hidden truth about the law, overriding the traditional interpretation that renders maritime limits ambulatory. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 38, Issue 1, pp 129 - 147 The essay investigates elements of sixteenth-century scholastic thought that have played a role in Grotius’s doctrine of necessity: the nature of the rights of the person in extreme need; the relation of the right of necessity to self-preservation; the compact that lies at the origin of property rights; and finally the obligation of restitution once the emergency is over. Grotius did not develop the doctrine of necessity as an abstract principle (...) about the relationship between private property and subsistence rights. Instead, he used it primarily as a normative principle on permissible behavior in times of war. The comparison with sixteenth-century thought and the practical purposes for which he developed the principle help to understand better the Grotian conception about the subjective nature of the right of necessity and its normative foundation. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive account and re-appraisal of the formative phase of what is often termed the 'Grotian tradition' in international relations theory: the view that sovereign states are not free to act at will, but are akin to members of a society, bound by its norms. It examines the period from the later fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, focusing on four thinkers: Erasmus, Vitoria, Gentili and Grotius himself, and is structured by the author's concept of international society. (...) Erasmus' views on international relations have been entirely neglected, but underlying his work is a consistent image of international society. The theologian Francisco de Vitoria concerns himself with its normative principles, the lawyer Alberico Gentili - unexpectedly, the central figure in the narrative - with its extensive practical applications. Grotius, however, does not re-affirm the concept, but wavers at crucial points. This book suggests that the Grotian tradition is a misnomer. (shrink)

This article compares two philosophical traditions and their attitudes to war and violence within the context of international relations. The first refers to Hobbes’ political realism, the second to the Grotian idea of international community. Each of these traditions understands the role of violence and war at an international level differently. From the perspective of political realism, violence is part of anarchistic relations between states and a means for achieving their goals. From the perspective of international community, violence is a (...) factor that needs to be minimized via the mechanisms of peaceful international cooperation between states. Based on the analysis of these two approaches, it is claimed that the Hobbesian perspective can be partly included in the perspective of the English School, which is based on the Grotian tradition. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 36, Issue 1, pp 28 - 39 This article reviews Andrew Fitzmaurice’s recent book _Sovereignty, Property and Empire 1500–1800_ with a critical examination of the author’s analysis of Hugo Grotius. Unlike other works of intellectual history that focus on the relationship between empire and political theory, this book offers a refreshing account of how Western political thought also provided a critique of empire. Using the law of occupation to explain the origin of property and political society, Fitzmaurice (...) demonstrates how ‘occupation’ was used to both justify and criticise extra-European imperial expansion. His analysis of Grotius is centred on ‘occupation’, explaining that even though Grotius’s political thought supports an imperialistic thesis, there is also evidence of anti-imperialist sentiments running through his works. I argue, however, that whilst Fitzmaurice provide a sound and interesting account of the role occupation plays in explaining Grotius’s two different accounts of property in _De Indis_ and _De jure belli ac pacis_, he disregards the broader philosophical implications this has for Grotius’s theory of property. (shrink)

Among Catholic philosophers, Saint Augustine was the first boldly to propose and defend the absolute view that all lies are wrong. Under no circumstances can a lie be licit. This absolute view held sway among Catholics until the sixteenth century with the introduction of the doctrine of mental reservation. In the seventeenth century, Hugo Grotius introduced another way to uphold the absolute view by changing the definition of lying: If the right of another is not violated, then there is no (...) lie. One could thus tell the murderer at the door “Nobody is home” without lying, as he has no right to know the whereabouts of his potential victim. By the late nineteenth century, Grotius’s definition of lying began gaining a following among Catholic philosophers and theologians, and continues to be held today by some Catholic philosophers. This article argues that adopting the Grotian definition of lying is a mistake. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] During the last few years, it has become usual to turn to some seventeenth century readings of the traditional idea of an original common possession of the earth for philosophical aid to explain and support the rights of persons in situations of extreme need, including refugees. Hugo Grotius’s conception of this idea is one of the most cited ones. In this paper, I hold that a Grotian reading of the idea of an (...) original common possession of the earth is not a fruitful principle if we want to elaborate a solid defence of the rights of the ones in need. I reconstruct and analyse the role this idea has in Grotius’s theory of private property and present objections to it from a Kantian perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 617-634 [Access article in PDF] Edmund Burke and Reason of State David Armitage Edmund Burke has been one of the few political thinkers to be treated seriously by international theorists. 1 According to Martin Wight, one of the founders of the so-called "English School" of international theory, Burke was "[t]he only political philosopher who has turned wholly from political theory to (...) international theory." 2 The resurgence of interest in Burke as an international theorist has not, however, generated any consensus about how he might be classified within the traditions of international theory. Wight variously divided thinkers into trichotomous schools of Realists, Rationalists, and Revolutionaries, Machiavellians, Grotians, and Kantians, or theorists of international anarchy, habitual intercourse, or moral solidarity; 3 more recent international theorists have refined or supplemented these categories to construct similar trinitarian traditions of Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism, and of Empirical Realism, Universal Moral Order, and Historical Reason. 4 Burke's place within any of these traditions remains uncertain. Debate over whether he was a realist or an idealist, a [End Page 617] Rationalist or a Revolutionist, has concluded variously that he was a "conservative crusader" or an "historical empiricist," a belated dualist or a Cold Warrior before the fact, or, most egregiously, "a proto-Marxist, or more precisely proto-Gramscian" theorist of hegemony. 5 The fact that Burke so obviously eludes definition may put in doubt the analytical utility of closely-defined "traditions" of international theory. 6Burke's relationship to conceptions of reason of state provides a more precise example of the confusion within such taxonomies. According to one recent historian of international theory, Burke "laid the foundations" of the "conservative approach to International Relations informed by the two modern notions of state interest and necessity, by raison d'état"; however, in the words of another, "Burke... was vehemently opposed to the idea of Reason of State and did not subscribe to the view that national interests override moral laws." 7 The assumptions on which each of these judgments rests are clearly incompatible: on the one hand that a "conservative approach" in the realm of foreign affairs implies an espousal of reason of state defined as the primacy of "state interest and necessity," that Burke did indeed acknowledge; on the other hand that reason of state is defined more exactly as "the view that national interests override moral laws" and that Burke did not hold such a view, so could not be defined as a reason-of-state theorist. It might of course be possible that Burke held various views on such matters at various points in his long literary and political career or that he argued for differing conceptions of reason of state in differing contexts. To test such a hypothesis demands a historical account of Burke's relationship to the theories of reason of state held by his contemporaries and predecessors. [End Page 618]To place Burke within traditions of reason of state might seem to be a simple category error. After all, he famously scorned "dashing Machiavellian politicians," deplored "the odious maxims of a Machiavellian policy," condemned "the dreadful maxim of Machiavel that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves," and identified the Discorsi as the inflammatory textbook of French republicanism. 8 His strictures on Machiavelli and Machiavellianism affirmed avant la lettre the classic modern account of reason of state offered by Friedrich Meinecke, which counterposed "raison d'état on the one hand, and ethics and law on the other" and traced the emergence of this separation to the heathen Florentine who had given the tradition its familiar nickname. 9 Such accounts of reason of state and of Machiavelli reinforced the long-standing interpretation of Burke as the last of the medieval theorists of natural law, for whom no merely human calculations of advantage or interest could override the dictates of divine reason. If reason of state represented the doctrine that political expediency should supersede moral law, then Burke could only have been its (and Machiavelli's) enemy: his "politics... were grounded... (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel egalitarian answer to the question: what initial distribution of the world’s resources could possibly count as just? Like many writers in the natural rights tradition, I take for granted that distributive justice consists in conformity to pre-political principles that apply to property regimes. Against the background of that assumption, the paper distinguishes between broadly Lockean and broadly Grotian conceptions of distributive justice in the state of nature. After an extended critique of various versions of the (...) Lockean approach, it argues for a particular, egalitarian version of the Grotian view. My position is based on what I call the common ownership formula, which says: each human being, as an equal co-owner of the world’s resources, may use those resources provided that the terms of their use are in conformity with principles that no co-owner could reasonably reject as the basis of an informed, unforced general agreement between all of the world’s co-owners who sought to find equitable principles of resource division. Using this principle, I suggest how an unequivocally egalitarian view of pre-political entitlement can be justified without recourse to any alleged duty to ameliorate the effects of brute bad luck on people’s lives. (shrink)

Après avoir évoqué le caractère dérangeant, voire scandaleux, pour le croyant, des réponses de l'Ecriture et de la tradition juive au dramatique problème de la souffrance humaine, en général, et à celui de la maladie, en particulier, l'auteur procède à un inventaire sommaire des conceptions relatives à la maladie, telles qu'elles s'expriment dans les écrits bibliques canoniques (I), dans le Nouveau Testament (II) et dans la littérature rabbinique des premiers siècles (III), en les illustrant par des textes de référence, choisis (...) parmi ceux qui font autorité tant pour le judaïsme que pour le christianisme. Dans la dernière partie de son étude, l'auteur brosse, à grands traits, un panorama des opinions et des croyances des penseurs juifs orthodoxes, du Moyen-Âge à l'époque moderne, et des comportements qu'ils préconisent face à la maladie et aux souffrances qui en découlent. Il précise que, s'adressant à un public non versé dans les sciences juives, il a choisi de donner à son exposé "un caractère plus descriptif que spéculatif". (shrink)

The cosmopolitan tradition begins with Diogenes, who claimed as his identity "citizen of the world." Martha Nussbaum traces the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient times to the present, weighing its limitations as well as merits. Using the capabilities approach, Nussbaum seeks to integrate the "noble but flawed" vision of world citizenship with cosmopolitanism's concern with moral and political justice for all.--.

In this paper, I analyze the relationship between Hume’s moral philosophy and a key aspect of classical Confucianism—namely, the concept of _lĭ_ (禮), which refers both to the virtue of ritual propriety and to rituals themselves. I argue not only that Hume employs conceptual correlates to each of these two aspects of _lĭ_ (禮), but also that he employs them in ways that have a similar, distinctively normative role in the process of moral formation. I illustrate these points by elucidating (...) Hume’s use of two pairs of concepts. The first is his presentation of decency and decorum. The second is his explanation of customs and manners. In so doing, I develop a line of inquiry that is important, novel, and promising both for Hume scholarship _per se_ and for comparative philosophical work on the relationship between Hume’s moral philosophy and that of classical Confucianism, especially as it is expressed in the works of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHERS WHO ENVY scientists think that philosophy should deal only with problems formulated in neutral terms—terms satisfactory to all those who argue for competing solutions. Without common problems and without argument, it would seem, we have no professional discipline, nor even a method for disciplining our own thoughts. Without discipline, we presumably have mysticism, or poetry, or inspiration—at any rate, something which permits an escape from our intellectual responsibilities. Heidegger is frequently criticized for having avoided these responsibilities. His defenders reply (...) that what he has avoided is not the responsibility of the thinker, but simply the tradition of "metaphysics" or "ontology." Consider the following typical passage. (shrink)

This article offers an in-depth analysis of the utopian vision proposed by contemporary Confucian philosopher Zhang Xianglong. Throughout most of the twentieth century, Confucianism has been the subject of intense criticism in China. It was often portrayed as a relic of a corrupt system that stands in the way of progress and modernity. Recent years, however, witnessed a Confucian renaissance. Academics, government officials, and grassroots activists in Mainland China have been engaged in various attempts to reassert Confucianism's enduring relevance for (...) modern life. This article offers a close reading of Zhang's key works in an attempt to explore the motivation behind his call for the creation of Special Districts for Confucian Culture (SDC) and its place within the Confucian revival. Located in remote rural areas, these eco-friendly and self-sustainable intentional communities offer their members a refuge from modern society and an opportunity to take an active role in saving Confucian values and practices from extinction. The article situates Zhang's vision against the backdrop of modern Western utopianism and ancient Chinese descriptions of ideal societies, showing the distinctiveness of his syncretic utopian proposal and its potential legacy. (shrink)

The present paper motivates one possible answer to Kant’s question, “What remains of the Enlightenment?” by reinterpreting the relation between Foucault and critical tradition from Kant to the Frankfurt School. The Enlightenment has left us with “normative superstition,” or a healthy form of skepticism about the justification of modern institutions and ideals. Along these lines, I adopt an interpretation of Foucault that diverges from the standard view. I argue that he shares with his detractors a common heritage of this “critical (...) attitude,” placing him squarely in line with Kant, Hegel, and critical theory generally. If it is possible to view this critical attitude as an expression of Enlightenment-oriented views, then there are reasons to believe that his so-called “postmodernism” is nothing more than hyper-modernism. The lines of this last argument have been made elsewhere, notably in Robert Pippin’s important work, but there is a need to situate Foucault in the unfolding narrative of modernity, rather than label him a hostile opponent to it. In my view, the “Foucault addiction” now so popular is consistent with the critical tradition and the aim of this paper is to develop this claim. (shrink)

In his most recent treatment of a priori knowledge, Philip Kitcher argues against what he takes to be the widespread view that our knowledge and warranted belief is 'tradition-independent'. Furthermore, he argues that defeasible conceptions of a priori warrant entail that it is not tradition-independent, a conclusion which he thinks is contrary to what most epistemologists hold. I argue that knowledge is not widely believed to be tradition-independent, and that, while warrant is widely believed to be tradition-independent, Kitcher's arguments show (...) neither that this widespread view is mistaken nor that it conflicts with defeasible a warrant. I conjecture that Kitcher may be misled by a lack of clarity regarding the analysandum designated by 'warrant'. (shrink)

This short essay makes a comment on the special issue on Japanese scholars’ responses to modern education in Japan edited by Morimichi Kato. The essay mainly focuses on the historical experiences shared by most of east Asian countries, the establishment of modern education of which tended to be historically forced by the external superpower: the experiences of feeling split between tradition and modernity. From the post-colonial perspective, the essay poses a challenging question of how the east Asian educators are to (...) purse a way of overcoming the split and reinventing their own subjectivities without falling into cultural essentialism or western universalism. (shrink)

This book presents a systematic unifying-pluralist account--a "constructive-engagement" account--of how cross-tradition engagement in philosophy is possible. The goal of this "constructive-engagement" account is, by way of reflective criticism, argumentation, and methodological guiding principles, to inquire into how distinct approaches from different philosophical traditions can talk to and learn from each other for the sake of making joint contributions to the contemporary development of philosophy. In Part I of the book, Bo Mou explores a range of fundamental theoretic and methodological issues (...) in cross-tradition philosophical engagement and philosophical interpretation. In Part II, he analyzes several representative case studies that demonstrate how relevant resources in the Western and Chinese philosophical traditions can constructively engage with each other. These studies cover issues in philosophical methodology, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics. The book's theoretical and practical approaches expand the vision, coverage, and agenda of doing philosophy comparatively, and promote worldwide joint efforts of cross-tradition philosophical inquiries. Cross-Tradition Engagement in Philosophy will be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in comparative philosophy and the intersection of Chinese and Western philosophy. It will also appeal to those who are interested in the ways in which cross-tradition philosophical engagement can enhance contemporary philosophical debates in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics. (shrink)

Guillaume Lejeune | : La philosophie de Bradley se présente moins comme une tentative d’importation de la pensée allemande en Angleterre que comme une volonté de régler par le recours à divers écoles les problèmes dans lesquels la tradition empiriste se dépêtre : un atomisme de la connaissance et une conception externaliste des relations qui rendraient impossible une vision unitaire de l’expérience. La critique que développe Bradley de l’association d’idées dans la mesure où elle fait ressortir les présuppositions de la (...) tradition empiriste et en rejette le bien-fondé peut se lire comme une tentative de déconstruction de celle-ci. | : Bradley’s philosophy is not a mere attempt to import German thought in Great-Britain, but a willingness to regulate the problems in which the empiricist tradition is entangled — an atomism of knowledge and an externalist conception of relation that make impossible a unitary view of experience — by borrowing ideas from various schools. According to Bradley, associationism clearly brings out the two problematic aspects of the whole empiricism. That is why his rejection has a strategic character. It can be read as an attempt to “deconstruct” the empiricist tradition. (shrink)

Plato's penchant for mythmaking sits uneasily beside his reputation as the inventor of rationalist philosophy. Hegel's solution was to ignore the myths. Popper thought them disqualifying. Tae-Yeoun Keum responds by carving out a place for myth in the context of rationalism and shows how Plato's tales inspired history's great political thinkers.

Originally published in 1931, Muirhead’s study aims to challenge the view that Locke’s empiricism is the main philosophical thought to come out of England, suggesting that the Platonic tradition is much more prominent. These views are explored in detail in this text as well as touching on its development in the nineteenth century from Coleridge to Bradley and discussions on Transcendentalism in the United States. This title will be of interest to students of Philosophy.

The concept of personhood in the Abrahamic tradition opens up new dimensions in contrast with the ancient world, especially the relationality and incommunicability of the person as a source of his or her dignity. However, these notions also originate their own set of contemporary challenges and problems. A proposal will be made as to how to overcome these problems by way of an integration of older insights on substance, act, and potency.

Rocco Rubini’s latest book Posterity: Inventing Tradition from Petrarch to Gramsci represents a greatly welcome addition to the recently reinvigorated field of Italian intellectual history. It foll...

The article reconstructs the premises of the reception of analytic philosophy in jurisprudence and shows that the development of a method for clarifying the meanings of legal concepts is not least connected with the problem of legitimizing law enforcement. The article analyzes H.L.A. Hart’s approach to the problem of correlation between the “letter” and “spirit” of the law in the process of interpreting legal norms. The article argues that the process of interpretation is determined teleologically. In its limit, the interpretation (...) of legal norms presupposes the re-creation of the desired image of society, the reconstruction of such social ontology that is most consistent with the ideal of achieving social welfare. The article examines the collision of the “ideal of order” and the “ideal of justice” as two regulations of law enforcement. The author believes that the interpretation of this collision within the analytical tradition was characterized by a gradual movement from the ideal of “mechanical” law enforcement, which minimizes the creative role of the interpreter, to the ideal of flexible interpretation focused on achieving legal goals in a changing environment. It is noted that, according to analytic approach, a theoretical solution to this conflict was proposed due to the development of the ideas of an “open texture” of law. The author demonstrates that the development of the analytic tradition in jurisprudence has shown that the criticism of language and the interpretation of meanings are not technical tasks, but it presupposes the construction of a metaphysics of law. In this regard, the author concludes: the development of the ideas of the analytic tradition in jurisprudence demonstrates that the thesis about the absence of a positive program in analytic philosophy, put forward in the first article of the discussion, can be challenged. (shrink)

Few modern thinkers have been as convinced of the necessity of recovering the past in order to redeem the present as Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Benjamin at once mourned and celebrated what he took to be an inevitable liquidation of traditional culture, and his determination to think both of these attitudes through to their conclusions lends his work its peculiar honesty, along with its paradoxical, antinomial coherence. In a landmark interpretation of the whole of Benjamin's career, John McCole demonstrates a way (...) of understanding Benjamin that both contextualizes and addresses the complexities and ambiguities of his texts. Working with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the "intellectual field," McCole traces Benjamin's deep ambivalence about cultural tradition through the longterm project-an immanent critique of German idealist and romantic aesthetics-which unites his writings. McCole builds a sustained reading of Benjamin's intellectual development which sheds new light on the formative role of early influences—particularly his participation in the pre-World War I German youth movement and the orthodox discourse of German intellectual culture—and shows how Benjamin later extended the strategies he learned within these contexts during key encounters with Weimar modernism, surrealism, and the fiction of Proust. The fullest account of Benjamin available in English, this lucid and penetrating book will be welcomed by intellectual historians, literary theorists and critics, historians of German literature, and Continental philosophers. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited.

This review discusses the thesis advanced by Sarah Summers in her recent book. In particular it examines the three radical claims that structure her argument. First, that the commonly used analytical distinction between adversarial and inquisitorial traditions in criminal procedure should be abandoned. Secondly, that since the Continental reforms of the 19th century, criminal procedure can best be understood in terms of a single European procedural tradition. Thirdly, that the European Court of Human Rights has misconstrued the logic of that (...) single European procedural tradition by failing to understand that it involves the rejection of a ‘determinative’ pre-trial phase. Each of Summers’ three arguments is subjected to critical analysis and ultimately rejected as innovative and stimulating but flawed. (shrink)

This chapter examines the immediate background of the emergence of the highly influential insular canonical collections and investigates the way they relate to the earliest canonical texts compiled in Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. It discusses the Irish collection of canons Collectio Canonum Hibernensis and the Canons of Theodore, and explores how the compilers of canonical literature approached an age-old problem inherent to medieval canon law. The chapter also outlines the governing principles which characterised insular canonical thinking and shows that the (...) Collectio Canonum Hibernensis was firmly grounded in an insular canonical tradition. (shrink)

Like the cracking of the genetic code and the creation of the atomic bomb, the discovery of how the brain's neurons work is one of the fundamental scientific developments of the twentieth century. The discovery of neurotransmitters revolutionized the way we think about the brain and what it means to be human yet few people know how they were discovered, the scientists involved, or the fierce controversy about whether they even existed. The War of the Soups and the Sparks tells (...) the saga of the dispute between the pharmacologists, who had uncovered the first evidence that nerves communicate by releasing chemicals, and the neurophysiologists, experts on the nervous system, who dismissed the evidence and remained committed to electrical explanations. The protagonists of this story are Otto Loewi and Henry Dale, who received Nobel Prizes for their work, and Walter Cannon, who would have shared the prize with them if he had not been persuaded to adopt a controversial theory (how that happened is an important part of this history). Valenstein sets his story of scientific discovery against the backdrop of two world wars and examines the fascinating lives of several scientists whose work was affected by the social and political events of their time. He recounts such stories as Loewi's arrest by Nazi storm troopers and Dale's efforts at helping key scientists escape Germany. The War of the Soups and the Sparks reveals how science and scientists work. Valenstein describes the observations and experiments that led to the discovery of neurotransmitters and sheds light on what determines whether a novel concept will gain acceptance among the scientific community. His work also explains the immense importance of Loewi, Dale, and Cannon's achievements in our understanding of the human brain and the way mental illnesses are conceptualized and treated. (shrink)

The metamathematical tradition that developed from Hilbert’s program is based on syntactic characterizations of mathematics and the use of explicit, finitary methods in the metatheory. Although G¨.

According to Marxist philosophy, everything in the world is universally connected and in perpetual motion. Chinese society has gone through a long history of civilizational development. Since the modern era (1840-1919), great changes have taken place in the civilizational development of China. The transformation of social forms depends on the transformation of culture, and the approximation of culture to modernity is a prerequisite for the modernization of society. Thus, the development of society inevitably causes changes in art and culture; and (...) vice versa, the progress of art and culture, in turn, contributes to the progress of society. A clear and complex line has been traced in the development of Chinese painting over the centuries: from a high degree of integration to gradual differentiation leading to conflict, and then to integration. The development of Chinese painting as a whole shows a transformational trend from tradition to modernity, developing in a tortuous way. In this paper, a combination of research methods is used for research, mainly documentary research, descriptive research, comparative research and case study. Considering the features and trends of Chinese painting at different stages of development, we can more accurately judge the direction of development of modern Chinese painting and find ways to integrate tradition and modernity. (shrink)