Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, ‘Socrates is running’, you begin by uttering the subject term Socrates, before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding thoughts also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. I then (...) present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to more recent thinking about propositions. (shrink)

In Categories 12 (14b11–22), Aristotle famously claims that [1] true sentences and reality stand in a mutually implicative relationship, and that [2] reality causes the truth of sentences but not vice versa. In this paper, I first argue that Boethius’ reading of the above passage led medieval logicians to assess [1] and [2] within the framework of a theory of consequence. Then, I consider two important questions raised by Boethius and later logicians in relation to [1] and [2], and, namely, (...) whether the implication described in [1] really satisfies the requirement for consequence, and whether the truthmaking relation posited in [2] can be boiled down to the relation of consequence. Boethius himself, I argue, answered affirmatively to both questions and thus (much like some contemporary truthmaker theorists) committed himself to an account of truthmaking as entailment. I then consider criticisms to Boethius’ account found in the writings of William of Champeaux, two anonymous authors connected to the school of Jocelyn of Soissons, Peter Abelard, and the author of the Ars Meliduna. Here, I argue that the emergence of a concern for relevance drives the need for abandoning Boethius’ account as well as his conception of truthmaking as entailment. (shrink)

This article discusses how technological official aids influence sporting competitions in terms of fairness and flow. It addresses the main arguments against technological official aids used to assist refereeing in binary referee situations. First, I argue that the criticism directed at the use of ball tracking devices (‘reconstructed track devices’) is mainly unjustified and that these devices provide the opportunity to make refereeing in certain types of sport fairer. In this regard, I also argue that empirical findings about referees’ decision-making (...) and potential biases must be considered when deciding how technological official aids influence the fairness of sporting competitions. Then I attempt to refute the argument that no situations are more decisive than others in sports with no fixed breaks, such as football. Finally, I scrutinise the argument that human fallibility in refereeing is somehow valuable in itself. Consequently, this article concludes that there are no convincing arguments against the use of technological official aids in binary referee situations. (shrink)

This paper provides an empirical study of Italian ‘boutique law firms’. By building on seventeen semi-structured interviews with lawyers, the paper explores institutional, professional, and societal features of such firms and their lawyers. The article shows that, while the rise of large law firms triggered a partitioning of the Italian legal field in the past decades, more recently this small, but economically important, sector of the profession revived the classic model of delivering legal services characterised by a strong sense of (...) autonomy and independence, a client-centered but ethically robust approach to legal practice, a close relationship with academic and political environments, and a focus on projecting a professional image of themselves and their firms in society. These are, in other words, the last bastion of professionalism and are increasingly gaining an important role in the Italian field. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between conspiracy theories and antisemitism by posing the question of whether conspiracism is an inseparable and integrated part of national socialist antisemitism or a marginalised, extremist position even within such settings. An analysis of two Danish national-socialist journals, _Kamptegnet_ and _National-Socialisten_, demonstrates how the introduction of _stigmatised knowledge_ in the form of anti-Masonic conspiracy theories and the myth of ritual murder led to an antisemitic escalation process in _Kamptegnet_, imbuing antisemitism with a redemptive character during (...) the Second World War. Antisemitic conspiracy theories, on the other hand, played a relatively marginal role in _National-Socialisten_, where aspects that enjoyed promotion in Germany were downplayed for tactical reasons. While antisemitism in _National-Socialisten_ primarily played a role in caricatures and as a bizarre form of entertainment, an escalation can also be observed here as a consequence of the progression of the war and the intensified German propaganda effort. (shrink)

Within recent years, an increasing number of people and researchers in the Global North have become interested in psychedelic substances and their therapeutic application. While much of the current media attention and research effort mainly concentrate on the therapeutic potential and actions of the individual's acute psychedelic experience, this article explores the user-perceived, therapeutic dynamics of psychedelics in a more long-term perspective by charting the lived experiences and practices of ‘integration’ among psychedelic users in Denmark. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (...) from November 2020 to June 2021, I offer a dual typology of self-related integration as narrative and experiential-somatic. Combining the two, I argue that psychedelic integration in contemporary Denmark can be viewed as a processual self-transformation of the users' experiential orientation where understandings and/or modes of being from the acute psychedelic experience are woven into, prolonged, and/or embodied in their everyday existence. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the about one hundred Danish translations of French revolutionary texts, looking particularly at a handful of the most relevant monthly reviews. By analysing the contexts in which texts were published and by mapping the networks of Danish translators, I argue that translators were engaged in a project of adapting republicanism to Denmark. This ranged from the more radical to the more moderate attempts of developing a kind of ‘republican monarchism’ (a notion used by one (...) interlocutor) that could lead Denmark on the road from absolutist monarchy towards some kind of a republic. In doing so, I argue that translators were not engaged in a mere passive project of ‘reception’; they should rather be understood as actively intervening politically in their local context. By analysing the Danish translations of French revolutionary texts, this article contributes to research on the spread of revolutionary culture in a region that has received scant attention. It also contributes to the intellectual history of republicanism by looking at how republicanism was adapted and transformed in different spaces and how the project of monarchical republicanism was one model for creating a republic fit for a modern society. (shrink)

"... the most important contribution to Kierkegaard studies to be published in English in recent years.... Not only is it a fascinating, surprising, and perceptive study of Kierkegaard within his time and world, Kirmmse has produced a research resource, a reference work, that is simply without parallel or equal." —Michael Plekon "It is a rare work of philosophy that not only clarifies its subject but also places it within an intellectual and historical context. In his study of 19th-century Danish philosopher (...) Kierkegaard, Kirmmse accomplishes both, setting a standard... " —Library Journal "... an outstanding contribution to Kierkegaard research... The book is intellectual history of the highest calibre." —So[slash]ren Kierkegaard Newsletter "This excellent book is recommended for all collections on Kierkegaard... For all readers." —Choice "This richly researched and readable book supplies an important contribution to the widespread reappropriation of Kierkegaard’s thought currently taking place."—Theology Today "This book is a tour de force in intellectual history." —Review of Metaphysics "Kirmmse's book is a major work of scholarship that confers on Kierkegaard's social and intellectual universe a depth and a richness of detail that will permanently alter the familiar stereotypes about Kierkegaard's isolation from his fellow Danes and his supposedly fanatical campaign against philistine Denmark and its corrupt state church." —American Historical Review Against the background of Denmark’s evolution from a mercantile economy to a broad-based agricultural economy, Kirmmse reinterprets Kierkegaard’s thought as a reaction to the tensions within his society. (shrink)

Responding to serious environmental problems, requires urgent and fundamental shifts in our day-to-day lifestyles. This paper employs a qualitative, cross-cultural approach to explore people’s subjective self-reflections on their experiences of pro-environmental behavioral spillover in three countries; Brazil, China, and Denmark. Behavioral spillover is an appealing yet elusive phenomenon, but offers a potential way of encouraging wider, voluntary lifestyle shifts beyond the scope of single behavior change interventions. Behavioral spillover theory proposes that engaging in one pro-environmental action can catalyze the (...) performance of others. To date, evidence for the phenomenon has been mixed, and the causal processes governing relationships between behaviors appear complex, inconsistent and only partly understood. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by investigating accounts of behavioral spillover in three diverse cultural settings using qualitative semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows that while around half of participants overall who were questioned recalled spillover effects, the other half had not consciously experienced spillover. There were few significant differences across cultures, though some forms of spillover effects were reported more in some cultures than others. More environmentally-engaged participants across all three countries were significantly more likely to experience spillover than those who were less engaged. Accounts of within-domain spillovers were most commonly reported, mainly comprising waste, resource conservation and consumption-related actions. Accounts of between-domain spillover were very rare. Recollection of contextual and interpersonal spillover effects also emerged from the interviews. Our findings suggest that more conscious behavioral spillover pathways may be limited to those with pre-existing environmental values. Behavioral spillover may comprise multiple pathways incorporating conscious and unconscious processes. We conclude that targeting behavioral catalysts that generate more socially diffuse spillover effects could offer more potential than conventional spillover involving a single individual. (shrink)

The Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are similar in many respects, not least with regards to the basic administrative set-up: a non-federal task-related division between state, counties and municipalities. In all three countries, counties and municipalities raise a large share of their own revenue, which is then supplemented by government grants. In addition, central government redistributes large amounts of locally collected revenue between the municipalities and the counties respectively, severely hampering local budgetary autonomy. Tax matters are generally (...) centralised, although local governments to a varying degree play a role in the collection of taxes as well as in the setting of local tax rates. In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden alike, the administrative set-up has not been able to prevent a massive increase in local public expenditure in the latter part of the 20th century.Les pays scandinaves, Danemark, Norvège et Suède présentent des similitudes sur beaucoup de points et notamment sur le plan de l’organisation de la base administrative : une division sans relation utilitaire fédérale entre l’Etat, les régions et les municipalités. Dans ces trois pays, les régions et les municipalités lèvent une large part de leurs propres revenus qui sont alors augmentés par les subventions du gouvernement.De plus, le gouvernement central redistribue de larges sommes de revenus collectés localement entre les municipalités et les régions respectivement, ce qui gêne sérieusement l’autonomie budgétaire locale. Les questions fiscales sont généralement centralisées, bien que les gouvernements locaux, à des degrés divers, jouent un rôle dans la collecte des impôts aussi bien que dans la fixation des taux d’impositions locales. Au Danemark et en Norvège tout comme en Suède, l’organisation administrative n’a pas été capable de prévenir une augmentation massive des dépenses publiques locales dans les dernières années du 20ème siècle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 189-202 [Access article in PDF] Spinoza in Denmark and the Fall of Struensee, 1770-1772 John Christian Laursen * Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza was the arch-heretic of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was denounced in half a dozen languages from the time he began to publish until at least the 1780s, when Lessing's allegiance to Spinoza became the heart (...) of a literary scandal. 1 In time-honored fashion, some of these denunciations led to the burning of books and the imprisonment or banning of authors. The most spectacular case, however, led to the trial of a prime minister, the cutting off of his right hand and of his head, and the drawing and quartering of his body in full public ceremony. The year was 1772, the prime minister was Johann Friedrich Struensee, and the country was Denmark.Late eighteenth-century Denmark was not known for barbarities of the type represented by Struensee's execution. Previously disgraced prime ministers had merely been imprisoned, and other political enemies of the ruling powers had [End Page 189] merely been exiled. 2 Why such harshness with Struensee? What was at stake in the fall of Struensee?The answers to these questions are complex, but an important element of those answers lies in Struensee's public image, which made it seem both necessary and justifiable to treat him with such harshness. In turn, public opinion about Struensee was closely tied to the reputation of Spinoza. This essay will show that charges of Spinozism were part of the campaign that poisoned public opinion against Struensee. This was an unusually clear case of a theological and philosophical debate having direct political effects.Before getting to the role of Spinozism and anti-Spinozism in eighteenth-century Denmark, let us fill in important points of the story. The charge against Struensee was lèse majesté, for plotting the death of the King and for usurping power in violation of the constitution. Behind these charges was a further element which encouraged outrage: sleeping with Queen Caroline Matilda. That much was true, as both the Queen, a sister of George III of England, and Struensee admitted, each in order to save the other. The King knew about it all along but did not care. He did not care because he had become a libertine, going out to whorehouses most nights with rowdy friends, and he figured that what was good for the gander was good for the goose. He was also schizophrenic and easily manipulable by those around him, so that Struensee and the Queen encountered no disapproval from him until he fell under other people's influence. After Struensee and the Queen were taken into custody, the King was forced to divorce the Queen and she was sent to live in a Hannoverian castle in Celle because her brother did not want the embarrassment of having her back in England. She died there a few years later. 3It is an irony that we owe our knowledge of the state of public opinion in Denmark in this period to Struensee. Until shortly before the fatal events mentioned above, the Danish press had been subject to censorship that might have prevented the expression of many of the subsequent attacks on Struensee. But in September 1770 Struensee persuaded the king to declare freedom of the press in all his realms (consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, the Duchies of Slesvig and Holsten [Schleswig and Holstein in German], Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, and colonies in India, Africa, and the Caribbean). 4 It is not widely [End Page 190] known that Denmark was the first country to declare unlimited freedom of the press as official public policy. For much of the century England and the Netherlands had effective freedom of the press, but it had never been declared official policy. The next to do so was rebellious Virginia, in the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), followed by other colonies and then the Bill of Rights of the new... (shrink)

During the past decade, several governmental reports have discussed how information technology can transform Danish society. Most important among these reports is Digital Denmark from 1999.In this article, the authors examine how to analyze Digital Denmark by considering two strategies for engaging reports. The first aims at uncovering and making explicit hidden assumptions or ideologies in the text. This approach is called “reading against the text.” The second approach—inspired by science, technology, and society studies—considers where a text goes (...) and what it does rather than how to critically interpret it. Texts may be read as material-semiotic actors, having effects on their environment that exceed or bypass discussions of content or motivation. This approach is called “reading with the text,” and the authors argue that traveling with Digital Denmark makes visible the limitations of critical analyses, while adding agency to the report as it moves in between practices. (shrink)

The Hebrew term kosher means ‘fit’ or ‘proper’ and it traditionally signifies foods that conform to Jewish dietary law. This article explores how kosher is understood, practised and contested in contemporary Denmark. In recent years, the rules regulating kosher consumption have been supplemented by elaborate rules concerning globalised mass production, which have had an impact on the way people handle questions of kashrut. During the same period, global markets for kosher have proliferated; this article explores the everyday kosher consumption (...) among Jews in Denmark in the light of these transformations. Everyday kosher consumption among a minority group such as Jews in Denmark is not well understood, and I argue that globalised forms of regulation increasingly condition this type of consumption. Even though Denmark is a small and relatively secular country and Jews comprise only about 7,000 individuals, kosher production and regulation have national economic significance. Methodologically, I build on ethnographic data from contemporary Denmark, that is, participant observation and interviews. (shrink)

Burial in the forest is a recent, non-confessional alternative to the established cemeteries owned and run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Danish forest burials fulfil common criteria for non-religion and they are an example of institutionalized non-religion. Their non-confessional character is emphasized in the information material directed towards potential buyers of forest burial plots. Forest burials appeal to both non-members and members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church; in fact, nearly two-thirds of those who had a forest burial (...) by the end of 2021 were members of the church. I have participated in seven tours conducted at different forest burial sites, and I have interviewed nearly fifty participants about their motives for considering buying a forest burial plot. In my analyses, I structure the interviews along the three dimensions, knowing, doing, and being. I found that the motives for people to choose a forest burial reflected both non-religious and religious/spiritual considerations. Forest burials exemplify a religious complexity where nature, non-religion, religion, and spirituality intersect. In this complexity, I see the institution of forest burial as a non-religious vessel, which the buyers fill with their individual thoughts and acts. (shrink)

This article discusses the effects of the 24 year-old rule in Denmark utilising Foucault’s understanding of the ‘subject’ within a governmentality framework. The 24 year-old rule is a good example of how a gendered knowledge about immigration becomes a reality that steers biopolitics, enables practices of normalisation and subjectifies immigrants in various ways. The article foregrounds the subjectivity of immigrant women through a narrative analysis of the constitution of the subject within discourses and in an asymmetrical relationship to power (...) in governance. This analysis reveals the complexity of empirical interactions between the ideational structure of legislative measures and personal meanings expressed by immigrant subjectivities. While I illustrate certain modes of subjectification in relation to the 24 year-old rule, I emphasise the ways subjects employ certain identity strategies by resisting, reworking or contributing to the practices of normalisation. (shrink)

Trust features prominently in a number of policy documents that have been issued in recent years to facilitate data sharing and international collaboration in medical research. However, it often remains unclear what is meant by ‘trust’. By exploring a concrete international collaboration between Denmark and Pakistan, we develop a way of unpacking trust that shifts focus from what trust ‘is’ to what people invest in relationships and what references to trust do for them in these relationships. Based on interviews (...) in both Pakistan and Denmark with people who provide blood samples and health data for the same laboratory, we find that when participants discuss trust they are trying to shape their relationship to researchers while simultaneously communicating important hopes, fears and expectations. The types of trust people talk about are never unconditional, but involve awareness of uncertainties and risks. There are different things at stake for people in different contexts, and therefore it is not the same to trust researchers in Pakistan as it is in Denmark, even when participants donate to the same laboratory. We conclude that casual references to ‘trust’ in policy documents risk glossing over important local differences and contribute to a de-politicization of basic inequalities in access to healthcare. (shrink)

Pepper Culpepper’s seminal Quiet Politics and Business Power has revitalized the study of when business elites can shape policies away from public scrutiny. This article takes the concept of quiet politics to a new, and surprising, set of actors: trade union leaders. Focusing on the case of Denmark, it argues that quiet politics functions through political elite networks and that this way of doing politics favors a particular kind of corporatist coordination between the state, capital, and labor. Rather than (...) showing macrocorporatist coordination between the two classes and governments, it identifies representatives of business and labor that hold privileged positions in political elite networks. Representatives of segments are found in industries important for the Danish economy, specifically, the exporting manufacturing sector. Being at the core of the network requires not only a key position in the Danish economy but also an understanding that politics is often done best without politicians and voters. The analysis shows that trade union and business association representatives work closely on a wide number of issues through quiet politics, using their extensive network to broker and foster agreement between different stakeholders. (shrink)

Over the last decade, a plethora of international policies and guidelines on research integrity have been produced, and many countries have developed national codes of conduct. Recently, as a way of implementing these codes, institutions have begun offering mandatory training in research integrity for PhD fellows. This paper is based on a case study of a mandatory course in research integrity for PhD fellows at a faculty of medicine in Denmark. The study comprised a small survey, participatory fieldwork, and (...) interviews with six course participants, the course leader and a teacher. Based on this study, the paper shows that the PhD fellows perceived the integrity course as if it, to some extent, contributed to normalising the questionable research practice and grey zone behaviour that the course was conceived to prevent. The interviews, however, also show that this latent normalisation must be seen in the context of the PhD fellows’ position within a strongly competitive culture, which sometimes rewards questionable behaviour. For this reason, creating a culture of research integrity cannot be accomplished by integrity training alone, it demands a wider structural change in the incentives for career advancement that sustain the current asymmetries of power. (shrink)

For some customers, the corona pandemic has turned e-shopping into a fine alternative to shopping in brick-and-mortar shops. For other customers in quarantine e-shopping is the only alternative. The long-lasting pandemic, however, has reminded us of the importance of social contacts and interactions – even if it’s just to go the supermarket to ‘mingle’. This paper investigates what ‘mingle’ means when shopping in physical self-service shops amongst unacquainted others in Denmark. It describes customers’ practice of doing self-service by organizing (...) interaction to minimize social involvement. It shows how they, as a matter of fact, co-ordinate their conduct in ways that hampers possibilities for engaging in even small ‘ritual’ exchanges of talk. The paper draws upon a corpus of video recordings of customers’ self-service practices in shops in Denmark. In addition, the customers’ gaze was recorded with the mobile Tobii Pro X3 eye tracker. The study falls within the realm of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies of multimodal interaction. It concludes that self-service is achieved through co-present customers’ tacit coordination of multimodal actions in social interaction and that their practices work to achieve ‘effortlessly’ and ‘spontaneously’ being, getting, and staying out of the way, which seems to be an ideal for self-service shopping. Talk and moreover having a conversation seems to be an impediment to it. (shrink)

We analyze Denmark’s COVID-19 containment policies. We argue that, despite the precautionary principle being explicitly appealed to by decision-makers at the highest political level, it is neither clear whether Danish COVID-19 policies did in fact constitute a genuine application of the precautionary principle, nor is it clear that the particular restrictions implemented ought indeed to count as precautionary when seen from a perspective that transcends the short-term emergency. Finally, we point at evidence suggesting that lock down policies had the (...) effect of saving the primarily older group of potential COVID-19 victims while causing severe problems of loneliness, mental illness, loss of education and loss of life opportunities for children and young people. This raises serious questions of social and intergenerational injustice in relation to lock down policies. (shrink)

Politics in Golden Age Denmark was largely an affair of liberal and conservative elites wrestling with the emergent phenomena of the “common man.” Denmark's bloodless revolution of 1848 led to a nationalist civil war and to the creation of a People's Church. The heightened fervor surrounding questions of nation and church forms the context within which Kierkegaard wrote. In particular, Kierkegaard set himself against Grundtvig and Martensen. These churchmen were public figures with a political voice. Kierkegaard's arguments against (...) these and other influential “world historians” reveal how his political imagination is worked out in the related areas of history, the moment, identity, and the common man. Crucial planks in the Kierkegaardian platform such as living in the present, the subjective critique of systematizing objectivity, and the single individual against the crowd, all had—and were seen to have—political implications for the common man in Denmark's Golden Age. (shrink)

This paper attempts to uncover some of the factors that may have influenced the choice of model for the systematic training of nurses in Denmark. From a historical analysis of selected historical literature, nursing magazines, and archival documents, three themes emerge: the interest from (and of) the medical profession, the strategy on nurse training of the Danish Nurses’ Organization, and the societal context of the time. Despite there being a Deaconess Institution in Copenhagen from 1863, it was ultimately the (...) Nightingale model that formed the basis for the training programme. Findings suggest that the Nightingale influence within the medical establishment and among leaders in Danish nursing played a vital role in this choice. As well, the Danish Nurses’ Organization actively promoted their preferred 3‐year training model, which had strong similarities to the Nightingale model. Changes in family and social life after the 1864 defeat in the Prussian war fostered a growing demand for the liberalization of women's rights and a need for increased professionalization in the nursing and caring function. (shrink)

In the 1970s, both Denmark and Norway passed abortion legislation that is still the basis for the regulation of abortion in these countries. The legislation was fairly liberal with abortion on demand until 12 weeks of gestation and a permission system for later abortions. This article provides a brief history of the developments leading up to these political compromises and an analysis of the reasons why they have proved remarkably stable. It ends by looking at some factors that may (...) now destabilize 50 years of stable compromise about abortion. (shrink)

There are marked differences between countries with regard to reimbursement decision-making, yet few studies have tried to understand this process and its consequences by a detailed analysis of the local context and decision-making structure. This article describes reimbursement decision-making and subsequent prescribing patterns of new pharmaceuticals by means of a case study on glitazones in treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients in Denmark. The study shows that institutional arrangements, providing the context in which evidence is used, are highly (...) important for understanding the reimbursement decision-making process. In particular the Danish Medicines Agency (DMA) has shaped the decision to reimburse glitazones on the basis of physician-mediated requests of individual patients. Relatively few patients have been prescribed glitazones since their introduction in 2000, suggesting that individual reimbursement may be an effective instrument in controlling overall expenditure of selected pharmaceuticals, although in the case of glitazones this has likely been achieved at the expense of equality in access to the products. The discussion focuses on the generalizability of the findings to both other pharmaceuticals in the individual reimbursement scheme in Denmark, and to other countries that are trying to balance the need to control overall pharmaceutical care expenditure with the need to secure equality in access to new drugs with therapeutic added value. (shrink)

Denmark was once at the forefront of nuclear research, operating three experimental nuclear reactors at the research facility at Risø, close to Copenhagen. However, the 1985 resolution of the Danish Parliament excluded nuclear power from the national energy mix. In 2003, the Parliament passed a resolution on the decommissioning of the nuclear facility at Risø, including plans for establishing a permanent solution for radioactive waste management. To understand the ensuing socio-technical controversy, we employ the “hybrid forum” framework that emphasizes (...) the entangled political-epistemological role of the municipalities and protest groups. They mobilized political resistance while also performing “research in the wild.” In 2016, the protest groups became part of an institutionalized “hybrid forum” where they could negotiate directly with experts and government representatives. We conclude that municipalities and protest groups were instrumental in changing the Danish position on radioactive waste management from final repository to long-term storage at Risø. (shrink)

This book is a tour de force in intellectual history. Kirmmse has brilliantly unearthed and synthesized the diverse social, political, ethical, and religious background of nineteenth-century Denmark from the onset of agrarian reforms to the shift from absolute monarchy to constitutional government. Kirmmse provides interesting chapters on such Golden Age cultural figures as Oehlenschlager, Mynster, Heiberg, Martensen, Grundtvig, Clausen, and others, and the romantic, Hegelian, elitist, populist themes and tensions elicited from their respective views. My brief review cannot possibly (...) do justice to the elaborate historical detail and interpretation found in Kirmmse's book. (shrink)

Håkon Evju demonstrates how history and historical writing were at the centre of debates over monarchy and monarchical reform politics in Denmark-Norway during the Enlightenment.

The aim of the article is to present the application of the lean management method as appropriate for the management of the organizational system of psychiatric care in the Zealand region of Denmark. The organizational solutions of the Danish psychiatric care system presented in this paper are individualized and adapted to the regional needs of the residents. In Denmark, there are five administrative regions, in which each independently organizes its own system of medical (psychiatric) care. This means that (...) the regions have considerable independence in choosing the acceptable and necessary methods of management, including – as is clear from the conducted research – the use of methods put-upon other areas of economy. Although the national laws in Denmark define certain conditions and guidelines for the functioning of psychiatric care (e.g. regarding the use of direct coercion/restrains for patients treated in the centres), there is a distinct separation of structures and methods of functioning throughout the whole country, which constitutes unique observation material – from the cognitive point of view. The authors of this paper conduct extensive research and analyse the systems of psychiatric care organizations in various countries (including Spain, Italy and Japan) and, as a result, the obtained results may lead to the selection of the best models from other systems (good organizational practices and management, the management methods in use), which can be applied in the currently reorganised system of the Polish psychiatric care. The choice of Denmark for the observational study is not accidental and is related not only to the fact that there is a large degree of systemic identity within the country and between the regions, but also because the country applies solutions addressed to patients with very different cultural conditions and needs, resulting from their descent, religion, and (world)-views. Denmark is one of those European countries that express a significant acceptance of diversity and tolerance, which is why communities with very different imponderables, denominations, and worldviews co-exist. In the area related to the organization of the psychiatric system, these conditions are of key importance. In the period from January 2015 to December 2017 the authors participated in study visits in Denmark, conducting research aimed at identifying the key success factors of the psychiatric care organization system in the country. The conducted analysis is also based on the analysis of literature and own and participant observations. The conclusions concerning this subject are also the result of interviews conducted with employees of the visited hospitals and system users, both professionals and patients. As the search for an optimal organizational model of psychiatric care is currently an ongoing concern in Poland, it seems justified to review the existing solutions in Europe and perform their critical analysis. A comparison of the adopted solutions was performed, in the context of, above all, the improvement of the quality of these services, their availability, and the satisfaction of patients and their families from the proposed organizational changes. The economic benefits of these solutions are also significant. (shrink)

The philosophy of science discussion in Denmark has mainly concentrated on the problem of the external world, the problem of induction, the problem of dialectic in the Marxian sense and the strife between ontological viewpoints, originating in the philosophical tradition, and the analytical method emerging in modern mathematics and quantum mechanics. In this discussion Bohr's correspondence argument and his doctrine of language have functioned as tools of analysis and as objects of study as well. In general, Bohr and J. (...) Jørgensen were the creators of the intellectual climate in which the discussion took place. (shrink)

This article addresses the sacredness of Ayahuasca from the perspective of the global shamanic vocation. If encounters with Ayahuasca are said to revitalize forms of sacredness in contemporary societies, this is perhaps clearest in cases where individuals understand themselves to be called to lead ceremonies. Recognizing the global scale of Ayahuasca shamanism, we compare facilitators of ceremonies in two societies to discern differences and similarities in how Ayahuasca vocations exist in differently modernized societies: Peru, a predominantly Catholic society with a (...) substantial Indigenous Amazonian population and an active Ayahuasca shamanism tourism sector, and Denmark, a secular society in Northern Europe, where Ayahuasca is illegal. Building on recent reappraisals of Weber’s reflection on vocation and Durkheim’s theory of the sacred, we argue that being called by Ayahuasca to follow shamanic vocations in contemporary societies leads to tensions around the need to both justify and resist the rationalization of Ayahuasca. (shrink)