This chapter contains sections titled: Cheerful Resignation Self‐Sufficiency Murphy was an Optimist: Negative Visualization Agency and Control Fate, Freedom, and Sailing.

Taking inspiration from the legal doctrine of the freedom of the seas, this paper makes the case for No Borders. To do so, it revisits Grotius’s arguments for the freedom of the seas. Analysis of contemporary bordering practices in the Mediterranean Sea reveals the weakness of what appears to be Grotius’s most plausible argument, namely that the ocean cannot be occupied and should therefore be free. While Grotius’s argument for the freedom of the seas (...) based on the idea of divinely sanctioned sociability is clearly problematic for the twenty-first century, the paper retools it by shifting from theology to ontology with a turn to Deleuze and Guattari, and Nancy. The resultant argument, based on Nancy’s idea of being-in-common, not only justifies the freedom of the seas, but also more radically calls for an end to exclusionary political communities and their borders. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study is the understanding of Gentili's position on the law of the sea as expressed in his classic De iure belli . The key constitutive elements turn out to be: 1) the idea of the sea as 'res communis' to all mankind, which amounts to the concept of 'freedom of the sea'; 2) 'jurisdiction' of the coastal state on the adjacent sea, even on the high seas, in order to police crime and prevent/punish (...) piracy. As such these two key elements, if taken in isolation, are rooted in the civil law tradition, but their true meaning can only be captured by placing them in the intellectual framework of which they constitute an integral part. Firstly, the epistemic structure of discourse hinges on the new science of natural jurisprudence, as applied to the subject of 'ius gentium bellicum'; secondly, the constituent theoretical languages emanate from a distinctive combination of civil law, scholastic-theological and humanist traditions. This procedure enables us to highlight the strikingly original and distinctly modern traits of Gentili's perspective on the law of the sea, which emerges as a corollary of his project of international/global order. A project that is based on the crucial notion of 'respublica magna' of mankind, a notion encompassing the two notions of 'freedom' and 'jurisdiction' that constitute and define the legal regime of the sea.The Stoic humanist notion of universal human society as 'corpus unum' implies, first of all, 'freedom of intercourse', or 'ius communicationis', to start from 'free passage' and 'freedom of commerce'. It is in the context of his argument about these basic freedoms that Gentili is finally led to discuss the subject of the 'law of the sea'. But, not only the concept of 'res communis', or 'freedom of use', but also the concept of 'jurisdiction', or 'protection', are strictly related to the same foundational concept of 'respublica magna'. This is a crucial characteristic of Gentili's approach to world order that is proved by reference to two cardinal points of his new 'cosmopolitan justice': 1) the 'international right to punish', as exemplified by the legitimacy of the wars of 'humanitarian intervention' and of the wars in support of the 'common law of mankind'; 2) the 'occupation of vacant land', which again underlines the relevance of the principle of 'jurisdiction' by striking a balance between the principle of 'free use' of nature and the 'jurisdiction' of the local ruler.Such a reconstruction definitely rejects the traditional image of Gentili as a supporter of 'maritime protectionism', on the ground of his Advocatio Hispanica published posthumously in 1613 and containing his pleadings as Spanish advocate before the Court of Admiralty. The guiding assumption here is that the book is strictly of a forensic character and as such devoid of any coherent theoretical substance. To the contrary, in his De iure belli, far from anticipating the English position in favour of 'mare clausum', Gentili tends to anticipate the essentials of Grotius' position, especially at the level of the ethic of the 'modern cosmopolis' and the related theme of colonial empire. On this very plane of discourse, Gentili's thinking transcends the so-called battle of the books and emerges as especially significant in illuminating the wider and deeper intellectual currents that contributed to the development of what were to become basic standard positions of modern international theory. (shrink)

This note announces the launch of a research project at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with the generous support of the Carlsberg Foundation and guidance from Prof. dr. Frederik Dhondt. The project explores the early steps of one of the most dynamic and debated branches of international law, namely the law of the sea. It focuses on the interactions between the principle of the freedom of the sea, maritime neutrality and small powers’ diplomacy in the long eighteenth century. Analysing the (...) rich archival material conserved in the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs – series Mémoires et documents, Correspondance politique – as well as the Danish National Archives, or Rigsarkivet, the project aims at the construction of a rich narrative of multiple uses of the law of the sea as an argumentative political-legal framework to express state and private interest. By a close reading of largely unexplored sources, the project contributes to the broader turn to state practice in the history of international law, a booming field of interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Los derechos de conquista, descubrimiento y ocupación, y la libertad de los mares: una genealogía de la injusticia sobre los recursos naturales Este artículo analiza los orígenes coloniales de tres principios del derecho internacional: el derecho de conquista, el derecho de descubrimiento y ocupación, y la libertad de los mares. Argumento que cada uno de estos derechos se estableció como principio jurídico internacional para facilitar la colonización de pueblos lejanos, sus territorios y tierras, y con el fin de acumular sus (...) recursos naturales. El artículo analiza cómo se justificaron estos derechos, qué conjunto de facultades e inmunidades exclusivas conferían, y cómo están vinculados a tres regímenes jurídicos modernos distintos de derechos sobre el espacio natural y sus recursos: la soberanía territorial, los derechos de propiedad privada sobre tierras extranjeras y los bienes marítimos comunes mundiales. En tanto expongo los orígenes moralmente arbitrarios de cada uno de estos principios de derecho internacional, que reflejan las condiciones y los objetivos específicos de determinados proyectos coloniales, también sostengo que los regímenes de derechos sobre los recursos naturales que estos institucionalizaron son convergentes en el sentido de que permitieron una apropiación y una explotación distintivamente injustas de los recursos naturales. El artículo también señala las formas en que la lógica y el funcionamiento de estos regímenes siguen dando forma al uso injusto de los recursos naturales hasta el día de hoy. (shrink)

The present article examines if the principle of freedom of the high seas as formulated by Hugo de Groot still plays a significant role in international law. The article starts from an analysis of De Groot's ideas on the law of the sea and then turns to the freedom of the high seas in the modern law of the sea. In both cases, the legal framework is assessed against the background of the activities that require regulation. (...) Freedom of the high seas, although it has lost ground to other ordering principles, remains significant at the level of principles. However, at the level of designing an effective regime for current problems in oceans management, which to a large extent are caused by deficiencies in the enforcement scheme implicit in freedom of the high seas, the writings of De Groot, in whose time those activities did not require any significant measure of international coordination and cooperation, offer little assistance. (shrink)

The present article examines if the principle of freedom of the high seas as formulated by Hugo de Groot still plays a significant role in international law. The article starts from an analysis of De Groot's ideas on the law of the sea and then turns to the freedom of the high seas in the modern law of the sea. In both cases, the legal framework is assessed against the background of the activities that require regulation. (...) Freedom of the high seas, although it has lost ground to other ordering principles, remains significant at the level of principles. However, at the level of designing an effective regime for current problems in oceans management, which to a large extent are caused by deficiencies in the enforcement scheme implicit in freedom of the high seas, the writings of De Groot, in whose time those activities did not require any significant measure of international coordination and cooperation, offer little assistance. (shrink)

Abstract Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel By the Sea (2001) is a compelling narrative of the trauma of displacement in postcolonial Africa. Set mainly between Zanzibar and Britain, it brings into focus the trauma of imprisonment as a defining feature of dislocation and unbelonging in postcolonial African cultures. The work critiques the forces of separation bred by racism in nationalist discourse, forces that act as the legacies of colonialism that limits the freedom of the oppressed colonial Other. This article supplements Michael (...) Rothberg’s notion of “traumatic realism” with Paul Gilroy’s concept of “camp mentality”. I argue that the novel‘s underlying purpose is to bear responsible witness to nationalist racism in Zanzibar and Britain as a holdover of the same ideological structures that made colonialism and slavery possible. As a bystander of the trauma of postcolonial displacement, the diasporic Zanzibari writer’s narrative seeks to break free from the discursive and literal restrictions of a world marked by the racial division of subjectivities into “units of camps”. Keywords: trauma-colonialism-nationalism-freedom-geography-unbelonging. (shrink)

John Wesley explained the existence of evil in moral rather than metaphysical terms. His understanding of the fall was fairly typical of western theology and he also enthusiastically embraced a version of the felix culpa theme as essential for theodicy. Unlike many influential western theologians, he also relied heavily on libertarian freedom to account for evil. His most striking proposal for theodicy involves his eschatalogical vision of the future in which he believed the entire world living then will be (...) converted. I argue that his theodicy is implicitly universalist, especially in its eschatalogical speculations, and show that this is in tension with his strong libertariancommitments. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Politics, religion and legal argumentation were inextricably intertwined in the reception of John Selden’s Mare Clausum/The Closed Sea (1635). The work’s writing and printing history is closely tied to Stuart foreign policy, particularly James I’s and Charles I’s attempts to tax the Dutch herring fisheries. Mare Clausum’s immediate impact on European international relations has received little attention from historians so far. It is clear, however, that government authorities in London, The Hague and Venice expected an official reply from Hugo (...) Grotius, author of Mare Liberum/the Free Sea (1609) and Swedish ambassador in Paris. Yet the latter declined to assist the Dutch authorities in this matter, blaming them for his imprisonment in 1618–1621 and his second banishment from Holland in 1632. The antipathy was mutual. The Dutch authorities abhorred Grotius’ pleas for religious tolerance and commissioned his Calvinist kinsman Dirk Graswinckel to respond to Selden instead. Graswinckel had already published Libertas Veneta/venetian Liberty (1634), a learned defense of the Republic of Venice’s political interests. In ‘Vindiciae maris liberi’/vindication of the Free Sea (written 1636–1637), he tried –but arguably failed – to reconcile Dutch claims to freedom of navigation, trade and fishing with Venetian claims to the Adriatic. It never appeared in print. (shrink)

This essay investigates the rôle of the North Atlantic as a silent actant in the dramatic economy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It takes the series of actions of Hamlet’s deportation by sea, his nocturnal transformation on board and his surprise return with the pirate ship as the axis around which the play turns. It examines the movement of deterritorialization and mimesis in the constitution of sovereignty by the ceaseless transference of piracy and inter-imperial rivalries and passages. Interpreting Hamlet as being not (...) just a play of nothingness and nihilism, born of and residing in the interstice of disjointed historical time, this essay argues that Hamlet is a play that inherits and inhabits the cranny of fractured historical space from Elizabethan to Jacobean England when the English isle became what Carl Schmitt called the “agency of the spatial turn to a new nomos of the earth.” The old nomos of the earth, terra firma in the Greco-Roman and feudal senses, was challenged by the new freedom of the sea which demanded a separate and distinct global order. This essay poses the question whether the dramatic economy of Hamlet as split by and revolving around the physical presence and symbolic charges of the North Atlantic in fact constitutes the irrhythm and mis-punctuation of this spatial turn toward a maritime modernity. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), one of the leading conservative legal thinkers of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, is best known today for his critique of liberalism. Between the late 1930s and mid-1950s, Schmitt wrote numerous articles and two books addressing the mythical and geopolitical significance of land and sea. In recent years, these texts have begun to attract attention from historians as well as theorists. This article reconstructs the origins of Schmitt's theories about land and sea, and shows how they (...) developed in the context of his efforts to delegitimize the British Empire and justify the persecution of Jews. It also explains how Schmitt selectively misread the history of maritime law in order to critique the ‘freedom of the seas.’ Finally, it reveals that the meaning Schmitt ascribed to ‘the opposition of the elements of land and sea’ changed dramatically to suit his political needs. For all their evocative qualities and insights, Schmitt's texts on land and sea do not constitute a coherent theory, but rather a shifting field of polemical positions in search of theoretical support. (shrink)

(Only begin) A descent -- Free bodies -- Collective subjectivities 1 -- Overture to dawn -- Collective subjectivities 2 -- Into the hot -- Solitary subjectivities -- Troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes -- Collective objectivities -- Imaginary birds said to live in paradise -- Postscript : The ballad of John and Yoko -- Rain falling down on old Gods.

This study argues that a much richer and more coherent account of Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy is gained by examining it in light of three customary sources for ordering human experience: human nature, religion and history. While the historical character of Oakeshott's thought has been readily recognized, too often the roles of human nature and religion have been neglected by commentators, leading to an impoverished account of his work. And even regarding history, there has been confusion concerning Oakeshott's notion of (...) the practical past. Towards this end, the study establishes that Oakeshott does have a significant concept of human nature and religion, clarifies his concept of the practical past, and argues that viewing his political thought through the prism of these three concepts significantly illuminates his understanding of, among other matters, political authority, politics, non-instrumental law, and the problem of innate human freedom versus the historical freedoms associated with Western individualism. ;Regarding human nature, Oakeshott's conception is seen to include the notions of reflective consciousness, free agency, intelligent learning, and a social character. These notions indicate a more substantial and consistent 'agent' across history than Oakeshott himself typically suggests. Regarding religion, the study argues there is a persistent if idiosyncratic religious sensibility in Oakeshott's writings, including an almost sacred understanding of human freedom tempered by an Augustinian awareness of human imperfection, that underlines the depth of conviction behind Oakeshott's philosophical and moral conclusions concerning human affairs. Regarding history, the concept of intimations operating in the practical past is explored as the primary vehicle by which moral and political practices are grounded in Oakeshott's thought. The limitations of this approach are examined as well. ;The study concludes that the substantive implications of Oakeshott's conceptions of human nature and religion are a significant aid to grasping the full significance of his political philosophy. In particular they render more coherent the force of his normative conclusions, especially his championing of individual freedom and his disdain of collectivism, clarify continued inconsistencies, such as his ambiguous gulf between reflection and practice, and suggest possible bridges between Oakeshott's thought and more foundational approaches to political philosophy. (shrink)

This article addresses the heritage of Grotius's concept of common goods as developed in his seminal work Mare liberum. This contribution identifies the basic tenets of Grotius's thinking on the nature of common property and identifies the relevance of these ideas for the present day management of global commons, i.e., the areas and natural resources beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. Successively, the article examines the regimes for: the deep seabed, the high seas, and marine mammals; outer space, particularly (...) the moon; the two polar regions; and the atmosphere, in particular the ozone layer and the climate system. The article demonstrates how some of the original tenets of Grotius's concept of res communis – in particular the idea of inexhaustibility – can no longer be upheld and how the freedom of access to the global commons has become increasingly qualified and supplemented, if not replaced by a new law of international co-operation aimed at conservation and sustainable use of natural wealth and resources beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. The global commons function as laboratories for the testing of new principles of international law and new forms of international co-operation, which can be said to clearly build upon the Grotian heritage. (shrink)

Makings of the Sea is an inquiry into the makings of the Mediterranean imagination in the 20th century, focusing on specific cases in the visual and performing arts, music and literature. Following a thematic structure that falls broadly under the headings of journey, doubt and nostalgia, this is an essay on Mediterranean aesthetics.

Without the freedom of the press the road to fanaticism and totalitarianism lies wide open. This book focuses on how the press reacted under strain in a number of cases in the 20th and 21st century. Both academics and journalists give their views on censorship, self-censorship and press-ethics challenging the reader to find his own position.

The generalization of history.--The continental disease.--The capacity of shipping and the seven seas.--The freedom of the seas.--Character versus characteristics.--By mistake.

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 1014-1034, September 2022. The plural, impure or discordant nature of time has become an important theme in recent critical social and political theory. Against Althusser’s dismissal of Sartre’s presumedly Hegelian understanding of time and history, this article establishes Jean-Paul Sartre as a key figure in this debate on the plurality of temporalities. Especially in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre understands history and the social in terms of a multiplicity of uneven (...) and non-synchronous temporalisations, rejecting an notion of time as a universal container within which events take place. The originality of Sartre’s approach is that it establishes a link between the notion of the plurality of temporalities and the problem of freedom and domination. His mature social and political theory allows us to understand temporalisation as a strategy for domination, and objective social temporality as key to a form of anonymous or structural domination. A reconstruction of this highly complex and sophisticated approach to thinking domination through time can also shed an original light on the temporal dimension of democracy and totalitarianism. (shrink)

While abortion has been legal in most developed countries for many years, the topic remains controversial. A major area of controversy concerns women’s rights vis-a-vis the rights of health professionals to opt out of providing the service on conscience grounds. Although scholars from various disciplines have addressed this issue in the literature, there is a lack of empirical research on the topic. This paper provides a documentary analysis of three examples of conscientious objection on religious grounds to performing abortion-related care (...) by midwives in different Member States of the European Union, two of which have resulted in legal action. These examples show that as well as the laws of the respective countries and the European Union, professional and church law each played a part in the decisions made. However, support from both professional and religious sources was inconsistent both within and between the examples. The authors conclude that there is a need for clear guidelines at both local and pan-European level for health professionals and recommend a European-wide forum to develop and test them. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that an analysis of the mind-control skills exhibited by Buddhist meditation experts may be used to formulate a theory of mental freedom, Buddhist Soft Compatibilism, that includes not only freedom of the will but the freedoms of emotion, attention, perception, the self, and all voluntary phenomena. BSC is compatible with determinism, indeterminism, the various Buddhist conceptions of causation, and the Buddhist conception of the self.The structure of my essay is as follows. First, I (...) review the major terms, positions, and arguments in the Western debate on free will, contrasting the strongest pessimistic and optimistic views, framing the... (shrink)

The accounts of social freedom offered by G. W. F. Hegel and Axel Honneth identify the normative demands on social institutions and explain how individual freedom is realized through rational participation in such institutions. While both offer normative reconstructions of the market economy, public sphere and family, they both derive the norms of educational institutions from education’s role in preparing people for participation in other institutions. We argue that this represents a significant defect in their accounts of social (...) freedom because they both fail to account for the distinctive aims and norms of education. Only educational institutions bring individuals into a both shared and autonomous standpoint necessary for participation in social life. We thus argue both that Hegel’s and Honneth’s accounts are empirically inadequate and that they neglect the normative demands on schools to contribute to individual moral and intellectual development. (shrink)

The idea of freedom of the will seems to conflict with the principle of causal efficacy implicit in many theories of mind. The conflict is normally resolved within a compatibilist view whereby the desires and beliefs of the agent, replete with a respectable if yet to be elucidated causal pedigree, are taken to be the basis of individual freedom. The present view is an alternative which erects mental content on a framework of rule following and then argues that (...) rule‐following is conceptually distinct from causally produced activity. The normative aspect of rule‐following defies reduction to descriptive or dispositional terms. According to this view we cannot get beyond the agent as a self‐determining rational individual in formulating a theory of mind and action. The theory is neo‐Kantian in that it identifies rules or conceptions of laws as central in human thought. It, follows Wittgenstein's treatment of rule‐following and generates a plausible (but non‐causal) account of mental explanation and weakness of the will. (shrink)

_Freedom of the Will_ provides a novel interpretation of G. E. Moore’s famous conditional analysis of free will and discusses several questions about the meaning of free will and its significance for moral responsibility. Although Moore’ theory has a strong initial appeal, most metaphysicians believe that there are conclusive arguments against it. Huoranszki argues that the importance of conditional analysis must be reevaluated in light of some recent developments in the theory of dispositions. The original analysis can be amended so (...) that the revised conditional account is not only a good response to determinist worries about the possibility of free will, but it can also explain the sense in which free will is an important condition of moral responsibility. This study addresses three fundamental issues about free will as a metaphysical condition of responsibility. First, the book explains why agents are responsible for their actions or omissions only if they have the ability to do otherwise and shows that the relevant ability is best captured by the revised conditional analysis. Second, it aims to clarify the relation between agents’ free will and their rational capacities. It argues that free will as a condition of responsibility must be understood in terms of agents’ ability to do otherwise rather than in terms of their capacity to respond to reasons. Finally, the book explains in which sense responsibility requires self-determination and argues that it is compatible with agents’ limited capacity to control their own character, reasons, and motives. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to determine the mental space of national identity by analyzing the semantic component of the national anthem. The national anthem can be considered as a social code that forms a citizen and as an ordinary text with its semantic structured levels. The national anthem is a political symbol and therefore forms two meanings: intent and influence. In the study, we combine the theory of mental spaces by G.Fauconnier and Ch.Fillmor’s frames semantics to visualize the (...) conceptual model of Ukrainian national identity. Research results: Designating the national anthem as a patriotic work that describes and symbolizes the history and traditions of the country, we articulate the generation and manifestation of social values by the anthem. Based on this position, the article proposes a conceptual model of the mental space of the Ukrainian national identity, which was initiated by the anthem of Ukraine. The basis of the scheme is a figurative fusion of three macro-worlds: Glory-Ukraine-Freedom, which symbolizes the value component that holds around itself the basic concepts of national identity.The article compares the text of the national anthem «Shche ne vmerla Ukraina…» written by P.Chubinsky and the text edited by M.Verbitsky. The symbolic construction of the text of Chubinsky’s anthem, published in 1963, broadcasts a conceptual model of future actions. The names Zalizniak, Nalyvaiko, Triasylo embody the ideal of Cossack chivalry, past times, which are the basis for future generations to follow. The concept of “national identification borders” includes not only geographical names, the Black Sea, the Carpathians, the Dnipro (in the text «from the Syan to the Don»), but also indexical categories – «inviolability», «integrity of the state», «integrity of the territory», «unitaryness», and as well as symbols embodied in names, for example, Crimea, Odesa, Lviv, Kharkiv. In the context of the semantic analysis of the text of the national anthem, its influence on the mental state of the state is recognized, which is reflected in the global peace index and the global terrorism index. A nation can be presented with ethnic, territorial, cultural, and political components. But there must also be abstract ideas, a mental space that makes it visible. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1961, given by Stuart Hampshire, a British philosopher.

The technology of undersea communications, from stranded-wire telegraph cables in the 1850s to fiber-optic cables at the end of the twentieth century, and its social, political, and economic impact. By the end of the twentieth century, fiber-optic technology had made possible a worldwide communications system of breathtaking speed and capacity. This amazing network is the latest evolution of communications technologies that began with undersea telegraph cables in the 1850s and continued with coaxial telephone cables a hundred years later. Communications under (...) the Seas traces the development of these technologies and assesses their social, economic, and political effects. If we cannot predict the ultimate consequences of today's wired world--its impact on economic markets, free expression, and war and peace--or the outcome of the conflict between wired and wireless technology, we can examine how similar issues have been dealt with in the past. The expert contributors to this volume do just that, discussing technical developments in undersea cables, management of the cables by private and public interests, and the impact on military and political activities. Chapters cover such topics as the daring group of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who wove a network of copper wires around the world ; the opening of the telegraphic network to general public use; the government- and industry-forced merger of wireless and cable companies in Britain; and the impact of the cable network on diplomacy during the two world wars. (shrink)

It might be the case that absence of constraint is the relevant sense of ' freedom' when we are discussing the freedom of the will, but it needs arguing for. ...

This essay explores the impact of the ancient principle of the freedom of the Church—identified by the Second Vatican Council as “the fundamental principle” governing “the relations between the Church and governments and the whole civil order”—on both Western civilization and the development of modern Catholic social thought. Arguing that this principle requires the articulation and institutionalization of a new understanding of society and government, it contends this principle revolutionized the structure of Western political life and helped lay the (...) groundwork for Western liberty. At the same time, it maintains that the development in contemporary Catholic social teaching that crystallizes in Dignitatis Humanae must be seen in the context of the ongoing effort of Catholic thought to understand the nature and role of the state towards which the idea of the freedom of the Church points. (shrink)

A central project of Enlightenment thought is to ground claims to natural freedom and equality. This project is the foundation of Suchon’s view of freedom. But it is not the whole story. For, Suchon’s focus is not just natural freedom, but also the necessary and sufficient conditions for oppressed members of society, women, to avail themselves of this freedom. In this paper I, first, treat Suchon’s normative argument for women’s right to develop their rational minds. In (...) Section 2, I consider Suchon’s three necessary and sufficient conditions for freedom, and the manners in which women are blocked from meeting them. The normative argument together with the obstacles to women meeting the conditions for freedom raises the question of how to get women into a position where they can enjoy the freedom to which they are entitled. In Section 3, I outline Suchon’s answer: women must live a life without attachment. I argue this answer situates Suchon both chronologically and theoretically between the Béguines, a medieval women’s spiritual movement, and 20th century feminist separatism. I conclude that Suchon’s view of freedom is radical, both for its time and ours, and deserves greater attention from historians of philosophy and of feminist thought. (shrink)

In contrast to classical natural law theory and traditional individualist liberalism, James Luther Adams develops a version of natural law doctrine grounded in liberal religion. In its ontological dimension, his natural law doctrine is derived from a communal understanding of the character of reality. In its institutional dimension, his natural law doctrine promotes a kind of democracy in which freedom of association is central. From this perspective, law is a practice intended to empower persons through their several associations in (...) the constant formation and transformation of community under the direction of divine power. (shrink)

In this article I argue not only for the value of hermeneutics today but also, and especially, how the crucial gesture of hermeneutics is that of changing the subject for the sake of our today. Surveying briefly the main lines of hermeneutical positions along its history and critiques, and connecting these critiques to the discrepancy between theory and practice, between interpretation and the need to change the world, the article proposes that our reality today, reshaped through globalization and the virtual, (...) is performed as a hermeneutics of history. The challenge for today’s hermeneutics is to work out categories for understanding the present as on-going in a world that tends to capture and distort more and more the meaning of freedom of thought. In the final section, I propose a hermeneutics of the on-going, of gerundive time, partially under the inspiration of Paul Celan, as a response that develops the meaning of the freedom of thought. A defense of nearness and how to think in narrow nearness to the on-going is discussed. (shrink)

This chapter explores the contours of our freedoms to enter into and leave particular associations with particular people. The chapter highlights the fact that often our associations with each other are morally complex and, indeed, morally wrong. This moral complexity stems partly from the fact that associations are necessarily intersubjective: they affect the social needs, claims, and freedoms of at least two people. When our associations are morally wrong, we must determine whether they can be protected nonetheless by our sphere (...) of associative freedom. The chapter shows that our sphere of associative freedom depends greatly on the character and consequences of our associations (or dissociations). The chapter also shows that, under certain conditions, freedom of association is less important than other associative rights, such as the positive associative claim‐rights of utterly dependent people. (shrink)

To what extent should states accommodate religious liberty claims? Can the pluralist state be neutral between religions and secularism? This book explores contemporary legal controversies regarding the protection of religious liberty from a theoretical and comparative perspective, looking at issues such as family and parenting, medical treatment, education, employment, religious group autonomy, and freedom of expression.

On the verge of the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the American Association of University Professors, we examine the organization’s focus on academic freedom, shared governance, and the challenges the AAUP faced during its early years. The history is a fairly uncontested one: higher education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States was the context for the struggle over academic freedom and shared governance. Dismissed professors, resignations by colleagues, and the struggle (...) of professionalization characterize the period.1 A century later, we wonder about the state of academic freedom and shared governance. We argue that higher education is currently so.. (shrink)