In _Plato on Democracy and Political technē_ Anders Dahl Sørensen offers an in-depth investigation of Plato’s discussions of democracy’s ‘epistemic potential’, arguing that this question is far more central to his political thought than is usually assumed.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Protrepticus ('Exhortation to Philosophy') by Iamblichus of Chalcis, the second book of his ten-volume introduction to Pythagorean philosophy, became the site of a series of important philological discoveries. It had long been known that Iamblichus (floruit late third and early fourth century CE), in composing the Protrepticus, had made extensive use of lengthy extracts from earlier thinkers, subjected to differing degrees of editorial modification.

The political outlook of the so-called ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’ has been a subject of controversy in the scholarly literature, with some commentators judging him to be a committed democrat, while others see in him a partisan of aristocracy or even oligarchy. This disagreement is not surprising, for the text contains passages that seem to pull in opposite directions. The article suggests that we move beyond the one-dimensional oligarch-or-democrat model traditionally employed and instead approach the issue from a fresh angle, applying the (...) more nuanced typology for understanding ancient social criticism developed by Josiah Ober.The article begins by situating the author within the social landscape of classical Athens. The resulting characterization presents the author as a representative of a distinctive social type: the Athenian ‘rich quietist’, who prefers private economic endeavours to engagement in public affairs, and who is ideologically committed to democratic government but also highly critical of how democratic society treats its wealthy citizens. This characterization helps make better sense of the seemingly contradictory political indications in the text. In particular, fragments 6 and 7 should be read as a single line of argument, which takes the form of an ‘immanent critique’ of contemporary Athenian democracy. According to ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’, democratic society rightly praises the rule of law as a distinctive democratic value, but it falls disappointingly short of that ideal in its treatment of its own wealthy elite citizens. (shrink)

Taking up the controversial issue of the value of the laws of non-ideal cities in Plato’s Statesman, the paper argues for a modified version of the traditional interpretation, as defended against Christopher Rowe’s influential criticism. The paper agrees with the traditional view that the established laws of non-ideal cities are assumed to be good laws and that the Eleatic Stranger’s justification for this assumption can be found in 300b. But it also argues that this defence of the traditional interpretation must (...) be based on a revised understanding of the role of legislation in the Stranger’s conception of ideal rule. The unique contribution of the expert to good government consists in his distinctive ability to judge what is appropriate in each case, not in his work as legislator, which, on closer inspection, turns out to be based on the very same ancestral traditions that the second best city must resort to. (shrink)

The article discusses the relation between political office and the rule of law in Plato’s dialogue Statesman. Taking its starting-point from an observation about the Statesman’s peculiar approach to constitutional analysis, the article argues that what Plato is concerned to show is how the reconceptualisation of the role of law in government proposed in that dialogue has important implications for what we take the role of the institution of office-holding to be. While Greek political tradition held the main aim of (...) archē to be the formal circumscription and control of official power within a constitutional order, Plato insists that it should primarily be understood as ensuring that the exercise of political power approximates, by means of law, the ideal rule by a political expert. The article ends by pointing out how this reading complements another recent discussion of office-holding in the Statesman. (shrink)

The paper challenges the traditional assumption that the fragments of ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’ are best understood and interpreted against the intellectual and cultural background of the so-called ‘sophistic movement’. I begin by suggesting that we can distinguish, in the fragments, between two separate ‘discourses’ concerning nomos and its role in human life: an abstract ‘sophistic’ discourse, centered around the defense of nomos against the antinomian champions of natural pleonexia, and another, less abstract and more polemical discourse on nomos, which is aimed (...) at the author’s contemporary Athens. I argue that the author’s engagement with well-known sophistic ideas is best understood as instrumental to his polemical agenda: it provides him with a powerful intellectual framework in which to articulate his criticism of democratic society, especially with regard to traditional notions of social ‘benefaction’ and the relation between rich and poor. (shrink)

Bei der Durchführung von Impfungen in der Pädiatrie sind die Interessen von Kind, Eltern und öffentlicher Gesundheitsvorsorge zu berücksichtigen. Eine ethische Diskussion allein auf Grundlage der informierten Einwilligung wird der vielschichtigen Dimension der Impfproblematik nicht gerecht. In bestimmten Fällen erscheint eine Impfung auch gegen den Willen der Eltern legitim, z. B. wenn das Kindeswohl gefährdet ist. Ein genereller Impfzwang ist jedoch ethisch nicht zu rechtfertigen. Untersuchungen haben gezeigt, dass impfkritische Eltern andere Entscheidungskriterien verwenden als bislang von Experten angenommen. Für die (...) weitere Diskussion sind die Grenzen der informierten Einwilligung sowie der Einwilligungsspielraum älterer Kinder zu präzisieren. Schließlich sollten unbedingt empirische Untersuchungen durchgeführt werden, um insbesondere die Beweggründe impfkritischer Eltern besser zu verstehen. (shrink)

Cognitive enhancements in the context of converging technologies. [Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1093, pp. 201-207] [with Anders Sandberg] [pdf].

The author's aim here is to philosophically analyze the notion of positive mental health. Defining characteristics of positive mental health are described, drawing on modern psychiatric, psychoanalytical, psychological, and philosophical literature. The author finds that it is impossible to draw decisive conclusions about what characteristics constitute positive mental health, and suggests a general theory of health. Lennart Nordenfelt's holistic theory of general health is chosen to guide the rest of the discussion. The author is affiliated with Malmo University, Sweden. This (...) book is based on his PhD thesis in the Department of Health and Society at Linkoping University. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This article engages the French pragmatism of Laurent Thévenot, Luc Boltanski and Bruno Latour in debates on how to forge a moral-political sociology of ecological valuation, justification and critique. Picking up the debate initiated by Thévenot on the possible emergence of a novel ‘green’ order of worth, the article juxtaposes the sociology of critical capacity of Boltanski and Thévenot with the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour. In doing so, the article suggests that each of these three pragmatic sociologists succeeds, in (...) characteristically different ways, in theoretically articulating an important but partial socio-political grammar of ecological worth. This claim is substantiated by invoking three case studies into environmental critique and compromise, on transnational carbon markets, urban sustainability projects, and Japanese whaling, respectively. Against this backdrop, the article concludes that – when read together as grammarians of the ecological bond – pragmatic sociology provides important insights into the bounded multiplicity of nature’s worth in political modernity. (shrink)

Lifetime quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) prioritarianism has recently been defended as a reasonable specification of the prioritarian view that benefits to the worse off should be given priority in health-related priority setting. This paper argues against this view with reference to how it relies on implausible assumptions. By referring to lifetime QALY as the basis for judgments about who is worse off lifetime QALY prioritarianism relies on assumptions of strict additivity, atomism and intertemporal separability of sublifetime attributes. These assumptions entail that (...) a health state at some period in time contributes with the same amount to how well off someone is regardless of intrapersonal and interpersonal distributions of health states. The paper argues that this is implausible and that prioritarians should take both intrapersonal and interpersonal distributions of goods into account when they establish who is worse off. They should therefore not accept that lifetime QALY is a reasonable ground for ascribing priority and reject lifetime QALY prioritarianism. (shrink)

This article examines some of the difficulties of universalistic science in situations of deep conflict over global nature, using empirical material pertaining to ongoing controversies in the context of Japanese whaling practices. Within global-scale whaling assemblages since the 1970s, science has become a ‘‘post-sovereign’’ authority, unable to impose any stable definition of nature on all actors. Instead, across spaces of deep antagonistic differences, anti- and pro-whalers now ontologically enact a multiplicity of mutually irreconcilable versions of whales. Empirically, the article attempts (...) to map out a ‘‘cosmogram’’ of Japanese pro-whaling enactments of abundant and ‘‘killable’’ whales. Following the political ecology of Bruno Latour, the global-scale situation is conceptualized as one of cosmopolitics, the politics of forging a common world across divergences in nature-cultures. Pointing to tensions inherent in this concept, the article ends by suggesting a move toward ‘‘agonistic cosmopolitics,’’ in clarifying the constructive potentials of a Latourian anti-essentialist political ecology. (shrink)

During the last decades there has been an upsurge in research on xenophobic populist parties, mirroring their political successes. In the Swedish context, characterised by neoliberal restructuring, issues of ‘race’, citizenship and belonging have been important elements of the public debate. These issues have unfolded in parallel with the presence of a neo-Nazi social movement and the emergence of two new parliamentary parties in which cultural racism has been central. Research has especially focused on the xenophobic content and how to (...) relate these parties to the wider research on party politics in western liberal democracies. While there have been some studies focusing on gendered differences in voting and activism highlighting the peripheral role of women, there are still very few studies analysing the worldview of women active in these parties, and the role of gender as metaphor, identity and policy within these parties. Inspired by feminist, postcolonial and Marxist research, the authors of this article are interested in analysing the worldview of women activists. The material is composed of 20 in-depth interviews with female Sweden Democrat politicians complemented by party texts and participant observation. The aim of the article is to explore how women within a Swedish version of these parties, the Sweden Democrats, name and reflect upon their experiences, especially focusing on how a care rhetoric is used in their narratives. These women have chosen to represent a racist party. What inspires them? What visions of gender evolve from their worldview? (shrink)

Introduction: The concept of ” work ability” is central for many sciences, especially for those related to working life and to rehabilitation. It is one of the important concepts in legislation regulating sickness insurance. How the concept is defined therefore has important normative implications. The concept is, however, often not sufficiently well defined. Aim and Method: The objective of this paper is to clarify, through conceptual analysis, what the concept can and should mean, and to propose a useful definition for (...) scientific and practical work. Results: Several of the defining characteristics found in the literature are critically scrutinized and discussed, namely health, basic standard competence, occupational competence, occupational virtues, and motivation. These characteristics are related to the work tasks and the work environment. One conclusion is that we need two definitions of work ability, one for specific jobs that require special training or education, and one for jobs that most people can manage given a short period of practice. Having work ability, in the first sense, means having the occupational competence, the health required for the competence, and the occupational virtues that are required for managing the work tasks, assuming that the tasks are reasonable and that the work environment is acceptable. In the second sense, having work ability is having the health, the basic standard competence and the relevant occupational virtues required for managing some kind of job, assuming that the work tasks are reasonable and that the work environment is acceptable. Conclusion: These definitions give us tools for understanding and discussing the complex, holistic and dynamic aspects of work ability, and they can lay the foundations for the creation of instruments for evaluating work ability, as well as help formulate strategies for rehabilitation. (shrink)

It is a common view that benefits to the worse off should be given priority when health benefits are distributed. This paper addresses how to understand who is worse off in this context when individuals are differently well off at different times. The paper argues that the view that this judgment about who is worse off should be based solely on how well off individuals are when their complete lives are considered (i.e. 'the complete lives view') is implausible in this (...) context. Instead, it is argued that a pluralistic stance toward this issue should be accepted. This pluralistic stance recognizes that also the view that only focuses on how well off individuals are now and in the future (i.e. 'the forward-looking view') is relevant. The argument is based on appeals to intuitive judgments concerning who is worse off in different cases and reference to various underlying reasons why priority to benefits to the worse off is justified. (shrink)

Om spørgsmålet: Hvad er oplysning? af Moses Mendelssohn oversat af Anders Hee Nørbjerg Poulsen.

ArgumentEugenics and race played significant roles in Ukrainian interwar nationalism, yet remain largely unstudied. The Ukrainian nationalists’ understanding of the racial makeup of their imagined community was contradictory as they struggled to reconcile their desire for racial “purity” with the realities of significant variations between the populations inhabiting the enormous territories which they sought to include in their intended state project. The “turn to the right” over the 1930s placed an increased onus on race, and eugenics came to occupy an (...) increasingly prominent place in Ukrainian radical nationalism from around 1936. In 1941, the leading Ukrainian far-right organization, the OUN had developed a project for eugenic engineering, for their aborted state, declared in L’viv on June 30, 1941. Racial conceptualizations of the Ukrainian community figured prominently well into the Cold War era, gaining a new actuality and meaning in an émigré community dispersed across several countries. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical implications of a possible future technology; namely cryonics of embryos/fetuses extracted from the uterus. We argue that more research should be conducted in order to explore the feasibility of such technology. We highlight the advantages that this option would offer; including the foreseeable prevention of a considerable number of abortions.

There is a mistake in the definition of the covering criterion on page 6.

During recent years, there has been a growing awareness that a better understanding of human activities and the behavioural components of environmental problems is needed. This volume brings together psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, historians of technology and economics, and management experts to identify and examine the rules and motives that govern the environmental behaviour of individuals, households, organizations and society as a whole. Illustrated with case studies from Scandinavia, it shows how behaviours with negative or positive environmental effects are often performed (...) without such consequences in mind. The book discusses how change towards positive environmental behaviour often conflicts with deep-rooted habits as well as exploring the importance for environmental practice of different everyday contexts. By presenting this multi-disciplinary analysis, the volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how behavioural change in relation to the environment can come about and how this can be integrated in the political framework. (shrink)

In the course of the nineteenth century the study of literature was professionalized. There was a concerted attempt to make the study of literature an academic pursuit, ‘a particular branch of learning or science’, to turn it into ‘literary studies’ or, as it was called in German, Literaturwissenschaft. 1 This attempt was ultimately successful in the sense that literary studies became a recognized and established discipline within the new Humboldtian kind of university. However, this success brought troubles of its own. (...) Among other things, the arrival of the academic discipline of literary studies not only required a method of study but also a determinate field of study. In order to delimit such a field, a clear and well-defined concept of literature was needed. This meant that academic literary studies would have to transform, for its own specific purposes, such concepts as ‘literary work’ and ‘literary text’ as well as the concept of ‘literature’, from broad, vague, non-theoretical, everyday notions into something like well-designed theoretical tools. Though it has not always been recognized, this transformation has presented a major theoretical problem for literary studies, and it is arguable that to this day no satisfactory solution has been found. (shrink)

Går det an å kunne mer enn man har lært? Finnes det ferdigheter og kompetanser som er generelle? Kategorien «generell kompetanse» i Nasjonalt kvalifikasjonsrammeverk for livslang læring forutsetter at svarene på disse spørsmålene er «ja». I denne artikkelen argumenterer jeg for at svaret ikke er så enkelt.

The article analyses the constitution of subjectivity in Ruben Östlund’s film Force Majeure. At the centre of attention stands the male protagonist who is uncapable of reconciling his inner nature with the external expectations. If the film may be un- derstood as a critique of existing middle-class conventions, it also reproduces a highly conventional ideal of the self-identical subject. The article argues that this confusion or irony is an expression of a Cartesian subject – still prevalent in the film – (...) in crisis. A neglected aspect of Descartes’ theory is that the autonomy of the subjects presupposes the existence of God. The problem for Östlund’s char- acters is that there is no God. Still, they act as if he, or as if any au- thority might, legitimize their subjectivity. Thus, the whole existence becomes a series of performances. The idea of an inner nature cor- responds with the notion of an outer nature. The latter is certainly very present in Force Majeure, but at the same time this nature is constantly problematized. On an allegorical level, the film may thus be read as a comment on the Anthropocene, a state where we no longer know neither what “nature”, nor “culture” is. (shrink)

The paper offers a historical survey of the emergence of logical formalization in twentieth-century analytically oriented philosophy of religion. This development is taken to have passed through three main ?stages?: a pioneering stage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (led by Frege and Russell), a stage of crisis in the 1920s and early 1930s (occasioned by Wittgenstein, logical positivists such as Carnap, and neo-Thomists such as Maritain), and a stage of rehabilitation in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s (led (...) by the Cracow Circle and Quine). (shrink)

The book brings together leading contemporary thinkers of war to outline the aesthetic dimension of warfare across art, technology, and politics.

Volume 24, Issue 7-8, November - December 2019, Page 866-868.