Aulis Aarnio addresses the question of how legal interpretations should be justified. Aarnio considers a justification to be rational only if the justification process has been conducted in a rational way, and if the final result of this process is acceptable to the legal community. According to Aarnio, a theory concerning the justification of legal interpretations should contain a procedural component specifying the conditions of rationality for legal discussions, and a substantial component specifying the material conditions of acceptability for the (...) final result. The procedural component of Aarnio’s theory formulates rules for the rationality of legal discussions. The substantial component specifies when the result of a legal interpretation can be called acceptable. Aarnio considers such a result acceptable if it is acceptable to a particular legal community in which there is consensus with respect to certain norms and values. (shrink)

This paper answers the question how pragmatic argumentation which occurs in a legal context, can be analyzed and evaluated adequately. First, the author surveys various ideas taken from argumentation theory and legal theory on the analysis and evaluation of pragmatic argumentation. Then, on the basis of these ideas, she develops a pragma-dialectical instrument for analyzing and evaluating pragmatic argumentation in a legal context. Finally she demonstrates how this instrument can be used by giving an exemplary analysis and evaluation of pragmatic (...) argumentation in a decision of the Dutch Supreme Court. (shrink)

In this paper, the author develops an instrument for the rational reconstruction of argumentation in which a judicial decision is justified by referring to the consequences in relation to the purpose of the rule. The instrument is developed by integrating insights from legal theory and legal philosophy about the function and use of arguments from consequences in relation to the purpose of a rule into a pragma-dialectical framework. Then, by applying the instrument to the analysis of examples from legal practice, (...) it is demonstrated that the instrument can offer a heuristic and critical tool for the analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation that can ‘bridge’ the gap between more abstract discussions of forms of legal argumentation on the one hand, and legal arguments as they occur in actual legal practice on the other hand. (shrink)

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s ‘The Politics of Life Itself’ there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This article uses what Rose terms ‘molecular politics’, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question ‘What, then, of biopolitics today?’ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. (...) In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that, taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not ‘life itself’ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of governance. (shrink)

In my paper I discuss belonging to a community as a lived experience aiming at interrogating with Hannah Arendt the dynamics of constituting or reshaping communities through action. The ungraspable »we« of communities allows for both constraining narratives and initiating new forms of belonging as a response to the need to belong. Acting together creates communities which can overturn the often painful experience of belonging to unbearable social units.

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

Given the predominance of multilingualism in many countries there is great need for a new, interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Sociolinguistics—or the sociology of language—provides such an approach and can help to shed new light on a phenomenon which is often discussed in terms that tend to create more problems than they solve. In order to demonstrate how sociolinguistic theory and practice can contribute to the study of multilingualism this paper will attempt to outline briefly some of the basic premises (...) of sociolinguistic theory which appear relevant to the understanding of the phenomenon of multilingualism and also to define multilingualism as a social behaviour in response to a contact situation. (shrink)

In this essay, some approaches towards the interpretation of language in the early thought of Heidegger are discussed, especially in Being and Time. Heidegger’s language can be understood by pointing out that he saw life as the main interest of philosophy, and questioned philosophy with regard to how it can determine itself. In contrast to Heidegger’s later writings, language is not the primary issue of discussion in the earlier period of his thinking. Therefore, different approaches to language need to be (...) taken. Language can be understood by following the existential analysis of Dasein , namely the interpretation of Rede . Further, the interpretations of Heidegger on Aristotle need to be discussed. As the Greeks had no word for language, the misleading interpretations of logos, dominating the history of philosophy, had an influence on the theory of language. Finally, taking account of prudence as a way to discover beings, another view on language can be found. In this approach to an understanding of language in the early thought of Heidegger, the manner of thinking about language is different to later approaches through poetry. There are traces of thinking about language in Being and Time and Heidegger’s earlier lectures. However, first of all, they have to be found. (shrink)

Without joint action, man's cultural, scientific and everyday achievements would be unthinkable. What special cognitive abilities make it possible for this to happen so often and in so many ways? Dancing, waging war, building a castle together in the sandbox - joint action is a central component of everyday life and the success of mankind. This ability is based on special socio-cognitive abilities, the scope and interplay of which characterize the human species. Literature often focuses on the large and complex (...) forms of joint action. This book represents an attempt to present a philosophical reconstruction of joint action through an interdisciplinary investigation of small forms with few actors. This is suitable for explaining the behavior of children and adults, as well as for taking into account empirical results from related disciplines, especially developmental psychology. (shrink)

« Le vieil original si intelligent, si fou » que Marcel Proust évoque à travers les autoportraits de Chardin, s'est-il dépeint lui-même sous le masque projectif du sage, dans l'un de ses tableaux les plus célèbres, le Philosophe du Louvre? Le maître de la nature morte, voulant s'élever dans la hiérarchie des rangs de I' Académie, a semble-t-il cherché, dans cette oeuvre de jeunesse, à suppléer à « son défaut d'instruction» dans «les humanités», par la représentation d'un personnage au goût (...) du jour, d'un moderne philosophe. Philosophe, Chimiste dans son laboratoire, Souffleur ou Philosophe occupé de sa lecture, le tableau du Louvre (1734) est-il un emblème? L'hypothèse retenue, que cette peinture donne figure à un philosophe chimiste et non à un charlatan ou à un alchimiste, se construit sur le rapprochement du tableau et du libelle anonyme intitulé Philosophe, mis en circulation d'après Voltaire dans les années 1730. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century fuelled heated debates about the nature and perception of spirits appearing to people. According to Protestant theology, apparitions of spirits were not souls of the dead but either diabolical illusions, natural phenomena, or ‘mere fantasies’ of a deluded mind. Swiss church minister Louis Lavater (1527–1586) emphasized that particularly melancholic people were prone to devilish deceits and thus inclined to imagine ghosts and other spirits. This paper traces the close connection between early modern (...) concepts of melancholy, imagination, and discourses on ghosts in then-normative perspectives before contrasting theological ideals and legal arguments raised in a 1681 Basel trial featuring an allegedly melancholic woman implicated in necromancy. This paper argues that scholarly discussions about imagination and melancholy regarding ghosts in Post-Reformation Switzerland were less concerned with ontological questions about the reality of ghostly phenomena than with possible sinful interactions with ghost, which in turn mirrored ideas about diabolical temptation. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 4, Page 43-57, December 2011.

Marx’s Eurocentrism : Postcolonial Studies and Marx Scholarship. This article takes as its starting-point the fourfold concept of Eurocentrism developed in postcolonial studies and global history. Against this backdrop, it traces the treatment of non-Western societies throughout Marx’s work. His 1853 articles on India are shown to be Eurocentric in every respect. They are partly based on a travel narrative written by François Bernier. Bernier’s text is analyzed in some detail as one of Marx’s sources. Marx’s treatment of the 1857-59 (...) Indian rebellions also displays Eurocentric traits. However his writings on British colonialism in Ireland begin to break with the Eurocentric mould. The Marxian critique of political economy is, in contrast, saturated with Orientalist motifs. The late work is however quite different in this respect. Both in the excerpts from his readings from 1879 on and in his discussions with the Russian Social Revolutionaries, it is evident that Marx breaks with Eurocentrism. The development of Marx’s thought thus shows that the somewhat hasty dismissal which he is frequently subjected to in postcolonial studies is, in many cases, inadequately thought out. The fact remains however that Marxists striving to apprehend global capitalism, historical progress and contingent development have something to learn from postcolonial studies. (shrink)

In this paper, I am arguing for hermeneutic responsibility in political judgment, as it can be attributed to Arendt’s work. Political judgment is reflective judgment relying on representation by imagination and therefore only has exemplary validity. Along the line of Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, I point out her argument for a different generality in politics than the generality of concepts. This generality of political judgment always refers back to the particular. Only by this reference to the particular, namely (...) to facts and situations of direct interaction, can the spectator, who undertakes the political judgment, create the public realm where action takes place. However, this task attributed to the spectator also implies the task of reshaping the public realm. These acts of giving an account of and reconsidering all over again facts handed over by narration and testimony imply the hermeneutic responsibility to unceasingly retrieve factual truth which is rooted in direct interaction. (shrink)

LS Penrose was the first to propose a measure of voting power (which later came to be known as ‘the [absolute] Banzhaf index’). His limit theorem – which is implicit in Penrose (1952) and for which he gave no rigorous proof – says that, in simple weighted voting games, if the number of voters increases indefinitely while the quota is pegged at half the total weight, then – under certain conditions – the ratio between the voting powers (as measured by (...) him) of any two voters converges to the ratio between their weights. We conjecture that the theorem holds, under rather general conditions, for large classes of variously defined weighted voting games, other values of the quota, and other measures of voting power. We provide proofs for some special cases. (shrink)

The text sets out from a fourfold concept of Eurocentrism developed in postcolonial studies and global history. Against this backdrop, it traces the treatment of non-Western societies throughout Marx's work. His 1853 articles on India are shown to be Eurocentric in every respect. They are partially based on a travel narrative by François Bernier. Bernier's text is analyzed in some detail as one of Marx's sources. Marx's treatment of the 1857-59 Indian rebellions also displays Eurocentric features. His writings on British (...) colonialism, in Ireland, however, begin to break with the Eurocentric mold. The Marxian critique of political economy, in contrast, teems with Orientalist motifs. Marx's late work is quite different in this respect: in the excerpts from his reading that he made from 1879 on, as well as in his discussions with the Russian Social Revolutionaries, he breaks with Eurocentrism. The development of Marx's thought shows that the hasty dismissal of him often observed in postcolonial studies is not carefully thought out. Yet the fact remains that Marxists who attempt to think global capitalism, historical progress and contingent development have something to learn from postcolonial studies. (shrink)

At the dawn of the Upper Palaeolithic era around 45,000 BP, Homo sapiens migrated into Europe. This process was accompanied by the extinction of Neanderthals, which has led many to believe that this species was cognitively and behaviorally inferior to anatomically modern humans. In recent years, however, this view has been challenged. This paper focuses on art and aesthetic practices among Neanderthals, as one of the exponents of modernity. It explores to what extent central cognitivist accounts of differences with Homo (...) sapiens are supported by both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence. The commonly cited cognitive capacity for symbolism may be less crucial for art than hitherto assumed, and several other variables, such as demography and ecology, adapt the mainstream idea that the crucial difference between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans is of a cognitive nature. As such, Neanderthals may have been artists as well, challenging longstanding ideas about the uniqueness of our species. (shrink)

In this contribution I characterize the role of the judge in the context of the argumentative activity of legal proceeding. I describe the role of the judge from a pragma-dialectical perspective and explain in which way this role promotes a rational resolution of the dispute. I specify how a critical discussion in accordance with the ideal model is implemented in legal procedure to accomplish the institutional point, a resolution of the dispute in accordance with the Rule of Law.

Within the genres of news and current affairs television, it is the generic logic of the ‘feelgood’ genre of the talk show that legitimizes personalized discourse between famous hosts and politicians. The article presents a case study of such an interview, focusing on the ways in which the interaction between the verbal, the visual and the rhythmic modalities of the interview is employed by the multiple authors of the text to construct a variety of interpersonal footings for interviewer and interviewee (...) on the one hand and a series of preferred interpretations for the audience on the other. The method is deviant case analysis, using tools from semantics and pragmatics, discourse and conversation analysis, and visual analysis of news images. To explore the manner of interaction between the verbal and visual channel, the concept of rhythm is developed for dialogic audiovisual texts. Dialogic audiovisual rhythm is defined as arising from the interaction of speaker or addressee change with onset of new shot, and with frequency of shots per turn/ generic unit of the interview. Rhythmic sequences can then be segmented which make up the textual structure of the interview, delineating its semantic units and areas of strategic positioning between the private, the personal and the political. Three types of the personalization of politics can be discerned in the text: that of the private domain, that of political relations as private ones, and that of politics as history being made by great men. A forth type of personalization is that of the relations between the media and politics. Different combinations of verbal, visual and rhythmic means are used to realize these types discursively. (shrink)

In general, analyses of voting power are performed through the notion of a simple voting game (SVG) in which every voter can choose between two options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Felsenthal and Machover [Felsenthal, D.S. and Machover, M. (1997), International Journal of Game Theory 26, 335–351.] introduced the concept of ternary voting games (TVGs) which recognizes abstention alongside. They derive appropriate generalizations of the Shapley–Shubik and Banzhaf indices in TVGs. Braham and Steffen [Braham, M. and Steffen, F. (2002), in Holler, et (...) al. (eds.), Power and Fairness, Jahrbuch für Neue Politische Ökonomie 20, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 333–348.] argued that the decision-making structure of a TVG may not be justified. They propose a sequential structure in which voters first decide between participation and abstention and then between ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, we compare the two approaches and show how the probabilistic interpretation of power provides a unifying characterization of analogues of the Banzhaf (Bz) measure. Second, using the probabilistic approach we shall prove a special case of Penrose’s Limit Theorem (PLT). This theorem deals with an asymptotic property in weighted voting games with an increasing number of voters. It says that under certain conditions the ratio between the voting power of any two voters (according to various measures of voting power) approaches the ratio between their weights. We show that PLT holds in TVGs for analogues of Bz measures, irrespective of the particular nature of abstention. (shrink)

Numerical magnitude information is assumed to be spatially represented in the form of a mental number line defined with respect to a body-centred, egocentric frame of reference. In this context, spatial language skills such as mastery of verbal descriptions of spatial position have been proposed to be relevant for grasping spatial relations between numerical magnitudes on the mental number line. We examined 4- to 5-year-old’s spatial language skills in tasks that allow responses in egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, as (...) well as their relative understanding of numerical magnitude. In addition, we evaluated influences of children’s absolute understanding of numerical magnitude assessed by their number word comprehension and of their knowledge on numerical sequences. Results indicated that when considering responses that corresponded to the egocentric perspective, children’s spatial language was associated significantly with their relative numerical magnitude understanding, even after controlling for covariates, such as children’s SES, mental rotation skills, and also absolute magnitude understanding or knowledge on numerical sequences. This suggests that the use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language may facilitate spatial representation of numbers along a mental number line and thus seem important for preschoolers’ relative understanding of numerical magnitude. (shrink)