In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Love of Country and Love of God: The Political Uses of Religion in MachiavelliBenedetto Fontana*This paper will discuss the place of religion in Machiavelli’s thought. 1 The traditional and generally accepted interpretation presents Machiavelli’s religion as a belief system whose value is determined by its functional utility to the state. In this he is said to resemble Cicero, 2 Montesquieu, 3 and Tocqueville, 4 among others. This view (...) is based on the proposition—one that is now fundamental to a modern understanding of Machiavelli—that his political theory develops a politics without moral, theological, and religious foundations (what Benedetto Croce 5 calls the “autonomy of politics” and Sheldon Wolin 6 the “autonomy of political theory”). Students of Machiavelli who ascribe to him an instrumentalist theory of religion rest their interpretation on this conception of politics: a distinction is established between religion viewed as religio, and religion conceived as fides, where the former is used to develop and cement social bonds and the latter is a faith based on a transcendent “truth.”A reading of the texts shows that Machiavelli discusses various kinds of religion. He refers, for example, to multiple forms of Christianity, such as “primitive” [End Page 639] or original Christianity, 7 official, medieval Christianity, the ecclesiastical principality of the papacy, as well as to ancient Judaism, 8 paganism, and to Islam. 9 However, it is possible to discern in Machiavelli two principal or distinctive types. One is based on the opposition Machiavelli sees between the religion of the Romans (which instills virtù) and the religion of the post-classical and post-Roman Christian world (which teaches humility and passivity). The other is prophetic religion, in which Machiavelli contrasts the prophet armed to the prophet unarmed. Thus, we have prophetic religion and non-prophetic religion; the former is either armed or unarmed, and the latter is either immanent (natural) or transcendent. 10Machiavelli’s stress on the importance of virtù (whether of the prince or of the people) suggests that religion is not simply religio—that is, a political technique to rule and to control the masses. Rather, it presupposes a concern for a moral fides which, though certainly not transcendent, is nevertheless necessary to the construction of a political order based on virtù. His concern with civil and military virtue links the armed prophetic religion with that of the ancient Romans, such that ancient Judaism, Islam, and a reformed Christianity (a kind of Lutheranism ante litteram) all stand opposed to primitive and post-classical Christianity.Machiavelli anticipates in theory the national, anti-papal, and anti-imperial movements that were later realized in history by the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations. He attempts to infuse the corrupt and decadent Christian conception of the world with a new, innovating spirit, one opposed to the prevailing medieval and scholastic conception of the world. In the past Christian philosophers and thinkers revised the classical notions of virtus and arete, transforming them into Christian concepts of value. Machiavelli attempts a similar “transvaluation of values” (Nietzsche), but for different ends and in a different direction: he reinterprets the Christian religion in order to assimilate it into his conception of virtù and his vision of a vivere civile.In the first part of this paper the relation Machiavelli establishes between “speaking with God” and the founding and/or reforming of states is explored. Parallels between Christian and pre-Christian (pagan and biblical) rulers reveal a basic ambiguity in Machiavelli’s belief that religion—that is, the claim of having spoken with God—is necessary to effective rule. In the second part [End Page 640] Machiavelli’s teaching (“new ways and methods”) is compared to Christ’s message of the “good news.” The contrast between the two is presented in terms of an opposition between different “ways of living,” each with its specific moral claims and political consequences. The opposition is not, the section argues, between logos and kratos, ethos and kratos, but rather between diverse ways of understanding logos and ethos. The final section argues that Machiavelli uses biblical, pagan, and Christian forms of religious symbols and metaphors in order to reevaluate the concepts of patria and amore. In so doing... (shrink)

Local supplier corporate social responsibility in developing countries represents a powerful tool to improve labour conditions. This paper pursues an inter-organizational network approach to the global value chain literature to understand the influence of suppliers’ collective behaviour on their CSR engagement. This exploratory study of 30 export-oriented and first-tier apparel suppliers in Bangladesh, a developing country, makes three relevant contributions to GVC scholarship. First, we show that suppliers are interlinked in a horizontal network that restricts unilateral CSR engagement. This is (...) justified in that unilateral CSR engagement is a source of heterogeneity in labour practices; consequently, it triggers worker unrest. Second, we present and discuss an exploratory framework based on four scenarios of how suppliers currently engage in CSR given their network’s pressure toward collective behaviour: unofficial CSR engagement, geographic isolation, size and competitive differentiation, and external pressure. Finally, we show the need to spread CSR homogeneously among suppliers and to reconceptualize the meaning of CSR in developing countries, encouraging more scrutiny toward horizontal dynamics. (shrink)

À partir d’une analyse de la matérialité linguistique, cet article explore les processus de subjectivation et d’identification qui constituent le(s) sujet(s) des différentes pratiques urbaines, par rapport à l’espace de la rue et dans le cadre de disputes visant à l’affirmation d’identités socialement légitimées. Le corpus constitué pour ma recherche est de nature hétérogène, aussi bien dans sa matérialité symbolique que du point de vue de son inscription institutionnelle et de sa circulation sociale.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Victorian DoorsErnest L. FontanaILet us begin with a simple observation. If we confine ourselves to mid- and late-nineteenth Anglophone (Victorian) poetry that employs traditional verse stanzas or rooms, it is perhaps not surprising that a line terminating with door most often rhymes with more, particularly as more is found in such locutions as no more or evermore.1 For example, in the work of Emily Dickinson, door rhymes with a (...) more phoneme in 14 of 20 instances. What is of special interest, and the focus of this essay, is the use of door as a rhymed word at the end or near the end of a poem. Of related but secondary interest is its appearance as a rhymed word at the end of an intermediate stanza. Since more signifies a quantitative concept, the frequent use of it to rhyme with door suggests that the designated door often demarcates a site of transition from a state that is quantitatively different (most often less) from the state to which one passes through the door. This imagined other state often involves quantities of time as in the frequent use of no more and evermore. In the first instance the time imagined is completely negated, in the second it is affirmed as a perpetual duration. Poe acknowledged the significance of the door/evermore rhyme in the "The Raven" in which this rhyme occurs at the end of 5 of its 18 stanzas.2 Thus this common English rhyme of door and more requires a signification of transition from one state to another that differ from each other in quantity. Often, particularly in Dickinson, the other state lies beyond the walled or enclosed room of [End Page 277] the self. My essay raises the question of whether without this accidental acoustical concurrence in English, the signification in Anglophone poetry of an implied transition from certain quotidian or phenomenal states to certain visionary or noumenal states would be as frequent or so easily rendered. Does this accidental rhyme in fact generate certain significations or metaphors?3I shall begin my demonstration with what I believe are telling examples of doors as a closural effect of both poems and stanzas.4 In the second, revised version of Hopkins's sonnet "In honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez: Laybrother of the Society of Jesus," written in Dublin in 1888, the concluding sestet of this Italian sonnet ends with door.Yet God (that hews mountain and continent, Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment, Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more) Could crowd career with conquest while there went Those years and years by of world without event That in Majorca Alphonso watched the door.5The sonnet is built on the contrast between honor that is "flashed off exploit," the highly visible exploits of the early Jesuit martyrs and missionaries, with the "Unseen," apparently un-heroic life of the obscure Spanish Jesuit laybrother and hall porter, whose war was "within." While God, through his Jesuit martyrs, "could crown [His] career with conquest," Alphonsus's life passed "without event" as he "watched the door." Hopkins's rhymes his terminal door with the more that results from the silent "trickling increment" of God's ongoing creative act. The foregrounded closural door of the poem becomes, through its position and rhyme, a metaphor for a passage to the abundance resulting from God's creative action, a quantification that extends beyond the perceptible world.Alphonsus is the guardian of the passage to this abundance, one that is subtly implied by the more/door rhyme. The sonnet ends with the reader and Alphonsus positioned on the threshold of an unnamable abundance that is signified by the silence and blank space that follows upon this terminal door. In Browning's "A Lovers' Quarrel," from Men and Women (1855), the male speaker recalls, during the advent of an Italian spring, the amatory intimacies he and his beloved shared during the past winter in their Tuscan farmhouse: "'Twas a time when the heart could shew / All'" (ll. 75–76).6 But the amatory union of the [End Page 278] two lovers has been ruptured by an unidentified, chance "hasty word" spoken... (shrink)

A cultura humana envolve uma rede complexa de dinâmicas e de trocas simbólicas. Entre as perspectivas teóricas que propiciam perscrutar liames dessas dinâmicas, possibilitando vislumbrar horizontes de tendências de novos paradigmas que se engendram nas fronteiras móveis de formas de representação da vida humana, entendemos que os Estudos Comparados de Literatura, por sua natureza interdisciplinar, possibilitam canais de comunicação entre várias disciplinas e áreas do conhecimento. Como espaço de reflexão, a perspectiva contemporânea desses estudos vem encorajando a tomada de consciência (...) da capacidade de a literatura ser uma forma de conhecimento da realidade e, por isso mesmo, encoraja a tomada de consciência do caráter pluralista que envolve o fenômeno literário, possibilitando relações interculturais, interdiscursivas e intersemióticas. O presente estudo com base nesses pressupostos, propõe, pelo diálogo possível entre a Literatura e a Antropologia, uma leitura da obra Onde a onça bebe água, tendo as representações presentes nas cosmologias amazônicas, como ponto de discussão e intercâmbio. Para tanto, serão utilizados estudos do antropólogo brasileiro Eduardo Viveiros de Castro e a produção literária que executa em parceria com Verônica Stigger. (shrink)

Nesse trabalho apresentamos os resultados obtidos na pesquisa “A centralidade da Matemática no currículo: um estudo sobre as origens a partir da paideia platônica”. Partimos do estudo bibliográfico da paideia platônica, com o objetivo de demonstrar que a Matemática é central no sistema educacional platônico na medida em que possui a função de instrumentalizar o pensamento e formar homens aptos a guiarem-se pela razão em todos os aspectos da vida. Caberia à Matemática, dada sua dificuldade, o papelde selecionar os homens (...) mais capacitados racionalmente para seguir os estudos de Filosofia e, posteriormente, tornarem-se os governantes. Seguimos com a etapa empírica da pesquisa, com a qual buscamos demonstrar que existe na contemporaneidade a permanência de uma herança platônica em relação ao papel central da matemática no currículo e ao papel que ela ocupa em selecionar aqueles que podem dar continuidade aos estudos. (shrink)

Les sœurs Papin, auteures d’un fait divers tragique qui a sidéré la France en 1933, ont inspiré, voire fasciné, hommes de lettres, cinéastes, psychanalystes. Christine et Léa Papin seraient dépositaires des traumatismes familiaux inter et transgénérationnels non transformés et clivés. Séparées dans la petite enfance, placées par leur mère comme domestiques chez la famille Lancelin, elles reproduiraient entre elles le lien d’interdépendance symbiotique instaurée auparavant avec elle. Le retour du vécu traumatique clivé et l’ébranlement de la symbiose consécutif à la (...) rupture d’avec celle-ci seraient à l’origine du passage à l’acte criminel sauvage perpétré par les sœurs sur leurs patronnes. (shrink)

Montaigne est souvent présenté comme un défenseur inconditionnel de la liberté de conscience et de la tolérance, mais cette vision est simplificatrice. À une époque déchirée par les guerres de religion, Montaigne envisage la tolérance religieuse dans une perspective qui privilégie la pratique politique plutôt que les questions de principe. Le caractère largement insaisissable des croyances humaines rend la notion de liberté de conscience presque impossible à définir, et Montaigne ne s’y essaie pas même dans le chapitre des Essais pourtant (...) intitulé « De la liberté de conscience » (II, 19). La question de la tolérance religieuse relève de la « politique », en un sens non opportuniste du terme. (shrink)

This creative intervention draws on our recent work investigating the lived experiences of poor rural communities in Bolivia’s Chiquitania, a region deeply affected by wildfires in recent years. We share learning and materials from our project, Playing with Fire, situated at the interface of and combining Boal’s model of Forum Theatre and social science research. The aim and hope of the project were to use Forum Theatre to open up space for dialogue on the complex and entangled gendered, social and (...) cultural politics of wildfires. (shrink)

Considering the challenges posed by populism and religiously motivated political engagement to liberal democracies, the present study sets out to examine, specifically, the role played by Pentecostal actors in the conflictive rearrangement of the democratic game in Brazil and worldwide. The engagement of Pentecostals in Brazil’s 2018 general election represented a milestone in that regard and constitutes, thus, the main focus of the present investigation. Given the novelty and nature of both phenomena in question, viz. Pentecostal political engagement and the (...) crisis of democracy, the analysis is carried out, methodologically, from a descriptive, theoretical vantage point, rather than a normative one. To that purpose, the study builds on Manow’s recent work on the current crisis of democracy so as to shed new light on this issue and engages with scholarly studies of Pentecostal political engagement in Brazil and Nigeria alike, where similar developments may be observed, thereby placing this predicament in a global perspective. The role played by Pentecostals can best be described as ambivalent, as, on the one hand, they contributed largely to democratizing contemporary democracies and, on the other, they played a significant part in undermining the very foundations of liberal democracies. (shrink)

The Herodotean passage (8. 73. 3), where the historian describes the people dwelling in the Peloponnese and their ethnicity, raises a textual problem: the ethnic Ὀρνεῆται is inconsistent with the passage and modern scholars have suggested several solutions either for an emendation of the text or for an alternative exegesis of the term. This paper discusses the previous proposals and offers a new emendation based on a passage from Pausanias.

The editors of the recently published English translation of Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone—the philosophical and philological commentary/notebook begun in the summer of 1817, when he was 19 years of age, and abandoned in the winter of 1832, four years before his death in Naples—note that for the first time, in his entry on April 20, 1821, Leopardi supplements the date of the secular calendar with a Roman Catholic festival, such as Good Friday.1 Leopardi’s references to the Catholic calendar increase in early (...) 1822 and continue with greater frequency until the reference to Holy Week 1829. These cited festivals range from major holidays, such as Christmas and Easter (Z 4254.. (shrink)

Taking advantage of economic opportunities has led to numerous conflicts between society and business in various geographies of the world. Companies have developed social responsibility programs to prevent and manage these types of problems. However, some authors comment that these programs lack a strategic vision. Starting with the Working with People model, created for the field of rural development planning, this paper proposes a methodology to prevent the generation of social conflicts from business strategy: the territorial dimension. The proposal emphasizes (...) that local development support prevents the generation of social conflicts. Finally, an experience in Peru, a country that has been characterized in recent years by high economic growth and also by the presence of social conflicts that have stopped entrepreneurship is analyzed. (shrink)

This book explores the sources of modern British liberalism through a study of the Edinburgh Review, the most influential and controversial early nineteenth-century British periodical. Founded by a group of young Scottish intellectuals in 1802, the Review served as a principal channel through which the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment gained wider currency, and did much to popularize the doctrines of economic and political reform. As Dr Fontana shows in this lucid and keen analysis, the first thirty years in (...) the life of the Review clearly display the new social and economic problems confronting European society in the aftermath of the French Revolution. (shrink)

This essay examines the place of Sallust in Machiavelli's political theory. Such an examination is necessary and fruitful for two basic reasons. First, the interpretative and secondary literature on Machiavelli's classical sources has neglected, with very few exceptions, the influence and role Sallust may have played in the formulation of Machiavelli's thinking. Second, the essay argues that Sallust is important to Machiavelli's attempt to recover republican liberty. At the core of Machiavelli's project to discover 'new modes and orders' is the (...) fundamental Roman republican antithesis between libertas and dominatio. The very critique of dominatio presupposes a conception of libertas without which such a critique would be impossible. Sallust is a useful source for Machiavelli's inquiry into the political, social and military determinants foRA vivere libero e civile. Elements of such a political life are prefigured in Sallust's conception of republican politics, where 'cives cum civibus de virtute certabant' -- that is, where robust competition and healthy conflict express the virtus and the bonae artes of the body politic. In effect, Sallust is important to Machiavelli both as a historian who provides a useful critique of monarchy and despotism, and as a source through which Machiavelli is able to develop his conception of politics in general, and of republican politics in particular. (shrink)

The folding of RNA sequences into secondary structures is a simple yet biophysically grounded model of a genotype–phenotype map. Its computational and mathematical analysis has uncovered a surprisingly rich statistical structure characterized by shape space covering, neutral networks and plastogenetic congruence. I review these concepts and discuss their evolutionary implications. BioEssays 24:1164–1177, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc.