Prioritarianism pertains to the generic idea that it matters more to benefit people, the worse off they are, and while prioritarianism is not uncontroversial, it is considered a generally plausible and widely shared distributive principle often applied to healthcare prioritisation. In this paper, I identify social justice prioritarianism, severity prioritarianism and age-weighted prioritarianism as three different interpretations of the general prioritarian idea and discuss them in light of the effect of pandemic consequences on healthcare priority setting. On this analysis, the (...) paper arrives at the following three conclusions: that we have strong prioritarian reasons for special concern about the vulnerable and socially disadvantaged in reference to pandemic effects, that severity of illness is an important factor in identifying the worse off in priority setting but that this must not over-ride the special priority to the socially disadvantaged and that the maximisation rationale of the age-weighted view runs against the core prioritarian idea, and the age-weighted prioritarianism is thus unfitting as a prioritarian response to the COVID-19 case. (shrink)

In this article, I take Habermas's treatment of civil disobedience as a litmus test of the way in which Habermas relates to the imperfectness of democracy. The case of civil disobedience, which Habermas deems to be a normal part of a mature constitutional democracy, shows that Habermas is ultimately unable to submit all decisions and distinctions to the public use of reason as envisaged in his deliberative account of democracy. As a consequence, I argue that we must take the imperfectness (...) of democracy as constitutive and our conceptualization of civil disobedience and democracy must start from there. The reading of Habermas and the argument for an alternative approach are inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, central to which is an idea of democracy and justice ‘to-come’ focusing our attention on the performative role of civil disobedience in creating more legitimate laws. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau introduced the category of heterogeneity into his theory of hegemony in the late 1990s. He did so as a way to capture the limits of representation, and the argument was fully developed in On Populist Reason in 2005. The chapter argues that heterogeneity should be a central category of hegemony and discourse analysis, and that antagonism can be seen as a strategy of ideological closure that suppresses heterogeneity. I show the limitations of Laclau’s concept of antagonism, and how (...) antagonism must be relativized. I then turn to examine the concept of heterogeneity. I end by discussing the usefulness of the category of heterogeneity in the wider context of how to do discourse theory and how to conceptualize the limits of representation. (shrink)

Many consider play a natural part of childhood, and although there is disagreement in the literature on what essentially defines “play” in childhood, philosophical theories of play tend to support this initial consideration. But is childhood play also something we owe each other within a framework of educational justice? This is a question yet to be addressed. In this paper, I answer this question affirmatively. I take off from a generic account of educational justice and argue that childhood play should (...) be considered a central entitlement of this account. I then argue in line with the capability approach that if we ought to protect childhood play, it should be children’s capability for play rather than the functioning of play that needs protection. I end by offering an account of the capability for childhood play. (shrink)

Age rationing is a central issue in the health care priority‐setting literature, but it has become ever more salient in the light of the Covid‐19 outbreak, where health authorities in several countries have given higher priority to younger over older patients. But how is age rationing different under outbreak circumstances than under normal circumstances, and what does this difference imply for ethical theories? This is the topic of this paper. The paper argues that outbreaks such as that of Covid‐19 involve (...) special circumstances that change how age should influence our prioritization decisions, and that while this shift in circumstances poses a problem for consequentialist views such as utilitarianism and age‐weighted consequentialism, contractualism is better equipped to cope with it. The paper then offers a contractualist prudential account of age rationing under outbreak circumstances. (shrink)

This is the first book to consider the debate between two of the most prominent philosophers and social theorists of the 20th century: Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas. It presents a unique collection of articles by the two figures and by those who have written about them, and includes pieces published in English for the first time.The book will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in the implications of Derrida's deconstruction and Habermas's critical theory for issues (...) such as international relations, Europe, tolerance, rights, multiculturalism and identity politics, and the nature of philosophy.Including an introduction to the differences and affinities between Derrida's and Habermas's works, introductions to each text, suggestions for further reading, and a bibliography, this book is the ideal starting point for students and scholars wishing to understand the relationship between these two great thinkers.Key Features: *Unique - the first Reader to consider the Habermas-Derrida debate*Features pieces by Habermas and Derrida published in English for the first time*Includes primary and secondary texts*Provides introductions to the debate and to each text, and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Introduction -- Towards a critical theory of society -- The public sphere -- Communicative action and reason -- Discourse ethics -- Deliberative democracy -- The new political constellation.

In this paper, I ask what is wrong with sufficiency. I formulate a generic sufficiency principle in relation to which I discuss possible problems for sufficientarianism. I argue against the arbitrariness–concern, that sufficiency theory need only to identify a possible space for determining a plausible threshold, and I argue against the high–low threshold dilemma concern, that multiple-threshold views can solve this dilemma. I then distinguish between currency-pluralist and currency-monist multiple-threshold views and test them against two different versions of the widely (...) shared ‘ignorance of inequality objection’ to sufficientarianism—a benefit-driven and a burden-driven version. I argue that currency-pluralist sufficiency views are better capable of responding to the former than currency-monist views. However, I show that no existing sufficiency view can provide a plausible response to the burden-driven version. Hence, I conclude that the problem of unequal distribution of burdens above the thresholds represents an overlooked threat to the sufficiency view, in any version. (shrink)

The taste for classical art that induced museums in the West to acquire masterpieces from ancient Greece and Rome for their collections was stimulated largely by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In the past decade, a number of articles have claimed that Winckelmann’s glorification of marble statues representing the white, male body promotes notions of white supremacy. The present article challenges this view by examining theories prevalent in the eighteenth century that affected Winckelmann’s views on race. Through an examination (...) of different types of classicism, the article also seeks to demonstrate that Winckelmann’s aesthetics were opposed to the eclectic use of ancient models typical of the fascist regimes of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper explores the role individual responsibility plays in contemporary political theory. It argues that the standard luck egalitarian view—the view according to which distributive justice is ensured by holding people accountable for their exercise of responsibility in the distribution of benefits and burdens—obscures the more fundamental value of being responsible. The paper, then, introduces an account of ‘self-creative responsibility’ as an alternative to the standard view and shows how central elements on which this account is founded has been prominently (...) defended in the history of Western political thought but are comparatively neglected in contemporary political theory. Relying on this account, the paper argues that society should hold persons responsible when, and only when, doing so enables them to lead responsible lives, and only on the condition that doing so does not infringe other persons’ equivalently valuable ability to lead responsible lives. The account of self-creative responsibility, the paper concludes, plausibly captures the intuitive attraction of holding responsible while respecting the value of being responsible. (shrink)

Setting out to defend luck egalitarianism in matters of justice in health, Shlomi Segall outlines a pluralistic version of the luck egalitarian framework allowing egalitarian justice to be traded-off against other moral requirements. The suggested pluralism enables luck egalitarian justice to coexist with a concern for meeting everyone’s basic needs thereby avoiding Elizabeth Anderson’s ‘abandonment objection’. In this article, however, we present three objections to Segall’s luck egalitarian justice in health. Firstly, the account is vulnerable to the common objection that (...) luck egalitarianism becomes too expansive, and that Segall’s defence against this is inadequate. Secondly, Segall’s pluralist attempt to balance luck egalitarian justice and other moral requirements ends up compromising its own ideal of justice. Due to the fact that resource scarcity is the reality of health and health care distribution, this problem would often arise in actual health policy. Finally, the account has a way of intensifying blameworthy behaviour which seems contrary to luck egalitarian principles. Based on these three objections, we conclude that Segall’s luck egalitarian account of justice in health must either be rejected or qualified further. (shrink)

A comprehensive understanding of the ethics of the COVID-19 pandemic priorities must be sensitive to the influence of social inequality. We distinguish between ex-ante and ex-post relevance of social inequality for COVID-19 disadvantage. Ex-ante relevance refers to the distribution of risks of exposure. Ex-post relevance refers to the effect of inequality on how patients respond to infection. In the case of COVID-19, both ex-ante and ex-post effects suggest a distribution which is sensitive to the prevalence social inequality. On this basis, (...) we provide a generic fairness argument for the claim that welfare states ought to favour a healthcare priority scheme that gives particular weight to protecting the socially disadvantaged. (shrink)

Telic sufficientarianism is the view that it is better, other things equal, if people are lifted above some sufficiency threshold of special moral importance. In a recent contribution, Shlomi Segall has raised the following objection to this position: The telic ideal of sufficiency can neither be grounded on any personal value, nor any impersonal value. Consequently, sufficientarianism is groundless. This article contains a rejoinder to this critique. Its main claim is that the value of autonomy holds strong potential for grounding (...) sufficiency. It argues, firstly, that autonomy carries both personal value for its recipient as well as impersonal value, and that both of these values are suitable for grounding sufficiency. It thus follows that we should reject both and. Secondly, although autonomy is presumably the strongest candidate for grounding sufficiency, the article provides some counterargument to Segall's rejection of the other candidates — the impersonal value of virtue; the personal value for the allocator; and the personal value for others. If the arguments are sound, they show that we need not worry about sufficientarianism being groundless. (shrink)

In recent works, Shlomi Segall suggests and defends a luck egalitarian approach to justice in health. Concurring with G. A. Cohen’s mature position he defends the idea that people should be compensated for “brute luck”, i.e. the outcome of actions that it would be unreasonable to expect them to avoid. In his defense of the luck egalitarian approach he seeks to rebut the criticism raised by Norman Daniels that luck egalitarianism is in some way too narrow and in another too (...) wide to uphold justice in health and health care distribution. He points out that a pluralistic outline of luck egalitarianism taking into account the moral requirement of meeting everyone’s basic needs can avoid this line of criticism. In this article I argue against the application of such pluralistic luck egalitarianism in matters of health distribution. First of all, Segall has not shown that luck egalitarianism handles well health distributions above a threshold of basic needs. Secondly, his way of avoiding Elizabeth Anderson’s abandonment objection is theoretically problematic. Finally, I argue that luck egalitarianism in general fails to acknowledge the moral foundation of health and health care as a basic human entitlement. Thus I conclude that luck egalitarianism fails to take health needs seriously and that it cannot therefore uphold justice in health. (shrink)

The concepts of adaptation and fitness have such an appeal that they have been used in other scientific domains, including the social sciences. One particular aspect of this theory transfer concerns the so-called fitness landscape models. At first sight, fitness landscapes visualize how an agent, of any kind, relates to its environment, how its position is conditional because of the mutual interaction with other agents, and the potential routes towards improved fitness. The allure of fitness landscapes is first and foremost (...) that it represents a complex story about adaptation and fitness in one coherent image. Different accounts of fitness landscapes in different domains in the social sciences suggest that the properties and functions of fitness landscapes are attributed rather freely. These differences are testimony of the model’s versatility. At the same time, one will notice that the different approaches can also create ambiguity about the exact meaning and role of fitness landscapes in the social sciences. This article presents an extensive literature survey of the diverging interpretations and uses of fitness landscapes in the social sciences and discusses the implications in terms of how these models inform scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Background Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized various healthcare domains, where AI algorithms sometimes even outperform human specialists. However, the field of clinical ethics has remained largely untouched by AI advances. This study explores the attitudes of anesthesiologists and internists towards the use of AI-driven preference prediction tools to support ethical decision-making for incapacitated patients. Methods A questionnaire was developed and pretested among medical students. The questionnaire was distributed to 200 German anesthesiologists and 200 German internists, thereby focusing on physicians who (...) often encounter patients lacking decision-making capacity. The questionnaire covered attitudes toward AI-driven preference prediction, availability and utilization of Clinical Ethics Support Services (CESS), and experiences with ethically challenging situations. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analysis was performed. Qualitative responses were analyzed using content analysis in a mixed inductive-deductive approach. Results Participants were predominantly male (69.3%), with ages ranging from 27 to 77. Most worked in nonacademic hospitals (82%). Physicians generally showed hesitance toward AI-driven preference prediction, citing concerns about the loss of individuality and humanity, lack of explicability in AI results, and doubts about AI’s ability to encompass the ethical deliberation process. In contrast, physicians had a more positive opinion of CESS. Availability of CESS varied, with 81.8% of participants reporting access. Among those without access, 91.8% expressed a desire for CESS. Physicians' reluctance toward AI-driven preference prediction aligns with concerns about transparency, individuality, and human-machine interaction. While AI could enhance the accuracy of predictions and reduce surrogate burden, concerns about potential biases, de-humanisation, and lack of explicability persist. Conclusions German physicians frequently encountering incapacitated patients exhibit hesitance toward AI-driven preference prediction but hold a higher esteem for CESS. Addressing concerns about individuality, explicability, and human-machine roles may facilitate the acceptance of AI in clinical ethics. Further research into patient and surrogate perspectives is needed to ensure AI aligns with patient preferences and values in complex medical decisions. (shrink)

This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism also invokes satiability in the space of value‐theory, as it determines the sufficiency threshold at the point where justice‐relevant (...) values have been completely fulfilled. The article gives examples of how this view is widely apparent in the literature, and it provides some reasons in its favour. It then presents the two standard objections against sufficientarianism – the threshold objection and the indifference objection – and argues that these critiques do not apply to value‐satiability sufficientarianism. The general argument of the article therefore proves sufficientarianism more difficult to refute than is commonly credited. (shrink)

The work of prominent analytical Marxist G. A. Cohen provides a vision of socialism which has distributive justice and community at its core. While Cohen's view of distributive justice has been hugely influential, much less has been said about community. This article argues that community plays three distinct roles in Cohen's socialism. One is as an independent value, the second is as a necessary adjacent counterpart to justice, which serves both to restrict and facilitate distributive equality, and the third is (...) as a critique of the liberal contractualist view of humanity. We argue that each of these are distinct and valuable elements in Cohen's thought, each of which must be recognized to understand the range and implications of Cohen's socialism. (shrink)

This paper discusses limitarianism in light of three popular objections to the redistribution of extreme wealth: (i) that such redistribution legitimizes envy, which is a morally objectionable attitude; (ii) that it disincentivizes the wealthy to invest and work, leading to a diminished social product, and, thereby, making everyone worse-off; and (iii) that it undercuts the pursuit and achievement of human excellence by depriving successful people of resources through which they may otherwise excel. We argue that these objections fail to undermine (...) limitarianism. An elaborated defence against them, rather, reveals how the Standard Defence of limitarianism may be expanded and strengthened by relying explicitly on the importance of preventing a society of envy, avoiding harm to non-rich citizens, and ensuring that humans are given the opportunities to excel in ways that go beyond those that allow for the amassment of wealth. (shrink)

Torbjörn Tännsjö has written a clear and thought-provoking book on healthcare priority setting. He argues that different branches of ethical theory—utilitarianism, egalitarianism, and prioritarianism—are in general agreement on real-world healthcare priorities, and that it is human irrationality that stands in the way of complying with their recommendations. While I am generally sympathetic to the overall project and line of argumentation taken by the book, this paper raises two concerns with Tännsjö’s argument. First, that he is wrong to set aside deontic (...) constraints as irrelevant or as pointing in the same direction as consequentialism. Secondly, that his argument against prioritarianism in favor of utilitarianism is insufficient and under-developed. Given these problems, I conclude that we should welcome Tännsjö’s contribution but with these qualifications in mind. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that morally justified healthcare rationing must be non-discriminatory and cost-effective. However, given conventional concepts of cost-effectiveness, resources spent on disabled people are spent less cost-effectively, ceteris paribus, than resources spent on non-disabled people. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that standard cost-effectiveness discriminates against the disabled. Call this thedisability discrimination problem.Part of the disability discrimination involved in cost-effectiveness stems from the way in which health-related quality of life is accounted for and measured. This paper offers and (...) defends a patient-sensitive account of health-related quality of life, which can effectively make cost-effectiveness less discriminatory against the disabled and thus more morally justified. (shrink)

Many methods are used in research on complexity. One of these is qualitative comparative analysis. Although many authors allude to the relationships between complexity and QCA, these links are rarely made explicit. We propose that one way of doing so is by using critical realism as a meta-framework. This article discusses the viability of this approach by examining the extent to which QCA is a complexity-informed method. This question is answered in three steps. First, we discuss the nature of complexity (...) and its epistemological implications. Second, we focus on Bhaskar’s perspective on critical realism and show how it can be used as a framework for understanding social complexity. Third, we examine the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying QCA and synthesize these with our critical realist approach to complexity. We argue that complex reality is non-decomposable, contingent, non-compressible and time-asymmetric. We conclude that, although QCA is inevitably reductive and partial, its core premises are built upon the notions of contingency and time-asymmetry. Therefore, it is not only a powerful method for doing complexity-informed research, but is also a complexity-informed method by itself. (shrink)

The capability approach, originated by Amartya Sen is among the most comprehensive and influential accounts of justice that applies to issues of health and health care. However, although health is always presumed as an important capability in Sen’s works, he never manages to fully explain why health is distinctively valuable. This paper provides an explanation. It does this by firstly laying out the general capability-based argument for health justice. It then discusses two recent attempts to justify why health is distinctively (...) valuable from within a capability framework – these are Sridhar Venkatapuram’s conception of health as the central human meta-capability and, respectively, Norman Daniels’ embrace of the capability metric in his use of Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity. The paper argues that none of these accounts succeed in providing a plausible justification of the value of health. Finally, the paper suggests an alternative more complex justification, closely tied to different but central element of the capability view, that captures the core intuitions of both Venkatapuram and Daniels’ accounts but without being vulnerable to the objections raised against each of them. This, the paper concludes, provides a promising ground on which the capability view on health justice should be founded. (shrink)

This article claims that the protection of children’s capability for play is a central social-political goal. It provides the following three-premise argument in defense of this claim: we have strong and wide-ranging normative reasons to be concerned with clusters of social deficiency; particular fertile functionings play a key role for tackling clusters of social deficiency; and finally the capability for childhood play is a crucial, ontogenetic prerequisite for the development of those particular fertile functionings. Thus, in so far as we (...) consider it a central political goal to tackle social deficiency, we should be concerned with protection of childhood play capability. This conclusion raises new insights on the importance – for global development policy as well as for welfare states’ aim to secure social justice – of protecting children’s capability to engage in playful activities. (shrink)

Much research has studied the importance of play for children’s development. However, questions of its political importance and our public institutions’ duties to protect it have been largely neglected. This article argues that childhood play is politically important due to having both intrinsic and instrumental value, and it suggests that the duty to protect the capability for play in childhood falls especially on the public health system. If this argument succeeds, it follows that we have stronger duties toward our children (...) than we currently believe. (shrink)

This article advances a tentative theory of skill in relation to eSports. This conjectural theory of skill rests on hypothesizes informed by assumptions from watching 100+ hours of eSport events on Twitch, YouTube, and AfreecaTV and is supported by discussions, reflections and evaluations with eSport players. The case material of this article includes the games Clash Royale (CR), StarCraft 2 (SC2), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), and online battle arenas (mobas) such as League of Legends (LOL) and Defense of the Ancient (...) 2 (DOTA2). This inferred theory of skill is conjoined and composed of seven strands, which provide a framework for explaining how to understand skill in eSport. These seven strands are presented under the headings: (1) knowledge about game objects, (2) insights into game systems, (3) understanding metagaming, (4), yomi: ‘reading’ the opponent, (5) ability to execute, (6) emotional discipline, and finally (7) team coherency (depending upon whether the skill is associated with a one-versus-one or team-versus-team game). In conclusion, the proposed theory of skill will expose its explanatory power and reach by providing an example of how it can both be implemented to create profiles of players’ skill, and how these profiles in turn can serve as guides to help players improve their skill levels in eSport. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 303-321 [Access article in PDF] "The Peak on Which Abraham Stands": The Pregnant Moment of Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard When Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s began his one-man crusade against the predominant philosophy of his time and place—the right Hegelianism that was en vogue among his contemporaries in Copenhagen—he chose his weapons with great circumspection. The (...) indirect form of communication, which he later advocated in more direct terms in his "Point of View," 1 was not only a maieutic means that helped the reader conceive of the latent and strictly private messages of the texts; it was also a strategy for Kierkegaard's undercover assaults on the Hegelian turn of the Geistesleben around him. By interweaving many of the Hegelian platitudes and self-confident pronouncements that circulated in the intellectual life of the day into the pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard contested them with parody rather than argumentation. This is the local background against which these texts are structured and to which they are addressed in multiple and very subtle ways. That also goes for that of the pseudonymous writings which has become the best known but which may also be regarded as the most private and most secretive of them all, Fear and Trembling, published pseudonymously in 1843.Secrecy, silence, and unspeakable messages are abundantly thematized in Fear and Trembling, as one could expect from the name of the narrator, Johannes de Silentio. Silentio is a prominent member of the choir of pseudonymous figures Kierkegaard invented to communicate indirectly with his audience and in [End Page 303] the name of which he published his most celebrated works. The silence that Silentio speaks of is that of Abraham of the Old Testament, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his only son on Mount Moriah. Although Genesis 22 includes fragments of the dialogue between Abraham and Isaac on their way to the mountain, Silentio insists that Abraham remained silent on the essential issue: the command he acts upon. The unmediated message Abraham had received from God could not be conveyed, and he was therefore barred from communication and bereft of his community as he journeyed to the Mountain. Yet Silentio's discourse upon this silence in Fear and Trembling has given impetus to innumerable pages of commentary. The questions and answers he poses in his reflections upon Abraham's ordeal have called for critical attention and controversy since the time of its publication. His obsession with the biblical narrative certainly seems to have been passed on to many readers of Fear and Trembling, which, a recent commentator has remarked, "continues to haunt us like no other of [Kierkegaard's] writings." 2 So far, it would seem, then, that Kierkegaard was right when he predicted, in an undated journal entry, that "Fear and Trembling will be enough to immortalise my name." It has indeed been "read and translated into foreign languages," as he foresaw it would. 3Even so, what has passed unnoticed in its long history of reception is the significance of the titles that the manuscript text bore before it came to be called Fear and Trembling. On the title page the definitive appellation is placed together with two alternatives with less suggestion of pathos: "Movements and Postures" (Bevægelser og Stillinger) and "Between-each-other" (Mellemhver-andre). 4 Not much can be discerned from these unpeculiar phrases in isolation. However, tracing their history and significance through Kierkegaard's writings and beyond, will make it clear that Fear and Trembling was also dispatched to the narrow Hegelian community in Copenhagen for the purpose of questioning their literary and visual aesthetics and philosophy of history. Into the guerrilla warfare against them Fear and Trembling introduces a weapon of such sophistication that it has remained undetected so far: the power of the "pregnant moment." My aim here will be to demonstrate the way in which Fear and Trembling appropriates a principle of selection intended for the... (shrink)

It is a common socio-moral practice to appeal to reasons as a guiding force for one’s actions. However, it is an intriguing possibility that this practice is based on fiction: reasons cannot or do not motivate the majority of actions—especially moral ones. Rather, pre-reflective evaluative processes are likely responsible for moral actions. Such a view faces two major challenges: i.) pre-reflective judgements are commonly thought of as inflexible in nature, and thus they cannot be the cause of the varied judgements (...) people rely on in everyday life, and ii.) if reflective reason-based judgements do not play a strong causative role in judgement, why do people rely on the articulation of reasons in their moral practices? We argue that the pre-reflective judgements motivating moral actions are embodied in nature. The experience of the rightness of an action that drives a person to act depends on the sensorimotor interactions that have cultivated an agent’s perspective on the world. These interactions are embedded in relational contexts, relative to which judgements are individuated. Because of this relational embeddedness they are more flexible than they are commonly thought to be, enabling us to explain the variety of human behavior by appealing to them. The Anglo-European practice of appealing to reason as if they were propositional belief-statements motivating actions can be accounted for as nothing more than an idiosyncratic way of constructing narratives to clarify and express the relational context of intentional actions. (shrink)

_“Ludvig Holberg’s angry comedies”_ This article contributes to research on anger and neo-classicist comedy drama. Facilitating a dialogue between state-of-the-art theory on anger as a complicated, ambiguous and broad-spectrum emotion and Aristotelian drama theory, especially the concept of anagnorisis, it is argued that neo-classicist comedies are scenes of social interaction that are replete with angry feelings and reactions. Characters are constantly provoking each other and reacting to provocations. The main case is Ludvig Holberg’s comedies. Anger is investigated both from a (...) quantitative perspective employing corpus-linguistic approaches (searching for concordance and clusters in all 36 comedies) and through a close reading of _ Den Stundesløse _. (shrink)

Visual attention evolved as an adaptive mechanism allowing us to cope with a rapidly changing environment. It enables the facilitated processing of relevant information, often automatically and governed by implicit motives. However, despite recent advances in understanding the relationship between consciousness and visual attention, the functional scope of unconscious attentional control is still under debate. Here, we present a novel masking paradigm in which volunteers were to distinguish between varying orientations of a briefly presented, masked grating stimulus. Combining signal detection (...) theory and subjective measures of awareness, we show that performance on unaware trials was consistent with visual selection being weighted towards repeated orientations of Gabor patches and reallocated in response to a novel unconsciously processed orientation. This was particularly present in trials in which the prior feature was strongly weighted and only if the novel feature was invisible. Thus, our results provide evidence that invisible orientation stimuli can trigger the reallocation of history-guided visual selection weights. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, I propose a deconstructive reading of Gutmann and Thompson’s theory of deliberative democracy. The deconstructive reading starts from their concept of provisionality, and I argue that provisionality has consequences beyond those admitted by Gutmann and Thompson. While provisionality is an essential part of Gutmann and Thompson’s theory of deliberative democracy, it also dislocates the principles and distinctions on which their theory rests. Although Gutmann and Thompson try to control the effects of provisionality – (...) for instance, through a distinction between deliberative and non-deliberative disagreements – ultimately this is only possible by suppressing contingency and disagreement, which are otherwise part of the motivation for introducing provisionality. Thus, Gutmann and Thompson’s deliberative democ- racy is marked by a tension between their affirmation of provisionality and their attempts to limit the effects provisionality. Out of the deconstructive reading emerges an alternative deconstructive conception of democracy and provisionality in terms of Derrida’s concept of democracy to-come. (shrink)

In his most recent work, Jürgen Habermas has proposed a deliberative account of tolerance where the norms of tolerance—including the threshold of tolerance and the norms regulating the relationship between the tolerating and the tolerated parties—are the outcomes of deliberations among the citizens affected by the norms. He thinks that in this way, the threshold of tolerance can be rationalized and the relationship between tolerating and tolerated will rest on the symmetrical relations of public deliberations. In this essay, and inspired (...) by Jacques Derrida's work on the concept of hospitality, I propose a deconstructive reading of Habermas's writings on tolerance. I argue that Habermas is ultimately unable to provide a rational foundation for tolerance and that his conception of tolerance encounters the same problems he is trying to avoid, namely, the contingency of the threshold of tolerance and a paternalistic relation between tolerating and tolerated. Yet, contra Habermas, the deconstruction of tolerance does not result in its destruction and does not force us to give up on the concept and practice of tolerance. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrgang: 13 Heft: 2 Seiten: 190-206.

According to luck egalitarianism, it is unjust if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. The most common criticism of luck egalitarianism is the ‘harshness objection’, which states that luck egalitarianism allows for too harsh consequences, as it fails to provide justification for why those responsible for their bad fate can be entitled to society's assistance. It has largely gone unnoticed that the harshness objection is open to a number of very different interpretations. (...) We present four different interpretations of the harshness objection in which the problem pertains to counterintuitive implications, badness of outcome, disproportionality, or inconsistency, respectively. We analyse and discuss appropriate luck egalitarian replies. Disentangling these different versions clarifies what is at the heart of this dispute and reveals the point of the harshness objection. We conclude that only the inconsistency version involves a durable problem for luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

This paper examines the reception of Reinhart Koselleck’s Kritik und Krise by the intellectual historian István Hont. Relying on hitherto unpublished manuscripts, it argues that the later work of Hont can be seen as a critical response to Koselleck and his characterisation of the crisis of modern politics as a crisis of political authority.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 992-1013, September 2022. This article examines the connection between populism and post-foundationalism in the context of contemporary debates about populism as a strategy for the Left. I argue that there is something “populist” about every constitutional order, including liberal democratic ones. I argue so drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of hegemony, agonistic democracy, and left populism. Populism is the quintessential form of post-foundational politics because, rightly understood, populism constructs the object it (...) claims to represent, namely the people. As such, it expresses the fact that, because there is no ultimate foundation, politics consists in the construction of contingent foundations. I develop this argument through readings of Jan-Werner Müller and Chantal Mouffe, showing the differences between their respective post-foundational approaches. I show that Müller cannot uphold the distinction between populism and democracy in the way he seeks to do, but I also argue that this does not mean that we must jettison all normativity, only that it requires that we rethink normativity in hegemonic terms. (shrink)

Since his contribution to the field of personal identity in 1738 Hume’s theory has been debated thoroughly. Throughout the years there have been multiple critiques of Hume’s theory, but despite the fact that all of these generally appear unsatisfactory, Hume’s theory of personal identity is far from being a popular one in the field. I believe the blame partly falls on Hume himself. Hume’s appendix to Treaties is most often read as expressing a deep concern regarding his own theory, and (...) this concern, I believe, is to blame for his theory never gaining the respect it deserves. After all, why should we listen to Hume if he himself found his theory lacking? It is, however, a mistake to judge Hume’s theory of personal identity, based on the appendix to Treaties. The appendix is far too ambiguity for any real conclusion and it offers nothing that cannot be found in the original chapter on personal identity from Treaties. (shrink)