We should now be able to come to some general conclusions about the main lines of Cuvier's development as a naturalist after his departure from Normandy. We have seen that Cuvier arrived in Paris aware of the importance of physiology in classification, yet without a fully worked out idea of how such an approach could organize a whole natural order. He was freshly receptive to the ideas of the new physiology developed by Xavier Bichat.Cuvier arrived in a Paris also torn (...) by many overlapping debates on the nature of classification, and in particular that between the natural and artificial systems. The very validity of the enterprise of classification was questioned in many quarters. Cuvier's achievement on his entry into the Parisian world of science was not simply to establish himself as a highly competent anatomist: far more important, he also began to use ideas from many different specialties to change completely the notion of what was involved in natural history.124 At the same time that he himself swung away from the guiding image of the field naturalist as the ideal of the specialty, he took ideas from the new physiology to answer questions about the order of the animal world, and from comparative anatomy to resurrect extinct creation — and to come to conclusions from that creation about the history of the forms of life and the manner of their succession. He showed himself able to alter the relationships between natural history and many other fields of study in a way that implied, rightly or wrongly, his own complete mastery over such a movement. Partly he was able to do this because the ideas he borrowed were not themselves logically articulated and thus could be easily adapted and refocused for many different specific purposes. The value of the heuristic possibilities inherent in the idea of life, for example, far outweighed its inability to generate full systems of classification. Cuvier also consistently refused to consider in science matters relating to the first causes of events. Freed from the consideration of first-order phenomena, he was able to use second-order explanations across a far wider field of applicability. Personal doubts about the validity of a theology that had used science in order to bolster its own claims were combined here with the strong influence of the Kantian critique of the limits of human reason.125Cuvier's characteristic mode of procedure was that of intellectual appropriation and a bold capacity for altering the relationships between different fields of knowledge, rather than, with the exception of taxonomy, the technique of expanding their subject matter. His claims to originality came, first, from this reappropriation and reorientation and, second, from the sheer scope of his work, which aimed at nothing less than the cataloging and classification of all animate objects.126 They rested also on his acute use of his assertion of a certain relationship with the past of his subject. Very often he would present this history in such a way as to obscure his own intellectual genealogy, and often too he would give differing accounts of the priority of use of an idea in order to distract attention from the questionable exactitude of his own claims to originality. Cuvier came to Paris at precisely the time when society and institutions were most profitably malleable for a newcomer; it was also a time when many scientific disciplines had reached a stage advanced in terms of their factual content, yet relatively inadequate in conceptual organization. They were ripe for takeover by large-scale organizing ideas such as the animal economy and the subordination of characteristics. Paleontology is a particularly good example of a specialty in this particular form of underdevelopment in 1795.Cuvier paid a high price for his initial success. His electic applications of large-scale organizing ideas tended to mean that little of his own work had complete coherence at all levels. Ideas, as we have seen, that proved capable of providing a complete reform of the larger groups of the animal kingdom were incapable of producing its detailed working-out in the taxonomy of smaller groups, which had to be supplied from observed analogical correlations. Further, his physiological approach to classification involved the breakdown of strict correspondence between organs and functions, which left the way open for workers such as Geoffroy St. Hilaire gradually to tilt the balance away from the study of the correlations of hierarchies of functions, and toward morphology as the basis of the order of nature. Cuvier's brilliant appropriations from physiology from the beginning, therefore, contained the seeds of conflict with Geoffroy.Cuvier's eclectic approach made it very nearly impossible for him to present a clear idea of the ways in which the life sciences could be said to be lawful. In spite of his efforts to assimilate them to the position of the physical sciences in this respect, he was forced in the end to accord only an ambiguous status as “laws” to observational correlations. From this area of failure came much of the attempt to give his own two laws — the correlation of parts and the subordination of characteristics — predictive qualities, particularly in relation to paleontological research.It is not surprising that Cuvier's title as the “legislator” of natural history should represent more a claim than a reality. How, then, was he able to emerge as the leading French naturalist of his day? First of all must be adduced the sheer scale of his undertakings. Then comes his expertise as a practical anatomist, and the range of different topics toward which he turned his interest. His collaborators cannot be given credit for his output nor, as we have seen, for slavish adherence to his ideas. Cuvier was able to successfully claim to have dominated the underdeveloped specialties, such as paleontology, and turned them into a major heuristic input into both geology and comparative anatomy; but in other fields, such as physiology, he appropriated concepts and encouraged research but made little impact on the field himself. His attempts in 1812 to head off, or neutralize and absorb the growth of morphological studies landed him in a dangerously rigid position, which despite his encouragement of the new physiological research under the Restoration made further elaboration of his own conceptual underpinnings almost impossible.Cuvier's authority in the scientific world would in any case have been great because of his substantive achievement in taxonomy, but the rest of his work had enough ambiguities and dislocations for it to need the support of his political and social power. Cuvier's detractors seized on a vital fragment of the truth when they accused him of finding the political dimension all-important: it obscured the disjunctions in his theories and at the same time gave him the authority to make new claims for the status of the observational sciences - and for their relations of power with their surrounding specialties. Cuvier's science both thrived on and was halted by the power games of intellectual appropriation, manipulation of the past to confirm the present, and continual claims for hegemony. (shrink)

"Sweeping through the history of Western philosophy of law, [the author] deals with the metaphysical idea of potency as defined by Spinoza and Nietzsche, upsetting entrenched theories of jurisprudence. [The author] first addresses how the idea of potency can change the meaning of the power ascribed to an omnipotent God. This brings together classical Greek philosophy with Jewish biblical exegesis, which [the author] links through the juncture of Christianity. He then relates potency to the classical philosophical tradition in Aristotle's (...) 'Metaphysics' and its Arabic interpretations, particularly those of Ibn Rushd (Averroës). This leads [the reader] to the genesis of natural law theory in Western philosophy, from Augustine to Aquinas and from Duns Scotus to Ockham... [The author] examines the inherently problematic concept of political theology, pitting Spinozan-Nietzschean potency against Kant and Enlightenment natural law to reveal the weakness inherent in the Enlightenment system. Finally, [the author] applies the theories of Carl Schmitt to the philosophical rationalism of the Western tradition, showing [the reader] how it has failed to contain absolute power in a juridical sense."--. (shrink)

This corpus analysis of linguistic and semantic features in French parliamentary debates concerning online hate speech regulation, highlights tensions between state powers and private rights. Two key themes are identified: first, the _problem of definition_: how such online content is defined in the debates, and second, the _problem of regulation_: how the debates negotiate the supra-jurisdictional and individual jurisdiction issues involved, in regulating both the global online content and the responsibilities of the owners of the platforms who manage the content. (...) For this analysis, the authors created a corpus of French National Assembly Examination Committee discussions and public sessions between July 2019 to January 2020 discussing the _Loi Avia _(Avia Law). The corpus was analysed using quali-quantitative methods. Overall, the study combines a top-down (global) and a bottom-up (local) analysis of the data, applying corpus semantic approaches (Lecolle et al. in Langages 210(2):35–54, 2018; Rastier in The Routledge handbook of semantics, Routledge, pp 507–522, 2015) to contextualize the analysis of the meta-discourse (Hyland in Meta-discourse: exploring interaction in writing, 1st ed. Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350063617 ). The analysis highlights the linguistic features revealing the power dynamics inherent within the discourse and counter-discourse of the dominant and opposition political parties respectively. (shrink)

The Critique of Pure Reason—Kant’s First Critique—is one of the most studied texts in intellectual history, but as Alfredo Ferrarin points out in this radically original book, most of that study has focused only on very select parts. Likewise, Kant’s oeuvre as a whole has been compartmentalized, the three Critiques held in rigid isolation from one another. Working against the standard reading of Kant that such compartmentalization has produced, The Powers of Pure Reason explores forgotten parts of the First Critique (...) in order to find an exciting, new, and ultimately central set of concerns by which to read all of Kant’s works. Ferrarin blows the dust off of two egregiously overlooked sections of the First Critique—the Transcendental Dialectic and the Doctrine of Method. There he discovers what he argues is the Critique’s greatest achievement: a conception of the unity of reason and an exploration of the powers it has to reach beyond itself and legislate over the world. With this in mind, Ferrarin dismantles the common vision of Kant as a philosopher writing separately on epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics and natural teleology, showing that the three Critiques are united by this underlying theme: the autonomy and teleology of reason, its power and ends. The result is a refreshing new view of Kant, and of reason itself. (shrink)

Organized after an almost complete term of office, but the end of which was marked by the resurgence of the community-linked problems and by the departure of the Ministers of the Volksunie, the parliamentary elections of 24th November 1991 will remain characterized by the punishment inflicted by apart of the voters, not only on the majority's parties, but also on the traditional parties as a whole.The opposition of the dissatisfied voters did not show itself either in a reduced participation to (...) the vote, a rather normal phenomenon in a country where voting is compulsory, or in a rise of the blank and spoilt ba/lot papers. The 1991 figures are, in these respects, very similar to the average figures of the last thirty years.The opposition was first characterized by high variations in the choice of the voters, which dit not, however, exceed the size of the movements noticed at previous elections. The rate of external mobility, as computed by us, is ranked fifth among the 22 levels that have been counted since universal suffrage has been introduced in Belgium. In 1991, this rate was the highest in Brussels, which is traditional, but it was also considerably higher in Flanders than in the Walloon Region, which quite seldom happens.Then, the opposition found expression in a setback for the Jour ruling parties.This set back amounted to about 8% and even 10% if account is taken of the Volksunie which was part of the Government until the very last weeks before the dissolution of the Houses of Parliament. Such a setback for an outgoing majority is not exceptional; a more unusual phenomenon lies in the f act that this decline was not profitable, on the whole, to the third traditional "family", i.e. the Liberals. As a result of this simultaneous setback for the three traditional families, these total only about 70% of the valid votes, which is the worst result of the whole Belgian electoral history.The political formations that are progressing are the Ecologists, on the one hand, and the far-right lists, on the other hand. Ecolo improves its results considerably in the Walloon Region and in Brussels, without however reaching the level obtained at the 1989 European elections, while Agalev only registers a slight progress.On the contrary, the winner of the elections in the Flemish Region, is unquestionablythe Vlaams Blok, as well as the "Rossem" lists that draw some 5% of the angry voters.If the far-left trend has almost disappeared from the Belgian political scene, the far-right parties, on the contrary, are making a breakthrough on it. The current made up by the Vlaams Blok and the openly far-right lists wins a bit less than 8% of the votes in the whole country. It is likely, however, that those who voted for the Vlaams Blok do not all adhere to the far-right ideas, but that some of them are attracted by the Flemish autonomist stands. The real electoral power of the far-right parties can then be assessed at 6 to 7%, which is much more than in 1987, hut does not make a record in comparison with other European countries.The votes of opponents without any clear political orientation, the bulk of which is won by the "Rossem" lists, amount to some 3%, which is new for Belgium.In a country where voting is optional, many of these voters would probably have stayed at home.This being so, and as f ar as these concepts still remain meaningful, the Belgian electoral pendulum shifted some 5% towards the right, at the expense of the left for more than 3% and the centre for a bit less than 2%.As far as the Parliament is concerned, the situation is clear in the Walloon Region and in the French-speaking Community where the Socialist Party, by far the most important party, is almost inevitable. It is however much more vague on the Flemish side, where the CVP's setback and the dispersion of the polical farces make several types of coalitions possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:538 Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Doreen J. Mattingly The Limited Power of Female Appointments: Abortion and Domestic Violence Policy in the Carter Administration In 1977 in the United States, Second Wave feminists were poised to make a meaningful impact on federal policy. Jimmy Carter’s successful 1976 presidential campaign had included an open wooing of feminist support : he had created a (...) “51.3 Percent” committee to address women’s issues and he had told feminist audiences that he “wanted to be known as the President who achieved equal rights for women, just as President Johnson had won civil rights legislation for blacks.”1 Once elected, Carter appointed an unprecedented number of feminist women to high office, many of whom were committed to addressing the concerns of marginalized women and advancing policy on issues such as sexual violence and reproductive rights. These appointees were linked to a dense feminist organizational presence in Washington that was unprecedented in its size and diversity. Not surprisingly, many feminists had high expectations for the new administration. 1. Cynthia Harrison, “Creating a National Feminist Agenda: Coalition Building in the 1970s,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 30. See also John Dumbrell, The Carter Presidency: A Re-evaluation (New York: Manchester University Press, 1993); and Sara Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: Free Press, 2003). Doreen J. Mattingly 539 Despite these promising conditions, feminists made little headway on policy during the Carter administration (1977–1981). Federal funding for abortion was eliminated; no permanent offices that would have advocated for women’s issues were created; and bills supporting domestic violence shelters, support for “displaced homemakers,” and quotas for female-owned businesses were defeated or extremely diluted. In addition, no additional states ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and several states rescinded earlier ratification votes. Some of these failures can be attributed to the general loss of feminist momentum and the emergence of a conservative backlash in the late 1970s. Anti-ERA organizing fueled the rise of a conservative “family values” movement that would shape social policies for more than a generation, and neoliberal economic conservatives were challenging the welfare-state programs that feminists sought to expand. But in Washington, there was an addition challenge —the unreliable support of Carter himself. Despite his promises, Carter felt that by appointing women he had met his commitment to feminists and did little to support feminist policy goals that went beyond eliminating discrimination. This paper makes an important contribution to the history of feminist action by looking in detail at the efforts of Jimmy Carter’s feminist appointees to influence policy. In particular, it discusses the actions of the most visible feminist in the White House, Margaret “Midge” Costanza. Carter named Costanza director of the Office of Public Liaison, a department that was created to manage relations between the White House and citizens’ groups. Her position as the first woman to serve as Assistant to the President, in concert with her gregarious nature and strong support for women’s issues, made Costanza a very visible symbol of affirmative action for Carter. Yet Costanza, like many other high-level feminist appointees, met opposition within the White House when she tried to advance women’s issues. Her persistent advocacy contributed to her marginalization within the White House. Just twenty months into the administration she resigned in frustration.2 This paper begins with a discussion of the unique circumstances surrounding Carter’s feminist appointees, followed by a detailed exploration 2. For Costanza’s complete story, see Doreen J. Mattingly, A Feminist in the White House: Midge Costanza, the Carter Years, and America’s Culture Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 540 Doreen J. Mattingly oftwomeetingsheldbyCostanzainJuly1977.Thefirstwasanimpromptu meeting of roughly forty prochoice Carter appointees, all deeply troubled by a statement made by Carter in support of the Hyde Amendment banning federal funds for abortion. The same month, Costanza hosted a groundbreaking White House meeting about battered women, in which high-level bureaucrats heard testimonials from domestic violence victims and shelter advocates. While both meetings broke new... (shrink)

The notion of a distinct 'executive power' was famously employed by Locke and Montesquieu; but the term potestas executiva, coined by medieval canonists, had been adopted by the early sixteenth-century theologian Cajetan, who located it as regimen medium in his defence of papal power against a revived 'conciliarist' challenge. The distinction between legislative sovereignty and a power effectively executive was used in post- Reformation political controversy and in Bodin's République. From those beginnings it was developed by (...) mid-seventeenth-century writers, from whom it passed to Locke; and the concept of the executive as a 'mediating' power was notably echoed by Rousseau. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Popular Autonomy and Imperial Power in Bartolus of Saxoferrato:An Intrinsic ConnectionFloriano Jonas CesarI. IntroductionBartolus of Saxoferrato is well known because of his ideas on the autonomy of the populus or civitas.1 He asserts that the populus can claim autonomous jurisdiction as a result not only of imperial concession but also of prescription, custom, or even eventual use on the ground of a de facto situation. Thus, the populus (...) needs no authorization from a superior, not even the emperor, to make its own laws. The idea of an autonomous populus did not originate with Bartolus, however. Marsilius of Padua had already worked out a quite developed theory about the authority of the whole body of the citizens to legislate.2 As opposed to the Aristotelian Marsilius, however, Bartolus bases his opinion about the populus essentially on the Corpus Iuris,3 though he knew at least the Politics and the Ethics too.4 What is important is not whether his knowledge of Aristotle [End Page 369] was immediate or through Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum but that he proves his ideas basically by showing that they agree with certain authoritative texts and that he considers the Corpus Iuris, not Aristotle, as the proper authority to support his opinion on the populus.Such an emphasis on the autonomy of the civitas must not conceal the fact that, unlike Marsilius, Bartolus introduces the pope and the emperor alongside the populus as having jurisdiction of their own. Nor must the omnipresence of the Corpus Iuris hide the significance of the Bible in relation to the issue of the empire. Indeed he turns to the Scriptures not to substantiate the autonomy of the populus but to establish the divine origin of the royal (and papal) jurisdiction in general. Moreover, he uses them along with a particular interpretation of the popular origin of the empire to present the imperial jurisdiction as not subordinate to the populus.The concept of an autonomous civitas based in human premises, therefore, coexists in Bartolus with a notion of imperial power established by God, the former being inseparable from the latter, by virtue of his use of authorities. In fact Bartolus turns to the Corpus Iuris and the Scriptures not simply to illustrate but to substantiate his point of view. The authority of the Corpus Iuris, however, which supports his views on the populus, comes from the fact that emperor Justinian was its autor. But the Corpus Iuris is by the same token less authoritative than the Scriptures, whose author is God and which support the divine origin of the imperial power. Thus, working out a theory grounded on the authority of the Corpus Iuris, Bartolus also favors the base on which the imperial power was founded.The texts of interest here are the De Regimine Civitatis, De Guelphis et Gebellinis, and De Tyranno, where Bartolus more systematically presents his political ideas. In the De Regimine Civitatis he is concerned about "how many ways there are of governing a city,""which is the better way" and "which is the worst."5 The De Guelphis et Gebellinis treats both old and "recent" meanings of these nouns, whether these factions are licit, and the criteria to prove to which one belongs. At last the De Tyranno explains the origin of the word and the characteristics of the tyrant. Having discussed if there can be tyrant in a neighbourhood, household, and city, Bartolus divides the tyrants in the civitas into manifest, concealed, and tacit, and discusses whether their acts are valid. In tackling all of these issues, he turns to different sorts of proof—several authorities, including the Corpus Iuris, Scriptures, Aristotle, Giles of Rome, Gregory I, and Aquinas, as well as the jurisdictions of the populus, pope, and emperor. [End Page 370] This essay shall refer mainly to these treatises, while picking up, from other works, any additional instructive elements.Although Bartolus is particularly concerned about the de facto autonomous Italian cities in his time, his defense of their autonomy lies in arguments, and he has clear rules which define a valid form of argumentation. He generally considers that to prove a point means to show that... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to outline the history of anticommunist legislation in interwar Yugoslavia and to bring to the fore its key phases. This approach is employed to re-examine the effectiveness of the introduced laws, to pinpoint their shortcomings, but also their strong points. Virtually from its creation, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) was hostile to communism. Anticommunist convictions of the ruling elites influ­enced many aspects of governance, not only internal affairs, as the outlawing of (...) the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in December 1920, but also foreign policy, as postponing the recognition of the Soviet Union to 1940. There are three distinct phases of anticommunist legislation, each clearly marked by a key anticommunist law. During the first phase (1918-1921), there were few legal instruments for combating left-wing radicalism. The second phase (1921-1929) was marked by the introduction of a highly controversial Law on the Protection of Public Security and State Order, which gave previous unprecedented powers to the prosecutors and police to crush the emerging communist movement. This legal framework was further expanded after the proclamation of the King`s dictatorship in 1929, and the overhaul of the Law, as well as the introduction of a special tribunal – The State Court for the Protection of the State. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century TheologyFrancis Oakley[W]e must cautiously abandon [that more specious opinion of the Platonist and Stoick]... in this, that it... blasphemously invades the cardinal Prerogative of Divinity, Omnipotence, by denying him a reserved power, of infringing, or altering any one of those Laws which [He] Himself ordained, and enacted, and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters (...) of Destiny.Walter Charleton, The Darknes of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature : A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (London, 1652)Of the various attributes characteristically ascribed to God in the Christian tradition—goodness, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like—it is omnipotence which of recent years has most persistently been the object of focused attention among philosophers and historians alike. That that should be the case with philosophers working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition is not altogether surprising. While it is doubtless a development few would have predicted half a century ago, the years since then have seen something of a recrudescence of interest in a legislative or divine-command ethic. 1 Had that [End Page 437] not itself conspired to make omnipotence an obvious focus of philosophic attention, the deepening contemporaneous preoccupation with modal logic or the logic of possibility would surely have succeeded in so doing. Understood classically as affirming of God the ability to do all things and connoting a virtual capacity for action (as opposed to a power exercised in actuality), omnipotence has proven to be something of a troublesome notion, inviting unrestrained speculation about hypothetical divine action and generating a veritable cat’s cradle of philosophical conundrums concerning the relationship of God’s power to his will, wisdom, goodness, and justice.Medieval theologians and philosophers alike were forced to grapple with these taxing problems, 2 and philosophers of our own era have found them no less directly pertinent to their own logical and ethical concerns. 3 In 1955 Mackie inaugurated what was destined to become an ongoing discussion of omnipotence in the philosophical journals, 4 and such philosophers as Kenny and Keane, Cowan and Wolfe, Dummett, Plantinga, Swinburne, and Geach have been drawn into the fray. Since then, as a result, the pages of Mind, Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and even The Listener have been punctuated by their efforts to grapple with those venerable questions concerning the divine power that had exercised St. Peter Damiani in the mid-eleventh century, brought Abelard to grief a half-century later, and subsequently led Peter Lombard to devote to them a crucial and influential section of his Sentences—whether God of his omnipotence could undo the past, whether he could have made things other than he had, or created a world better than he did, and so on. 5 [End Page 438]While no medievalist can be expected to be anything but gratified by this unexpected testimony to the enduring significance and power of medieval scholastic concerns, those of us interested especially in the intellectual developments of the later-medieval centuries have particular reason to be energized by it. The years since Mackie launched this contemporary philosophical debate have also seen an intensification of interest on the part of historians in the ways in which, during these particular centuries, medieval thinkers themselves came to terms with the implications of the divine omnipotence and dealt with the theological and philosophical puzzles characteristically generated by that notion. Unlike the philosophers, whose concerns have been somewhat more broad-ranging, the historians have focused in particular on a quintessentially scholastic distinction that was developed, it has been said, “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and grace.” 6 The distinction in question is that between God’s power understood as absolute and as ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata), which the theologians and philosophers of the period deployed as part of their great effort of accommodation between Greek philosophical and biblical notions of the divine, and the historical significance of which the scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to vindicate. 7 But while that distinction has been... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe goal of this paper is to locate indirect legislation within Bentham’s art of legislation, and to distinguish it, as far as possible, from direct legislation. Along the way, some parallels are drawn between indirect legislation on the one hand, and the Nudge theory of Thaler and Sunstein on the other. It will be argued that many expedients categorized by Bentham as indirect legislation are simultaneously exercises of direct legislation. Another set of indirect expedients act on knowledge, and involve efforts (...) to eliminate asymmetries of information between potential offender and potential victim by providing official standards and disseminating a plethora of factual information. Other forms of indirect legislation threaten the coherence of Bentham’s theory of law, firstly by regarding all government actions as exercises in legislation, and secondly by turning the formers of public opinion into legislators. Insofar as some forms of indirect legislation operate by sleight of hand, they conflict with Bentham’s commitment to transparency in the exercise of public power, reflecting a tension between reality and appearance which runs through his thought. (shrink)

Magna Carta Libertatum is one of the few documents that continuously imply thorough discussions about fundamental principles of the law. In 2011, Lord McNelly, Justice Minister of UK at the time, has emphasized the core and everlasting principles that derived from this document: ᠅ that the power of the state is not absolute ᠅ that whoever governs the state must obey the law ᠅ and that whoever governs the state must take account of the views of those who are (...) governed. These are the fundamental principles of any government that strives to be distinguished as democratic, these are the self-evident truths that have been developed in the theory of social contract that established the modern day democracies. It is very common that article 39 of Magna Carta that provides for the right to due process, as well as article 40 that provides for the right to access to justice and justice itself, to be usually analyzed from the point of view of the rights of the person accused of a crime. However, it must be taken into consideration, that failure to guarantee these two very important human rights makes the accused person a victim of abuse of power. This article aims to analyze the relevance of Magna Carta in the rise of the concept of rights of victims of abuse of power. Although it is a concept developed later in history, the clauses of Magna Carta that remain in power can be directly linked to this category of victims. The thirteenth century provides a very important perspective on the position of the victim of crime and can be analyzed in a comparative aspect regarding the Common Law and the Civil Law historical development. The article will briefly explain the evolution of the concept of victims’ rights throughout these eight centuries to the modern times when these rights have become a crucial part of the national legislations of Western Balkan countries. (shrink)

The origins of U.S. corporate taxation are often associated with the 1909 corporate excise tax. Scholars who have investigated the beginnings of this levy have mainly focused on the legislative history of the 1909 corporate tax to argue that it was either an expression of the Progressive Era impulse to regulate large-scale corporations or an attempt to use corporations as remittance devices to collect taxes aimed at wealthy shareholders. This Article broadens the conventional historical accounts of the emergence of (...) American corporate taxation by revisiting the 1909 U.S. corporate tax from a comparative perspective. The aim is to look both below and beyond the American nation-state to determine how and why U.S. state governments and other Western industrialized nations tried to tax corporations at the turn of the twentieth century. This Article investigates a small slice of subnational and transnational comparative examples: corporate tax laws and policies in a few representative nineteenth-century industrializing American states, and in turn-of-the-century England and Germany. Building on the well-known insights of comparative business history, this Article contends that historically-determined political interests, social ideas, and cultural beliefs help explain the American obsession with disciplining large-scale business corporations through the use of nominally punitive tax laws and policies. Comparative-historical analysis shows how differences in the organizational structures of big businesses across place and time have led to variations in political economy that were ultimately expressed in the legal ideas and cultural attitudes toward corporate capitalism. These variations, in turn, shaped the transnational distinctions in corporate tax law and policies. Greater attention to the comparative-historical development of law and political economy may help us understand the stubborn persistence of American corporate taxation, particularly in the face of recent global changes and the relentless economic critiques of the double taxation of corporate income. (shrink)

There is more to law than rules, robes and precedents. Rather, law is an integral part of social practices and policies, as diverse and complex as society itself. Thinking About Law offers a comprehensive introduction to the ways in which law has been presented and represented. It explores historical, sociological, economic and philosophical perspectives on the major legal and political debates in Australia today. The contributors examine the position of Aborigines in the Australian legal system and the impact of the (...) Mabo case; divisions of power in Australian society and law; the question of objectivity in law; the relationship between legislation and social change; judicial decision-making and other issues. Accessibly written, Thinking About Law is essential reading for students and anyone interested in understanding our legal system. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Because Rousseau identifies popular sovereignty with the enactment of fundamental laws, he seems to conflate popular sovereignty with constituent power: the people are sovereign because they constitute the state, without actually ruling it. However, he assigns the lawgiver, or (‘legislator’) an antecedent task that has a more obviously ‘constituent’ character – the task of constituting the people itself, as a political subject and political unity. Thus Rousseau’s lawgiver offers a template for understanding the relationship between popular sovereignty and (...) constituent power. Accordingly, I make three arguments concerning the ‘constituent’ role of the lawgiver. Firstly, I argue that Rousseau’s lawgiver belongs within a ‘realist’ tradition of constituent power, which understands the people not as the bearer of constituent power, but as its product. Secondly, since the lawgiver’s task is to alchemise peoplehood by bequeathing the people a ritual life, this helps us understand how constituent power remains ‘live’ within the social life of the republic. And thirdly, since the lawgiver effects a rupture in political time of which Rousseau judges the people itself incapable, its role is to compensate not only for the people’s incapacity to reason, but more importantly, its incapacity to act. (shrink)

Times of heightened risk to the physical safety of their citizens inevitably cause democracies to recalibrate their institutions and processes and to reinterpret existing legal norms, with greater emphasis on security, and less on individual liberty, than in "normal" times. This article explores the ways in which the American courts have responded to the tension between civil liberties and national security in times of crises. This history illustrates that courts have rejected both of the two polar positions that characterize public (...) discourse on these issues. Civil libertarians argue that political bodies are too easily gripped by passions, hysteria, and self-interest in these times and that courts therefore ought to play a central role in protecting liberty. Executive unilateralists argue that the qualities that uniquely characterize the executive branch, such as decisiveness, access to information, and efficiency, must become so dominant in these moments that few checks, if any, should constrain executive prerogatives. Oddly, civil libertarians and executive unilateralists find implicit consensus in the view that, in times of war, courts have tended not to play a significant role in overseeing executive power. We argue to the contrary: historically, a significant constitutional tradition of judicial scrutiny in the United States during times of war does exist. But this scrutiny does not take the form of courts making first-order substantive judgments about the content of liberty or other claimed constitutional rights. Nor does it take the form of judicial assessment of how significant or credible the national security claims of the executive branch might be. Instead, judicial oversight has been focused on preserving the institutional structures and processes through which decisionmaking on these issues takes place. The judicial role has centered on the second-order question of whether the right institutional processes have been used to make the decisions at issue, rather than on what the content of the underlying rights ought to be. This approach has historically rejected or resisted most claims of executive unilateralism. When courts have upheld the government's actions, they have done so only after a judgment that Congress, as well as the executive, has endorsed the action. This approach has also rejected the civil libertarian framework. When courts find bilateral institutional endorsement, they have typically accepted the joint political judgment of how liberty and security tradeoffs ought to be made. By focusing on congressional endorsement of emergency measures, the courts have created a broad-based political accountability for the actions taken in the name of national security. We suggest that even if congressional endorsement is more apparent than real in some of these contexts, the judicial maintenance of this structure of rhetorical justifications sustains desirable understandings of political structure. Because the President and Congress draw from different political constituencies in a presidential rather than a parliamentary system, we also raise questions about whether the American judicial approach to these questions should be limited to political systems with separated executive and legislative powers. (shrink)

Hegel’s political philosophy regards the “corporation” as both a civil society association and an institution guaranteed under the constitution. The present article focuses on the concept of corporation as an institution of the ‘internal constitution’ by analysing some of the writings which go back to Hegel’s Heidelberg and Berlin phases, namely the Heidelberg review of the Proceedings of the Estates Assembly of the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1815–1816, his first lectures on the Philosophy of Rights, and the Elements of the Philosophy (...) of Rights. Notwithstanding the analysis shows that Hegel’s sophisticated constitutional culture is informed directly by, and developed along with, his involvement in the Württemberg’s political debates, yet his idea of State administration is far more elaborate than the constitutions of nineteenth-century German States which it does not, in fact, intend to merely reproduce. I shall argue that Hegel’s account of corporation is based on his specific understanding of European history and the related conceptualization of institution as a guarantee of freedom. Both history and theory are necessary tools to frame and comprehend the philosopher’s discussion of corporation, whose civil and institutional nature is essential to conceive the connection established between the government of civil society and legislative power. I contend that the role that Hegel attributes to corporations cannot be interpreted as an idea reflecting or inherited from the history of the German states, and that rather it represents the key to understanding his concept of patriotism and model of political representation via the assemblies of estates. From this perspective, it appears clear that the Hegelian theory of corporation is at the center of the philosopher’s diagnosis on the crisis and evolution of the modern State. (shrink)

The theory of the separation of powers between a legislature, an executive and a judiciary is still the foundation of modern representative democracy. It was developed by Montesquieu and came to replace the older theory of the mixed constitution which goes back to Plato, Aristotle and Polybios: there are three types of constitution: monarchy, oligarchy and democracy; when institutions from each of the three types are mixed, an interplay between the institutions emerges that affects all functions of state: legislation, implementation (...) of laws and jurisdiction. Today Montesquieu's separation of powers is riddled with so many exceptions that it is an obstacle rather than a help to understand the structure of modern democracy. The mixed constitution deserves to be revived as a corrective to the prevailing view that Western states are pure democracies and that democracy is rule by the people. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 425-426 [Access article in PDF] Martin Heidegger. The Essence of Human Freedom: An Introduction to Philosophy. Translated by Ted Sadler. London: Continuum, 2002. Pp. xiv + 216. Paper, $29.95.Of the recently translated volumes comprising Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, perhaps the volume whose importance is most underestimated contains his lectures from the summer semester of 1930 (Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit), which now appears (...) in English under the title On the Essence of Human Freedom. In this work, Heidegger complements his other attempts to retrieve Kant's transcendental philosophy—which primarily focused on reinterpreting the Critique of Pure Reason—by offering the fullest treatment of practical reason to be found in the Gesamtausgabe. As such, this translation of Band 31 of the Gesamtausgabe proves invaluable because it (1) provides another side to Heidegger's critical exchange (Auseinandersetzung) with Kant (198) and (2) yields some tantalizing clues as to a vestige of a Heideggerian ethic which can be developed by examining human freedom.In a lecture course from the winter semester of 1925-26 (Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit), Heidegger turned to Kant's doctrine of schematism in order to distinguish finitude as the key dimension of temporality. From that point until the publication of "Kants These über das Sein" (1961), the importance of retrieving transcendental philosophy surfaces at strategic places in Heidegger's thought, although he devotes most of his attention to unraveling the issue of temporality couched in the Transcendental Analytic of the first Critique. What sets The Essence of Human Freedom apart, however, is that it identifies freedom as a new locus from which to address the possibility of being's disclosure through time, which remains unthought in the Greek concept of ousia as "permanent presence": "The question of human freedom is the fundamental question of philosophy, in which is rooted even the question of being" (203). Human freedom, and the questioning of its finite origin in human existence (Dasein), thereby yields a wider topography within which to re-ask the question of being in light of its connection to time. The topography takes this form: the traditional, or "leading question of philosophy" (what are beings as such?), gives way to the "fundamental question of philosophy" (why is being disclosed through time?), which can be developed only by addressing freedom as the ground of human existence (23).In Part I of The Essence of Human Freedom, Heidegger shows how Kant's modern effort to define freedom epistemically as a form of causation must be recast in light of the ontological concern of the ancients to define movement as a determination of the dynamism of being. In Part II, Heidegger outlines Kant's attempt to establish the possibility of freedom in the Transcendental Dialectic, the enigma of how two apparently incompatible forms of causation—the determinism of nature and the spontaneity of will—can stand in a "double [End Page 425] relation to the same effect" (172). Heidegger offers his own resolution of the third antinomy. He argues that the apparent incompatibility of the preceding causalities can be resolved when reason reconciles itself with its own finitude: leaving open its possibility of serving as a spontaneous cause in the intelligible realm of morality, while restricting the scope of natural causality to the sensible realm of appearances. The need to establish the possibility of freedom must then give way to establishing its actuality as the self-legislative power of the will in the practical domain. "Pure willing is the willing of one's own essence as will.... Thus the fundamental law of a finite pure willing, i.e., of a pure practical reason, is a categorical imperative (190-1). Having then distinguished the occurrence of freedom in its practical domain, Heidegger identifies ethical praxis as the source of actuality for the spontaneous causality of a will, the self-legislation of the categorical imperative. "The factuality corresponding to the idea of freedom is that of praxis" (185). In one of the strongest statements to be found anywhere in his writings in... (shrink)

We explore two special challenges indigenous peoples pose to the idea of sovereigns as trustees for humanity. The first challenge is rooted in a colonial history during which a trusteeship model of sovereignty served as an enabler of paternalistic colonial policies. The challenge is to show that the trusteeship model is not irreparably colonial in nature. The second challenge, which emerges from the first, is to specify the scope and nature of indigenous peoples’ sovereignty within the trusteeship model. Whereas the (...) interaction between states and foreign nationals is the locus of cosmopolitan law, the relationship between states and indigenous peoples is distinctive. In the ordinary cosmopolitan case, foreign nationals do not purport to possess legal authority. Indigenous peoples often do make such a claim, pitting their claim to authority against the state’s. We discuss how international law has attempted to come to grips with indigenous sovereignty by requiring states to include indigenous peoples in decision-making processes that affect their historical lands and rights. A crucial fault line in the jurisprudence, however, separates a duty to consult indigenous peoples from a duty to acquire their free, prior and informed consent. The latter but not the former recognizes that indigenous peoples possess a veto over state projects on their lands, in effect recognizing in them a limited co-legislative power. We focus on recent jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and consider whether either the duty to consult or FPIC are enough to dispel the shadow of the trusteeship model’s colonial past. We suggest that they are a move in the right direction, and that implicitly they represent international law’s recognition that states are no longer the sole bearers of sovereignty at international law. In limited circumstances, international law recognizes indigenous peoples as sovereign actors. (shrink)

Locke's Second treatise in context -- The life and times of John Locke -- The political and philosophical context of the Second treatise -- Overview and key themes -- The Second treatise in Locke's philosophy -- Key themes -- Reading the text -- Getting started: the problem of absolutism -- From the First treatise to the Second treatise -- The state of nature -- Equality -- Freedom -- The law of nature -- Right and duty to punish: executive power (...) of the law of nature -- Natural rights -- State of nature, history and realism -- The state of war and slavery -- War -- Slavery -- Private property -- Self-ownership -- Original acquisition -- World ownership and equality -- The invention of money -- Property and colonial acquisition -- Patriarchal power and the family -- The status of children -- The duty of parents and the role of the family -- The obligations of children and parents -- The conjugal or sexual contract -- The origins of political society -- The original contract -- The second stage agreement and the role of majorities -- The problem of consent -- The Lockean state -- Legislative power -- Executive power -- Prerogative -- Conquest, tyranny and the dissolution of the state -- Conquest -- Usurpation -- Tyranny, rebellion and resistance -- When to rebel and resist? -- Reception and influence -- Locke's influence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- History, religion and Locke: contemporary interpretations of Locke -- Locke, property and contemporary liberalism -- Notes -- Further reading -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

Land is a constitutional issue in Ethiopia. Article 40 of the FDRE constitution enshrines governing provisions about rural and urban land. Legislation power is given to the federal government (Article 51(5) of the constitution) although this power can be delegated to regions (Article 50(9) of the same constitution). In contrast, administration power is allocated to regions (Article 52 (2(d)) of the constitution). The federal government has enacted the Rural Land Administration and Use Proclamation 456/2005. Both federal and (...) regional land laws have Alternative Dispute Resolution clauses. However, the opportunities and challenges of these clauses from the access to justice perspective are not studied very well. The main objective of this paper is to assess the legal framework and practice of ADR mechanisms in the rural land administration system from the access to justice perspective and come up with a policy option. Doctrinal type of legal research is applied where it involves theory testing which deals with studying existing laws (both federal and regional laws). In addition, both primary and secondary sources have been used. Primary qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The study found that there are legal constraints. One significant legal constraint is the requirement for mandatory mediation in certain regional states before seeking recourse in a court of law. Mediation is not clearly and uniformly applied per the law and in practice (often the practice and legal framework confuse mediation with arbitration, inappropriately giving decision-making powers to mediators, and turning them into arbiters). Women and Vulnerable Groups are generally more negatively affected by the overreaching of mediators into decision-making, because the mediators are more easily influenced by the party opposing women and Vulnerable Groups, and/or the mediators are culturally biased. This study recommends that mediation should be made optional, where mediators are chosen by the parties and the legal framework is clear that the role of the mediators does not involve imposing decisions. For Oromia and SNNPR, the legal regime of mediation should be clarified to avoid confusion with the arbitration. It is necessary to train community-level mediators in the law and the protection of land rights of Vulnerable Groups against gender discrimination. (shrink)

The first step in education's long road to respectability lay in the ability of its proponents to demonstrate that it was worthy of collaborating with traditional disciplines in the syllabus of higher learning. The universities where the infant discipline of education was promoted benefited from scholars who engaged in teaching and research with enthusiasm and preached the gospel of scientific education. These schools-Teachers College/Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University-gained a reputation as oases of pedagogical knowledge. Soon, public (...) and private colleges alike introduced professional academic programs for the preparation of teachers. Foremost among the subjects for these programs was education philosophy, with its long history and the impeccable credentials of its ancient and modern expositors. Although the principal focus of this study is the history of educational philosophy in colleges and universities, it also recognizes educational philosophy's antecedents. Chapters cover ancient roots, Christian educational theory, educational theory and the modern world, philosophy and education in early America, development of philosophies of education, disciplinary maturity for educational philosophy, and prospects. There is a bibliography and an index. (shrink)

Alison L. LaCroix is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she specializes in legal history, federalism, constitutional law and questions of jurisdiction. She has written a fine, scholarly volume on the intellectual origins of American federalism. LaCroix holds the JD degree (Yale, 1999) and a Ph.D. in history (Harvard, 2007). According to the author, to fully understand the origins of American federalism, we must look beyond the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and range over the (...) colonial, revolutionary, and founding periods including developments in the early republic. LaCroix questions both the idea that American federalism originated, all at once, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the idea that republican ideology (with its strong emphasis on legislative power) was the single dominant framework of eighteenth-century American political thought. Versions and elements of federalist or con-federative ideas were also long present and in a process of development. (shrink)

Discourse analysis is a relatively recent form of inquiry without a strict step‐by‐step method. The methodology of discourse analysis has a longer history in Continental Europe than in other countries.1 The complex theoretical assumptions, the goals and the target (discourse) have been explicated, but the methodology may be applied in different ways. This paper will describe discourse analysis and give examples of some of the possible variations. It is the claim of this paper that discourse analysis deserves consideration as a (...) methodology for nursing inquiry. (shrink)

In Italy a specific legislation on administrative management has been belated and its rhetoric showed to be in contradiction with its practical translation. The relationship between management and politics has been characterized either by an excessive distance or by a pathological proximity or else by indifference towards the ends of the policies that the management should have interpreted. The senior civil service has thus self-excluded from the national elites and it has never really mobilized in the decisional spheres of the (...) country. The essay analyzes, through four periodizing dates, the transformations of the senior civil service and its relationship with the political power in the 150 years of history since the unity of Italy. (shrink)

This paper argues for a fundamental overhaul of the current competence constellation in the EU, which is necessary to address the problem that the current arrangement does not respect the important values that it is supposed to uphold, namely those of democracy, subsidiarity and national diversity. While pretending otherwise, it effectively contains neither negative nor positive EU integration in areas of Member State competence. Furthermore, it enables European integration of these areas through even less accountable intergovernmental mechanisms. It will be (...) argued that the root cause of this problem is that demarcation of competences as a method to contain the EU does not work, because such an approach of ‘categorical federalism’ is bound to fail, especially in the EU context since it is incompatible with the functionality that is written in the legal order’s DNA. It is therefore proposed to dispose of demarcation as a way to contain EU action and instead to openly recognise the inevitable broadness of the EU’s powers while containing the exercise of these powers through a democratisation of the legislative process. The paper tables a number of proposals that on the one hand enhance the EU’s formal legislative powers, while on the other hand strengthen national parliaments in their powers politically to review proposed EU legislation. (shrink)

Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qurʾān. By Gordon Nickel. History of Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 13. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. xx + 244. $146.

The moral economics of the Islamic Action Front, the partisan wing of the original Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, is both defined and compromised by internal inconsistency. Similar to others that might be classified as a socially conservative, religiously-oriented political party, the Islamic Action Front pledges a paternalist commitment to the poor only to undermine the already limited prospects of such paternalism through the adoption of charity-based approaches to social welfare and through their more general advocacy for economic liberalization, free markets, capital (...) mobility, and private initiative. How can one best explain both the contradictions constituting the Islamic Action Front’s economics and the political implications contained within such an economic agenda? This article will review the intersection of local class structure, party ideology, and history so to furnish an answer. (shrink)

Liberty and Law examines a previously underappreciated theme in legal history―the idea of permissive natural law. The idea is mentioned only peripherally, if at all, in modern histories of natural law. Yet it engaged the attention of jurists, philosophers, and theologians over a long period and formed an integral part of their teachings. This ensured that natural law was not conceived of as merely a set of commands and prohibitions that restricted human conduct, but also as affirming a realm of (...) human freedom, understood as both freedom from subjection and freedom of choice. Freedom can be used in many ways, and throughout the whole period from 1100 to 1800 the idea of permissive natural law was deployed for various purposes in response to different problems that arose. It was frequently invoked to explain the origin of private property and the beginnings of civil government. Several kinds of permissive natural law were identified. Permission could be positive or negative, depending on whether it was specifically conceded by a legislator or only tacitly allowed. It could free from sin or merely remit some temporal punishment that was due. It could commend some conduct without commanding it or permit some evil without condoning it. Medieval canonists used the concept of permissive natural law to harmonize the discordant texts that they found in their sources; William of Ockham found it a powerful tool in his defense of Franciscan poverty against papal criticisms; for Richard Hooker it justified both the constitutional structure and the ritual practices of the Anglican church; John Selden used it to uphold the inviolability of contracts, most importantly the contract of government; Hugo Grotius made it a central theme in his treatment of the conduct permissible in waging war; in the eighteenth century Jean Barbeyrac and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui associated the idea with the emerging doctrine of natural rights. In Liberty and Law, Tierney has presented us with a magisterial and provocative way of interpreting legal history. (shrink)

The focus of my dissertation is a general and comprehensive examination of Locke’s view of divine power. My basic argument is that John Locke is a theological voluntarist in his understanding of God’s creative and providential relationship with the world, including both the natural and moral order. As a voluntarist, Locke holds that God freely imposes both the physical and moral laws of nature onto creation by means of his will: this contrasts with the intellectualist perspective in which the (...) laws of nature emerge from the essences of things. For Locke, there are no intrinsically necessary laws in the created order: both physical and moral laws are arbitrary determinations of the divine will. While these laws are not intrinsically necessary, they are hypothetically necessary. Hypothetical necessity involves things that could have been otherwise, but which are necessary based on the supposition of a free action and other relevant conditions pertaining to the actor. Concerning God, we can understand hypothetical necessity in the following way: □ [ → Y]. X is a variable that ranges over a subset of contingent propositions about actions. ‘P’ is the proposition ‘God is perfect’. And Y is any proposition that is a necessary consequent of both X and P. In any possible world in which God performs X, it is the case that Y will obtain. Supposing that God decides to create beings like us, God must of necessity craft the moral laws of nature in a way that harmonizes with our nature. What grounds this necessity is that God must act consistently with the perfection of the divine nature: to give us a different law would be less than perfect. Furthermore, I argue that certain physical laws of nature – those that help to realize our nature – are also hypothetically necessary. (shrink)

The 1981 legislation in Arkansas and Louisiana which required "balanced treatment of creation-science and evolution-science" represents the most ambitious effort of the "scientific creationists" to date to gain equal time for the teaching of the book of Genesis as an alternative and viable scientific theory of origins. The trial testing the constitutionality of the Arkansas law culminated in a powerful and unambiguous decision; however, creationists continue to lobby for similar legislation in many other states. Far from an aberration, today's scientific (...) creationists represent a modern manifestation of a deep fundamentalist current in American social history. (shrink)

Both G.F.W. Hegel and Carl Schmitt took seriously the problem of political sovereignty entailed by liberal political theories. In Dictatorship (1919) and Political Theology (1922), Schmitt rejects liberal political theories that argue for the immediate unity of democracy and legality i.e., popular sovereignty, because he thinks they cannot secure political sovereignty. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel denounces popular sovereignty for similar reasons. Yet given Schmitt’s negative assessment of Hegel their positions are seldom related to one another. I argue in (...) this paper that Schmitt’s analysis of liberal political theories is similar to Hegel’s analysis of Rousseau’s liberal ideas. I contend, however, that Schmitt’s solution, which collapses the distinction between the executive and the legislative power in favor of the former, fails to secure political sovereignty. Contrary to Schmitt, Hegel conceives of the liberal predicament as a basic determination of any political state that rests on the division of the legislative and executive power. Hegel argues that the constitutional monarchy is a genuine instantiation of political sovereignty that can maintain not only the division of these powers, but also their unity. In this regard, I argue that Hegel’s conception of the division of powers provides a more convincing theory of the problem afflicting modern states than Schmitt’s and at least deserves to be taken more seriously by critics of Schmitt’s solution such as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Jurgen Habermas, Andreas Kalyvas and Chantal Mouffe. (shrink)

Heide Gerstenberger’s book offers a comparative view of the origins and emergence of the bourgeois state in England and France. Both, according to her, emerged out of ancien-régime type structures which were themselves distinct from feudalism. Whilst recognising the value of Gerstenberger’s attempt to avoid economic reductionism when explaining changing power-structures, it is suggested that analytical tools such as ‘class’, ‘mode of production’ and the ‘state’, which she confines to capitalism, do have considerable utility for the analysis of precapitalist (...) régimes. More importantly, it is suggested that her attempt to maintain that in England, as in France, an ancien-régime type society endured at least to the end of the eighteenth century obscures the fundamentally divergent paths taken by the two countries. This is compounded by her rejection of the idea of a French absolutism and an underestimation of the extent to which power-structures in England were modified by the precocious development of capitalism. Whilst suggesting that a bourgeois public space was able to develop in the interstices of structures of the ancien régime, Gersternberger fails to recognise the extent to which this had transformed the English polity by the mid-seventeenth century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE IN THE REPRESENTATION OF GOD IN HIS SEMINAL work on the theory of signs, Charles Morris affirms that human beings are " the dominant sign-using animals" and that" the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs-if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning." 1 By means of acculturation we learn to use and interpret signs, both linguistic and (...) non-linguistic; and by virtue of these capacities we can appropriately designate the human animal as homo symbolicus, homo loquens, and homo sapiens. Indeed, all forms of human culture presuppose the ability to use and interpret signs, including that form of human culture which leads us to speak of ourselves as homo religious. Over the years I have come to understand and speak of religion as a community with its cultus. There is the community, be it triba1, national, or universal with its polity or structure and ongoing history; and there is the cultus with its organic system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, encompassing ·such elements as stories, creeds, scriptures, doctrines, theologies, confessions, prayers, chants, songs, rites, rituals, sacraments, artifacts, etc. Like any other cultural system, scheme or network of signs one can characterize a religious cultus as an inter -subjective set of signs whose usage is determined by the implicit or explicit rules that govern the relations of signs to each other; the relations of the signs to the objects which the signs designate or denote, or stand for in some way; and the relations of signs to the users or interpreters of these signs and to those who are affected by these signs in some way. 1 Charles W. Morris, FoundatioJi of the Theory of Signs, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), p. L 6~7 628 WILLIAM L. POWER: Given this understanding of community and cultus, one can describe a religion as an organized group of socially interdependent human beings which uses or employs ·a system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs to represent reality in its various modalities and mixtures of good and evil and to affect human ways of life on the basis of that representation. Altering the terminology somewhat, one could say that a religious community uses its cultus to proclaim, enact, and display a comprehensive worldview.and to form and tr:msform the ethospathos of human beings in their solidarity and solitude. Expressed semiotically, there is the system of signs of a particular community, the intended signification of these signs, and the significance of these signs for those who use and are affected by them. What distinguishes a religion from other forms of human culture is that a rel·igious cultuml sy•stem or a religious community with its cultus is primarily concerned with ultimate or supreme reality or with that which is divine, holy, or sacred and that reality's bearing on and relevance for human life and well-being. In short, a religion is a cultural system which functions to map the whole of re.ality and to acculturate in desirable ways or to civilize. If a religion is a cultural system, then one can identify three distinct yet inseparably related dimensions of every religion. There is 1) the cultural dimension consisting of the interrelruted signs, symbols and expressions of a cultus; 2) the reality and value dimension consisting of the ontological and axiological purport of the cultus; and 3) the experiential dimension consisting of the existential import of the cultus. It is this thioo dimension which has led many in the past and in the present to speak of religion as piety, consciousness of things divine, ultimate concern, religiousness, etc. In the tradition of Peircian semiotics, one can speak of these three dimensions as the syntactic, semantic, and praigmatic dimensions of a religion; and they can be analyzed and studied with the aid of syntactics or syntax, semantics, and pr:agmatics, which as a unity LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE 629 constitute the discipline of semiotics. As Peirce recognized, modem semiotics is continuous with the Medieval trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric-the semiotics of almost a millennium a;go... (shrink)

The recent publication of DSM-5 highlighted the two opposing views that exist within psychology and psychiatry as to how we deal with mental disorders. This book provides an introduction to the history of psychiatry and clinical psychology, looking at how people have attempted to classify the various problems and disorders they face.

Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice. By Marion Holmes Katz. Themes in Islamic History, vol. 6. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 243. $85 ; $29.99 ; $24.

Evil remains a primary source of inquiry in contemporary literature of French expression, even among its most secular writers. In considering French-speaking authors from France, Belgium, the United States, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this collection delineates a rich international perspective on some of the most disturbing events of our time. Each essay testifies to the urgency expressed in works of fiction to give an account of human catastrophes, from the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide to the terrorist attacks of (...) September 11, and the ongoing oppression of women in Islamic nations. Themes underlying this volume include an investigation into the origins of evil, its representations in writing, and the ethical responsibilities of authors who write on human suffering. Contemporary fiction on evil confronts us with fundamental questions: Can evil be attributed to intentionality, is evil "subconscious," or is it the result of impersonal forces? Which styles of writing are ethically appropriate or effective for depicting evil? Can we speak of a veritable "poetics of evil" shared by contemporary authors? When does a literary text on evil become "evil"? In providing informed and nuanced answers to these important questions, the scholars engage in crucial theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, address a number of issues raised by trauma and genocide studies, and draw from critical frameworks in literary theory on testimony, the limits of representing the extreme, and "transgressive" writing. (shrink)

The case of Terri Schiavo, a young woman who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state, has emerged as a watershed in debates over end-of-life care. While many observers had thought the right to refuse medical treatment was well established, this case split a family, divided a nation, and counfounded physicians, legislators, and many of the people they treated or represented. In renewing debates over the importance of advance directives, the appropriate role of artificial hydration and nutrition, and the (...) responsibilities of family members, the case also became one of history's most extensively litigated health care disputes. The Case of Terri Schiavo assembles a team of first-hand participants and content experts to provide thoughtful and nuanced analyses. In addition to a comprehensive overview, the book includes contributions by Ms. Schiavo's guardian ad litem, a neurologist and lawyer who participated in the case, and scholars who examine issues related to litigation, faith, gender, and disability. The volume also includes a powerful dissent from the views of many scholars in the bioethics community. The book is intended for students, health care professionals, policy makers, and other in search of carefully reasoned analyses of the case that will shape our view of death and end-of-life medical care for decades. (shrink)