This article offers a novel account of a key concept in Hannah Arendt’s political thought: amor mundi. In political theory’s ethical turn, theorists have increasingly turned to amor mundi as a source of ethical guidance and inspiration for politics. However, in doing so, they have elided Arendt’s distinct understanding of care. This article recovers Arendt’s understanding of amor mundi as care for the world by reconstructing the central concerns of her dissertation, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, and tracing them to the (...) “Crisis” essays of Between Past and Future. It shows that amor mundi emerges in the dissertation as part of a question: if love is our fundamental orientation toward the world, how can we love the world without instrumentalizing it? The two “Crisis” essays provide the following answer: if love is to avoid—and perhaps militate against—the instrumentalization of the world, it must take the form of care. Following this analysis, this article contends that the contribution of amor mundi to the ethical turn is best understood, not as the ethos needed to guide action in the political realm, but as a key pre- or nonpolitical ethos needed to conserve the world where politics takes place—and thus the very possibility of politics. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held Dec. 4-5, 1998 at the Universit'at G'ottingen.

Does stakeholder theory constitute an established academic field? Our answer is both “yes” and “no.” In the more than quarter-century since Freeman’s seminal contribution in 1984, this domain has acquired some of the administrative, social, and disciplinary trappings of an established field. Stakeholder research has coalesced around a unique intellectual position: that corporations must be understood within the context of their stakeholder relationships and that this understanding must grow out of the interplay between normative and social scientific insights. Yet, much (...) of this domain remains an unexplored territory. In this article, the authors assess the progress to date toward field status and outline future directions for stakeholder research. (shrink)

This book shines bright light into the dim recesses of quantum theory, where the mysteries of entanglement, nonlocality, and wave collapse have motivated some to conjure up multiple universes, and others to adopt a "shut up and calculate" mentality. After an extensive and accessible introduction to quantum mechanics and its history, the author turns attention to his transactional model. Using a quantum handshake between normal and time-reversed waves, this model provides a clear visual picture explaining the baffling experimental results that (...) flow daily from the quantum physics laboratories of the world. To demonstrate its powerful simplicity, the transactional model is applied to a collection of counter-intuitive experiments and conceptual problems. (shrink)

This paper provides preliminary insights into the process of sense-making and developing meaning with regard to corporate social responsibility (CSR) within 18 Dutch companies. It is based upon a research project carried out within the framework of the Dutch National Research Programme on CSR. The paper questions how change agents promoting CSR within these companies made sense of the meaning of CSR. How did they use language (and other instruments) to stimulate and underpin the contextual essence of CSR? Why did (...) they do that in this particular way? What were the consequences of this approach for shaping the process of CSR in their company? Did their efforts contribute to a new way of thinking and acting or was it merely putting old wine in new barrels? A preliminary conclusion is that change agents use above all linguistic artefacts (words and notions) and carry out practical projects while constructing meaning. Still, the meaning of meaning itself remains highly intangible, situational and personality related. (shrink)

Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat--as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography, Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. "America," Jaume says, "was merely a pretext for studying (...) modern society and the woes of France." For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understanding Democracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted--and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism. (shrink)

The territory of time travel has, from the days of H. G. Wells to the mid-1980's, been the exclusive province of writers of science fiction and fantasy. SF critics have even argued that time travel stories are so scientifically unlikely that they should be considered fantasy, not science fiction.

In the contemporary globalized economy, multinational companies have come to hold considerable power that may previously have rested with nation states. However, state structures remain relevant. With Brexit, the year 2016 featured an exemplary case in which the ongoing importance of nation states came to the fore. Preceding the British referendum to exit the European Union, discourses of national identity were deployed to promote a vote for the anti-globalization campaign. It is against this background that this research investigates how the (...) relationship between multinational corporations and nation states is constructed in news discourse. The underlying assumption is that news actively construct rather than merely reflects the nature of this relationship. Drawing on Social Actor Analysis and Transitivity as a theoretical framework, this study examines news coverage of the BP oil spill that occurred in the United States in 2010 but was caused by a multinational company headquartered in the United Kingdom. The main research question is ‘How does the media establish a link between multinational corporations and nation states?’. To address this central question, this study investigates how corporate responsibility is assigned, the role of the nation state is portrayed and victim status is allocated in the news. Findings show that the nature of the problem is constructed differently according to diverging national interests or priorities of the two nations represented by the media sources analyzed. The study indicates that the discourse around British nationality emphasized in the political struggle around Brexit was already mobilized extensively in the years leading up to the referendum. (shrink)

This column is about the heaviest neutron star ever observed, an object that produces the largest gravitational fields ever directly measured. This discovery by X-ray astronomers was reported at the Spring Meeting of the American Physical Society, held April-1998 in Columbus, Ohio. As will be discussed below, the very large mass of the neutron star has important implications for our understanding of the strong nuclear force at very large densities.

Recent research on thick terms like “rude” and “friendly” has revealed a polarity effect, according to which the evaluative content of positive thick terms like “friendly” and “courageous” can be more easily canceled than the evaluative content of negative terms like “rude” and “selfish”. In this paper, we study the polarity effect in greater detail. We first demonstrate that the polarity effect is insensitive to manipulations of embeddings (Study 1). Second, we show that the effect occurs not only for thick (...) terms but also for thin terms such as “good” or “bad” (Study 2). We conclude that the polarity effect indicates a pervasive asymmetry between positive and negative evaluative terms. (shrink)

Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics deals with these problems is reviewed. A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the transactional interpretation, is presented. The basic element of this interpretation is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced and retarded waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The transactional interpretation is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal. (...) A detailed comparison of the transactional and Copenhagen interpretations is made in the context of well-known quantum-mechanical Gedankenexperimenre and "paradoxes." The transactional interpretation permits quantum-mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as "mathematical representations of knowledge" as in the Copenhagen interpretation. The transactional interpretation is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum-mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its "collapse." It also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Born probability law (P = ii iij*), basic elements of the Copenhagen interpretation. (shrink)

The problem of the direction of electromagnetic time, i.e., the complete dominance of retarded electromagnetic radiation over advanced radiation in the universe, is considered in the context of a generalized form of the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in an open expanding universe with a singularity atT=0. It is shown that the application of a four-vector reflection boundary condition at the singularity leads to the observed dominance of retarded radiation; it also clarifies the role of advanced and retarded waves in the emission (...) of very weakly absorbed radiation such as neutrinos. (shrink)

Alternate View Column AV-70 Keywords: Casimir effect negative energy quantum nonlocality tachyons extra dimensions Published in the February-1995 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine ; This column was written and submitted 7/13/94 and is copyrighted ©1994 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

Alternate View Column AV-02 Keywords: cosmology, bubble, universe, inflation Published in the September-1984 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine; This column was written and submitted 2/10/84 and is copyrighted ©1984, John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

Alternate View Column AV-19 Keywords: cosmic strings, gravitational lensing, angle deficit, superconductor, space drive Published in the April-1987 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine; This column was written and submitted 9/19/86 and is copyrighted © 1986, John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

La théorie lockienne de la perception a été lue tantôt comme une forme de représentationnalisme, tantôt comme relevant d'un réalisme direct n'impliquant pas d'entité intermédiaire entre l'esprit et les choses. Cet article entreprend de clarifier cette question à partir des analyses de l'Essai sur la distinction et la confusion des idées. Celles-ci interrogent à la fois la nature de l'idée comme image et le fait qu'elle n'est déterminée que lorsque l'esprit lui donne un nom. Pour faire comprendre ce dernier point, (...) Locke utilise la métaphore de l'anamorphose en peinture, et plus particulièrement de l'anamorphose cylindrique. En reliant cette métaphore aux théories de la perspective du XVIIe siècle, à la camera obscura de l'esprit, et enfin à l'optique du XVIIe siècle, l'article parvient à plusieurs conclusions. Faire de l'idée une image ne conduit jamais Locke à voir en elle un objet qui s'interpose entre l'esprit et les choses. Une idée comme celle de sense data est étrangère à sa pensée. Si Locke ne met jamais en doute la réalité du monde extérieur, c'est que pour lui l'idée nous donne d'emblée accès à une extériorité, qu'il s'agit de déterminer. Enfin, la perception lockienne ne relève pas d'un modèle sémantique dont l'origine serait à trouver dans Descartes et qui préparerait celui de l'empirisme du XVIIIe siècle, faisant de l'idée un signe. Elle se rapprocherait plutôt, paradoxalement, de l'idée austinienne du silence des sens. (shrink)

In this landmark work of economic sociology, Lucien Karpik introduces the theory and practical tools needed to analyze markets for singularities. Singularities are goods and services that cannot be studied by standard methods because they are multidimensional, incommensurable, and of uncertain quality. Examples include movies, novels, music, artwork, fine wine, lawyers, and doctors. Valuing the Unique provides a theoretical framework to explain this important class of products and markets that for so long have eluded neoclassical economics. With this innovative (...) theory--called the economics of singularities--Karpik shows that, because of the uncertainty and the highly subjective valuation of singularities, these markets are necessarily equipped with what he calls "judgment devices"--such as labels, brands, guides, critics, and rankings--which provide consumers with the credible knowledge needed to make reasonable choices. He explains why these markets are characterized by the primacy of competition by qualities over competition by prices, and he identifies the conditions under which singularities are constructed or are in danger of losing their uniqueness. After demonstrating how combinations of the numerous and multiform judgment devices can be used to identify different market models, Karpik applies his analytical tools to the functioning of a large number of actual markets, including fine wines, movies, luxury goods, pop music, and legal services. (shrink)

The pivotal problem of comorbidity research lies in the psychometric foundation it rests on, that is, latent variable theory, in which a mental disorder is viewed as a latent variable that causes a constellation of symptoms. From this perspective, comorbidity is a (bi)directional relationship between multiple latent variables. We argue that such a latent variable perspective encounters serious problems in the study of comorbidity, and offer a radically different conceptualization in terms of a network approach, where comorbidity is hypothesized to (...) arise from direct relations between symptoms of multiple disorders. We propose a method to visualize comorbidity networks and, based on an empirical network for major depression and generalized anxiety, we argue that this approach generates realistic hypotheses about pathways to comorbidity, overlapping symptoms, and diagnostic boundaries, that are not naturally accommodated by latent variable models: Some pathways to comorbidity through the symptom space are more likely than others; those pathways generally have the same direction (i.e., from symptoms of one disorder to symptoms of the other); overlapping symptoms play an important role in comorbidity; and boundaries between diagnostic categories are necessarily fuzzy. (shrink)

In October-2010 the headlines of the science press were dominated by the announcement of the discovery of a “Goldilocks Planetâ€, Gleise 581g, which has a mass not too different from that of the Earth and has an orbit squarely in the middle of the habitable zone of its parent star. It was supposed to be not too hot, not too cold, but just right for the evolution of life. Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz, the lead author of the paper, (...) was quoted (out of context) as saying, “The chances of life on the planet are 100%.†Now that some of the dust has settled concerning this reported discovery, I’d like to have a look at the work behind the announcement and consider its present status. (shrink)

Why is gravity so weak? Why are the color forces between quarks so strong? In the standard model of particle physics, why are there so many different energies at which distinct fundamental forces are supposed to "unify", and what determines these widely separated energies? The answers to these questions may be provided by extra dimensions curled into loops a millimeter around. In other words, our universe may be only a millimeter across, in directions we are not yet able to perceive. (...) In this column we'll consider millimeter-size extra-dimensional loops and their implications. (shrink)

Cet essai dénonce comme fascisantes certaines tendances de la pensée des philosophes déconstructivistes. Selon l'auteur, ils ont fait l'apologie d'un nouveau nihilisme qui a eu pour résultat des phénomènes paradoxaux tels que la sympathie envers l'islamisme radical, le détournement des arts ou la naturalisation de la crise des institutions.

L’alpinisme, pour Pierre-Henri Frangne, est d’abord une expérience. Spécialiste de philosophie de l’art, professeur à l’université de Rennes, auteur d’ouvrages sur la photographie et le cinéma, Monteverdi et Mallarmé, il pratique cette activité tous les étés depuis près d’une vingtaine d’années. Ses domaines de recherche l’ont déjà amené à écrire sur la montagne comme objet esthétique et sur la photographie de montagne. Mais ce nouvel ouvrage est cette fois d’abord une interrogation, à la pre...

Alternate View Column AV-97 Keywords: super-lasers space molecules atom lasers 4-wave mixers direct CP violation matter-antimatter asymmetry K0 mesons Published in the October-1999 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine ; This column was written and submitted 03/28/99 and is copyrighted ©1999 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

Alternate View Column AV-109 Keywords:carbon nanotube space orbital elevator high tensile strength conductor semiconductor hydrogen energy storage Published in the December-2001 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine ; This column was written and submitted 6/19/2001 and is copyrighted ©2001 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

Lucien Sève (1926–2020) was one of the foremost Marxist theoreticians of the Parti Communiste Français. An indomitable opponent of both structural and humanist Marxism, his 1973 article reprinted below represents the core of his conception of alienation. For Sève, whilst the mature Marxism of Das Kapital is fundamentally distinct from the speculative humanism of the 1844 Manuscripts in placing capital, not abstract labour, at the heart of alienation, this reinforces, rather than replaces, the role of alienation at the centre (...) of Marx’s mature thought, and hence of Marxism itself. (shrink)

Im Jahr 1966 erschien mit dem Band "Spinozas Philosophie des Absoluten" im Verlag Vittorio Klostermann der erste Band einer Reihe, in der Wolfgang Cramer unter dem Titel "Die absolute Reflexion" in fünf Bänden eine Summe seines philosophischen Lebenswerkes ziehen wollte. 1967 legte Cramer mit "Gottesbeweise und ihre Kritik" einen zweiten Band vor; die weiteren drei geplanten Bände "Das transzendentale Subjekt", "Die absolute Reflexion in der Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus" und "Die absolute Reflexion" sind nicht mehr erschienen. Dass (...) class='Hi'>Cramer jedoch auch in seinen letzten Lebensjahren an der weiteren Durchführung seines philosophischen Gesamtvorhabens gearbeitet hat, geht einerseits aus seinen letzten Veröffentlichungen, andererseits aus Schriften hervor, die sich in seinem Nachlass oder in den Händen seiner Schüler und philosophischen Weggefährten befanden. Herausgegeben von Konrad Cramer, Sohn Wolfgang Cramers und emeritierter Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Göttingen, werden nun diese Arbeiten aus dem Nachlass erstmals veröffentlicht. Cramers Schriften, deren erste im Verlag Klostermann 1957 erschienene "Grundlegung einer Theorie des Geistes" von Dieter Henrich als "einziges grundlegendes systematisches Werk, das nach 1945 in Deutschland veröffentlicht wurde" bezeichnet wurde, standen mit ihrem Beharren auf der Möglichkeit der Begründung einer rationalen Metaphysik zur Zeit ihres Entstehens quer zum Geist des "nachmetaphysischen Zeitalters". Die Texte dieses Bandes dokumentieren den Gang des Cramerschen Denkens hin zu einer Philosophie des Absoluten - einer systematisch begründeten Bestimmung des Absoluten aus absoluter Voraussetzungslosigkeit, die Hand in Hand geht mit Cramers Ausarbeitung einer Theorie des Geistes als einer Ontologie der konkreten singulären Subjektivität. Wolfgang Cramer (1901-1974) war Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Frankfurt am Main. Durch seine seit 1957 durchgängig bei Klostermann erschienenen Bücher wurde er zu einem der wichtigsten systematischen Philosophen im Deutschland der sechziger Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

Alternate View Column AV-58 Keywords: Japan science fiction HamaCon physics Tscuba KEK TRISTAN Published in the April-1993 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine ; This column was written and submitted 9/17/92 and is copyrighted ©1992 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without prior explicit permission of the author.

Alternate View Column AV-38 Keywords: special relativity, twin paradox, time dilation, starship, Einstein, Lorentz factor Published in the March-1990 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine; This column was written and submitted 8/20/89 and is copyrighted © 1989, John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

The concept of ‘world visions’, first elaborated in the early work of Georg Lukàcs, is used here as a tool whereby the similarities between Pascal’s Pensées and Kant’s critical philosophy are contrasted with the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume. For Lucien Goldmann, a leading exponent of the most fruitful method of applying Marxist ideas to literary and philosophical problems, the ‘tragic vision’ marked an important phase in the development of European thought from rationalism and empiricism to (...) the dialectical philosophy of Hegel, Marx and Lukàcs. The book is not a collection of isolated essays on Kant, Pascal, Racine, the status of the legal nobility in seventeenth-century France and the exact nature of the religious movement known as Jansenism, but an attempt to formulate, by an examination of these different topics, a general approach to the problems of philosophy, of literary criticism, and of the relationship between thought and action in human society. (shrink)