This article examines the Asian storytelling model ‘Kishotenketsu’, identifying its similarities with, and differences from, the classical Western model of dramaturgical plot construction. The ‘Kishotenketsu’ structure is used in poetry, literature, documentation, scientific research dissertations, music, and video game design. The article examines the application of this model in feature films. From the directing point of view, researchers have studied films with different artistic trends and from different production countries and discovered scripting and directing techniques having the elements of the (...) Asian model. Through the comparative analysis of the world films with those from Kazakhstan, this study attempted to reveal the use of the ‘Kishotenketsu’ model and its separate elements in the process of making films by prominent filmmakers in the past and the present from different countries. The films were studied in the context of screenwriting, visual storytelling, and editing. The study found that the ‘Kishotenketsu’ model is found in Kazakh cinematography in the direction of Art cinemas. The authors believe that ‘Kishotenketsu’ model will add more artistic value to the Kazakh cinema, allowing filmmakers to diversify unconventional ways of storytelling and filmmaking in the genres of both auteurs’ cinema and commercial cinema. (shrink)

Chaos and Cosmos offers a new and unique interpretation of Argentine essayist and fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges as a thinker of what continental twentieth century political theory called the political. While not a political writer in the traditional sense, Borges was indeed an author whose response to the advent of totalitarianism, in particular in its Nazi form, generated the most experimental, insightful, and rigorous short fiction and non-fiction political interrogation. -/- As is well known, Borges’ writing went beyond originality; (...) it created a genre of its own, and the Borgesian style is not limited to form. This Borgesian style fundamentally relates to how his response to the advent of totalitarianism led to sharp and philosophically sophisticated interrogations-in-fiction of the political, understood in this book as related to three main distinctive dimensions: that of the question of the forms of society, that of the relationship between the imaginary and the real, and that of the relationship between the same and the other. -/- Chaos and Cosmos introduces the reader to Borges as an experimental writer, as an Argentine citizen, as a thinker of global political phenomena, and as a South American Pragmatist. The book also makes incursions in a political theorizing of its own, intertwining an interpretation of Borges’ essays and fiction pieces from the 1930s and 1940s with the central concerns of philosophers and political thinkers such as William James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort, Michael Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Judith Butler. (shrink)

Es bien conocido el aprecio que desde hace tiempo tiene la Iglesia por el método ver-juzgar-actuar, sin embargo, las reflexiones de la filosofía y la sociología hacen considerar hoy la necesidad de enriquecer el momento del ver, con unos elementos fenomenológicos y hermenéuticos que lo hagan más histórico y menos objetivista y de lograr además una mayor interacción entre los tres momentos. En este sentido, la investigación propone la inserción de las historias de vida de las personas y las comunidades (...) como un camino nuevo de conocimiento de la realidad. En efecto, la realidad no sólo consiste en el hecho desnudo, sino también en el hecho tal y como lo percibe el sujeto; no sólo es suceso, sino también narración. Así, las historias de vida, y el consecuente método autobiográfico constituyen, según la investigación, un recurso vital en la planificación pastoral; no simplemente un apéndice secundario o un recurso simplemente aplicativo, sino, un momento intrínseco de la reflexión y de la experiencia teológica y pastoral. It is well-known the log lasting appreciation of the church for the method see-judge-act, however the current philosophical and sociological considerations are considering the need for an enrichment of the moment of seeing with some phenomenological and hermeneutical elements which could make it more historical and less objective and to achieve, moreover, a major interaction among the three moments. In this sense, the research proposes also the introduction of the stories of people’s lives and of the communities as a new way of awareness of reality. Indeed, reality is not only in the naked event, but also in the event as it is seen by the subject; not only the happened event, but also its narration. For this reason, the life stories and the autobiographical method are, according to the research a vital resource in the pastoral planning; not simply a secondary appendix or a applicative type, but as an intrinsic moment of the theological and pastoral reflection and experience. (shrink)

This book focuses on Andrew Arato’s democratic theory and its relevance to contemporary issues such as processes of democratization, civil society, constitution-making, and the modern Executive. Andrew Arato is -both globally and disciplinarily- a prominent thinker in the fields of democratic theory, constitutional law, and comparative politics, influencing several generations of scholars. This is the first volume to systematically address his democratic theory. Including contributions from leading scholars such as Dick Howard, Ulrich Preuss, Hubertus Buchstein, Janos Kis, Uri Ram, Leonardo (...) Avritzer, Carlos de la Torre, and Nicolás Lynch, this book is organized around three major areas of Arato´s influence on contemporary political and social thought. The first section offers a comprehensive view of Arato’s scholarship from his early work on critical theory and Western Marxism to his current research on constitution-making and its application. The second section shifts its focus from the previous, comprehensive approach, to a much more specific one: Arato´s widespread influence on the study of civil society in democratization processes in Latin America. The third section includes a previously unpublished work, ‘A conceptual history of dictatorship (and its rivals,)’ one of the few systematic interrogations on the meaning of a political form of fundamental relevance in the contemporary world. Critical Theory and Democracy will be of interest to critical and social theorists, and all Arato scholars. (shrink)

Le discours managérial constitue un véritable genre et représente une catégorie particulière au sein des énoncés performatifs. L’objectif annoncé de présentation des orientations stratégiques et de dynamisation des équipes s’accompagne d’une mise en scène particulière qui constitue une des conditions de sa félicité, de son accomplissement. Le contexte d’internationalisation et d’interdépendance dans lequel se déroule l’activité des entreprises renforce la stéréotypie de ce langage qui mobilise un format, un vocabulaire et une syntaxe particulière marqués par l’anglicisme et l’asyncticité. Destiné à (...) unifier et à galvaniser les équipes, ce langage est porteur de signes de pouvoir et de distinction, il exclut plus qu’il n’inclut, génère la perplexité et le désarroi et s’inscrit dans une stratégie du flou qui semble être le seul mode contemporain de l’avenir économique. Circulant à l’envi dans la communauté internationale et de la finance qu’il unifie à sa manière, il a une force incantatoire sur la scène financière et médiatique mais un impact paradoxal sur le travail quotidien des hommes et des femmes. Langage de la spéculation et de l’anticipation, il est plus proche des discours de la performance que des énoncés performatifs.Managerial language is a genre in itself and makes up a particular category of performative speech. The stated objective when presenting strategic goals or team building strategies is always dressed up in a particular way that will determine its aptness and success. The context of internationalisation and interdependence in which business activities take place reinforces a stereotype of management-speak, based on a particular format, vocabulary and grammar permeated by anglicisms and lack of syntax. Aimed at unifying and galvanising business teams, « corpu-speak » conveys a sense of power and distinctiveness, suggests exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness, generates bewilderment and anxiety and is very much at one with the strategy of obfuscation that seems to be the sole contemporary register where the economic future is concerned. Circulating freely within the international and finance community and uniting it as it goes, it acts with the hypnotic effect of incantation on the financial and media scene but has a paradoxical impact on the daily working lives of men and women. As the language of speculation and anticipation, it is more akin to performance discourse than to performative speech. (shrink)

This paper defines and defends time-slice epistemology, according to which there are no essentially diachronic norms of rationality. First I motivate and distinguish two notions of time-slice epistemology. Then I defend time-slice theories of action under indeterminacy, i.e. theories about how you should act when the outcome of your decision depends on some indeterminate claim. I raise objections to a theory of action under indeterminacy recently defended by Robbie Williams, and I propose some alternative theories in its (...) place. Throughout this discussion, I defend a more general moral about action under indeterminacy, namely that time-slice theories are supported by strong analogies with ethical theories. In particular, our understanding of agents torn between interpretations of a decision situation should be guided by our theories of agents torn between incommensurable values. (shrink)

Political science in the West has long dealt quasi-exclusively with the experiences of the stable two-party systems of the Anglo-American type and the so-called continental European polities.The smaller European democracies have been neglected. Belgium too was terra incognita to most political scientists.In the late sixties the tide has turned. A vast literature on the political processes of countries such as Belgium has come into being. This article deals with studies on Belgian politics which have been published in the United States (...) and in Britain between 1965 and 1975.Two themes in particular were selected: «verzuiling» and « he politics of accomodation». The main conclusion is that the studies under review have added a considerable amount of insights, findings and hypotheses to our knowledge of political processes in Belgium. We might impute this positive balance to three characteristics which mark most of these studies : a strong tendency towards comparative analysis, the use of fruitful theoretical concepts, and the use of sophisticated techniques for handling empirical data. (shrink)

L’origine iranienne du titre de « Vivificateur », donné en 4Q521 au héros eschatologique, auteur de la résurrection, a été établie dans un article antérieur. On suit ici le parcours du « Vivificateur » dans la littérature juive de langue grecque, dans le Nouveau Testament et dans les Actes de Thomas. In a former article we established that the title « Life-Giver » – which is attributed to an eschatological hero in 4Q521, who brings about the resurrection – has an (...) Iranian origin. Here we follow the track of the « Life-Giver » in Jewish literature written in Greek, in the New Testament and in the Acts of Thomas. (shrink)

D’où vient le jargon scientifique ? Quel lien l’éditeur et l’auteur entretiennent-ils dans l’écriture ? Pascal Rouleau, s’appuyant sur son expérience, montre qu’il faut distinguer trois domaines d’écriture, la création, le jargon et les langages techniques, et que l’éditeur ne doit pas chercher à vulgariser à tout prix.Where does scientific jargon come from? How do publishers and authors relate to each other in the writing process? Pascal Rouleau, drawing on his own experience, shows that a distinction has to be made (...) between three kinds of writing – creative writing, jargon and technical language – and that publishers should not attempt to « popularise » at any cost. (shrink)

In this paper, we bring together Foucault's biography and oeuvre to explore key concepts that support the analysis of nurses' acts of resistance. Foucault reflected on the power relations taking place in health services, making his contribution especially useful for the analysis of resistance in this context. Over three decades, he proposed a nonnormative philosophy while concomitantly engaging in transgressive practices guided by values such as human rights and social justice. Hence, Foucault's philosophy and public activism are an apparent (...) contradiction, but we argue that when analysed together they allow for a different understanding of his work. We describe the evolution of the concept of resistance in Foucault's work, supported by the approaches of Brent Picket (1996) and Miguel Morey (2013). Foucault started his work considering the idea of transgressiveness as it connects to being at the margins of society. He then spent considerable time elaborating the concept of power and identifying resistance strategies as forms of power exercise. In doing so, he considered that people engage with social change from multiple positions, including limited desire for change, fomenting reforms, or engaging in everyday revolutionary acts. As he further elaborated on power relations and defined resistance, Foucault asserted that resistance involves both repressive and productive dimensions of power, governance of biological life, state governance, and deliberate practices of illegalisms. Finally, Foucault shifted his attention to the freedom of ethical subjects, proposing the use of counter‐conduct and counter‐discourses to speak truth against oppression. Such framework offers a comprehensive lens for analysing nurses' acts of resistance within the complexities of the healthcare system and in society. In summary, Foucault's conceptual framework on resistance expands the role of nurses, to understand them not only as caregivers, but also as political agents capable of confronting and transforming oppressive institutional practices. (shrink)

In June 1979, Congress passed the Espionage Act, the first act of the three secrecy-defining statutes that have shaped so much of the last hundred years of modern American secrecy doctrine. Together with two other statutes that followed in later decades-the Atomic Energy Acts of 1946 and 1954, and the Patriot Act of 2001-these three Acts picked out inflection points in the great ratcheting process that has expanded secrecy from the protection of troop positions and recruitment stations through (...) an entire field of the physical sciences to almost the whole of government and civil society. Along with a surround of orders, directives, laws, and policies, these three Acts ground the modern world of national security secrecy. Necessarily schematic, my aim here is to follow the long term history of secrets over the last hundred years, using the debates and cases that that encircled them to understand better the governing principles of what information had to be hidden. What dangers did each period identify among things that should be secret? What were the properties and assumed power of these secrets? What kind of thing could, in the end, properly be declared secret? In short, I am interested in using the Acts to fix what it is that secrets were: An historically changing ontology of secrets from World War I through the Long War, and finally into the Terror Wars, our unbounded conflict. (shrink)

Pour prouver que l'Instinct est une réalité scientifiquement établie, l'auteur procéde comme suit. Répondant à ceux qui prétendent qu'il n'a jamais été possible d'en donner une définition satisfaisante, il cite trois formules qui décrivent avec toute la clarté désirable les conditions observables de certains comportements nettement innés et spécifiques, instinctifs donc; Il réfute les raisonnements d'auteurs qui, dissimulant l'action de l'Instinct derriére le rôle rempli par des facultés auxiliaires, mémoire, intelligence, ont cru par cet artifice pouvoir prétendre que „l'Instinct n'est (...) rien“. Il analyse des raisonnements qui ont été élaborés pour démontrer que certains Instincts, considérés comme degrés inférieurs et transitoires, sont pratiquement aussi savants, aussi parfaits que ceux acceptés comme tels! Il cite des faits qui montrent que des Insectes vivant à l'état larvaire dans des troncs d'arbres, prévoient, au moment de se chrysalider, quelles seront leur forme et leurs aptitudes, et agissent en conséquence, bien que rien n'ait pu les éclairer à cet égard; Il montre que l'Instinct n'est pas un simple réflexe, qu'il ne dépend pas des sécrétions hormonales et, par l'exemple des Canaris et des Castors du Rhône; il fait voir qu'il est indélébilement inscrit dans la mentalité de l'espéce, et peut se réactiver aprés avoir été inutilisé par des centaines de générations. Il établit enfin que, pour agir comme ils le font, les Animaux doivent être dotés d'une science innée, que rien dans leur passé individuel ne leur enseigne et que l'Instinct est donc, dans sa nature intime, la connaissance héréditaire, virtuelle peut-être, d'un plan de vie spécifique.To prove that instinct is a scientifically established fact, the author proceeds as follows. Replying to the argument that it has never been possible to give a satisfactory definition of instinct, he quotes three formulae stating clearly the observable conditions of modes of behaviour which are incontestably innate and specific and therefore instinctive. He refutes the captious arguments of authors who, concealing the action of instinct behind the part played by auxiliary faculties , try to demonstrate by this artifice that “instinct is nothing” . He criticizes the arguments adduced to demonstrate that certain instincts, considered to be inferior and transitory stages of development are practically as adequate and as skilful as those considered perfect. He quotes facts showing that larvae living in trunks of trees at pupation, act in accordance with their future shape and aptitudes — as if they could foresee these — though nothing could have instructed them in this matter. He demonstrates that instinct is not a simple physiological reflex, that it does not depend on hormonal secretions and, by the example of the Canary-birds and the Beaver , he shows that instinct is ineffaceably stamped in the species mentality, and can reappear after a period of inactivity of several hundreds of generations. Finally he demonstrates that, to be able to act as they do, the animals must be endowed with an innate knowledge which nothing in their individual past can have taught them, and that instinct essentially is: the hereditary knowledge of a specific mode of life.Zum Beweis, dass der Instinkt ein wissenschaftlich begründeter Begriff ist, geht der Autor in folgender Weise vor. Antwortlich des Argumentes, dass es niemals gelungen ist eine befriedigende Definition des Instinktbegriffes anzugeben, gibt der Autor drei Zitate, woraus ganz deutlich die wahrnehmbaren Verhaltensumstände hervorgehen, welche unstreitig angeboren und spezifisch und deshalb instinktiv sind. Er lehnt die Auseinandersetzungen ab von Autoren, welche unter Zurücksetzung der Instinktsaktivität hinter der Funktion der nebensächlichen Aktivitäten wie Gedächtnis und Intelligenz, mittels dieser Manipulation zu beweisen versuchen dass der Instinkt nichts ist. . Er kritisiert die Argumente aufgeführt zum Beweis, dass gewisse Instinkte, betrachtet als subordinierte und vorübergehende Entwicklungstufen, genau so geeignet und fähig sind wie die als perfekt betrachteten Instinkte. Er führt Tatsachen auf, welche zeigen, dass Larven welche sich in Baumstrünken aufhalten sich bei der Verpuppung benehmen in Übereinstimmung mit ihrer künftigen Erscheinungsform und Lebensweise, alsob sie es vorhersehen könnten — obwohl gar keine Instruierung stattgefunden haben könnte. Er zeigt, dass der Instinkt nicht ein einfacher physiologischer Reflex ist, dass er unabhängig ist von Hormonalregulierungen, und mit den Kanarienvögeln und Bibern , als Beispiele zeigt er, dass der Instinkt unauslöschlich eingeprägt ist in der Mentalität der Art, und wieder erscheinen kann nach einer Periode von Inaktivierung von verschiedenen Hunderten von Generationen. Schliesslich konstatiert er, dass die Tiere, dank der Zielstrebigkeit der Handlungen, ausgestattet sind mit einer angeborenen Kenntnis, welche Kenntnis nicht in ihrem vorübergegangenen individuellen Leben angelehrt sein kann, und dass der Instinkt wesentlich ist: die erblich determinierte Kenntnis eines speziellen Lebensplants. (shrink)

This paper aims to determine whether extended human-machine cognitive systems and group systems can be regarded as autonomous agents. For this purpose, I compare two notions of agency: one developed within analytical philosophy of action and based on the concept of intention, and the other introduced by enactivists via the concepts of autopoiesis and sensorimotor autonomy. I argue that only the latter approach can be used to demonstrate autonomous agency in respect of systems that are not humans as such, though (...) they contain humans as their elements. After introducing Maturana and Varela’s conception of minimal autonomy as a kind of generalization of autopoiesis, I present the three conditions of agency put forward by Barandiaran, Di Paolo and Rohde, noting that they do not invoke the property of being alive as necessary in that respect. I argue that both extended and group systems can satisfy these conditions of agency, even though they are not alive as such. The fulfillment of these conditions, however, is ensured by the autopoietic nature of the living components of these systems. That being said, an autonomous system itself does not need to be alive in the biological sense. Sensorimotor, adaptive agency could emerge out of other processes than those responsible for biological life. The article concludes with a suggestion that this is exactly what will happen if an autonomous system is ever artificially created. It would be functionally indistinguishable from a living organism, though not alive in a biological sense. (shrink)

Can we trade in the truths we discover? We show that any public work of truth requires the assistance of three collaborators that we call the Inscriber, the Thinker and the Truthmaker. We then show that if the Inscriber can legitimately trade in his inscriptions, the Thinker should not be authorized to trade in those of his thoughts which are true: because he is not the author of their truth.

This article offers a semiotic perspective on the debate over critical race theory (CRT) bans in the United States. It presents the debate as unfolding in three stages. In the first stage, CRT is created by an opportunistic journalist as a catchall category for white grievances, and the bans themselves are seen as consistent with freedom of speech, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a colorblind society. A semiotic rupture, occasioned by Timothy Snyder’s 2021, _New York Times Magazine_ (...) article “The War on History is a War on Democracy,” ushered in a second stage. By comparing CRT bans to Vladimir Putin’s use of law to deny Soviet past crimes (especially regarding Ukraine), Snyder exposed the CRT bans as willful acts of forgetting past crimes, while indirectly highlighting Putin’s own anti-woke initiatives. This led to the third stage, in which some CRT ban supporters began to view critical race theory as form of communism. Sometimes this use was tactical; in other instances, it reflected a belief that a conspiracy theory, one consistent with white nationalism, according to which cultural Marxists were destroying American society from within. (shrink)

This meditative essay considers what it might mean to “read” text and terrain comparatively, attending to the nuances of poetic and environmental form that shape experience. I explore this notion through a sensorial reading of a thirty-five-acre plot of land in rural Virginia, alongside three poems by American poet Charles Wright, “Sitting Outside at the End of Autumn,” “Lines After Rereading T. S. Eliot,” and “Reading Lao Tzu Again in the New Year.” Examining place in dialogue with poem, I (...) explore how physical and formal elements in both terrains can produce parallel aesthetic, bodily, and emotional effects and resonances. (shrink)

_The Incident at Antioch_ is a key play marking Alain Badiou's transition from classical Marxism to a "politics of subtraction" far removed from party and state. Written with striking eloquence and extraordinary poetic richness, and shifting from highly serious emotional and intellectual drama to surreal comic interlude, the work features statesmen, workers, and revolutionaries struggling to reconcile the nature and practice of politics. This bilingual edition presents _L'Incident d'Antioche_ in its original French and, on facing pages, an expertly executed English (...) translation. Badiou adds a special preface, and an introduction by the scholar Kenneth Reinhard connects the play to Paul Claudel's _The City_, Saint Paul and the early history of the Church, and the innovative mathematical thinking of Paul Cohen. The translation includes Susan Spitzer's extensive notes clarifying allusions and quotations and hinting at Badiou's intentions. An interview with Badiou encompasses the play's settings, themes, and events, as well as his ongoing literary and conceptual experimentation on stage and off. (shrink)

Dans L’esprit en acte, Mathias Girel propose une radiographie non pas d’un courant (le pragmatisme), non pas d’un auteur (James, Peirce ou Dewey), mais d’un moment clé de l’histoire du pragmatisme (les années 1870 à 1900). L’ambition de l’ouvrage est de montrer que les débats actuels sur la nature du rapport entre nos croyances et notre conduite étaient vifs dès la genèse du pragmatisme. Loin d’être dus à une complexification croissante du mouvement pragmatiste, qui verrait l’unité initiale ê...

Marking the 20th anniversary of Belgium’s Kunstenfestivaldesarts—a major international arts festival—this ambitious book examines a wide range of critical perspectives on two decades of performing arts. The authors look closely at performing arts pieces from around the world to see what critiques and insights they reveal about society. Among the topics that these works address are the dialogue between history and memory, the development of a sense of community, the interplay between fiction and reality, and the fine line between a (...) spectator and a witness. In addition to featuring images of the performances, the book includes texts by the artists themselves, sketches, photos, and writings by prominent figures in the fields of philosophy and sociology. _The Time We Share_ attempts to build a global overview of the relationship between performing arts and society and determine how different performances helped shape international thought surrounding specific issues and ideas. (shrink)

Researchers in several academic fields have indicated an increase in academic authorship disputes and the utilization of unethical authorship practices over the past few decades. This trend has been attributed to a variety of factors such as vague authorship guidelines, power disparities between researchers, dissimilar disciplinary and/or journal practices, and a lack of guidance for emerging scholars. As a rapidly emerging academic field, sport management (and its connected sub-fields) maintains the propensity for unclear procedures due to the various departments, schools, (...) and colleges the field calls home (e.g., kinesiology, sport science, education, business), as well as the wide variety of journals that the field’s scholarship resides in. This situation is similar to many emerging or expanding fields as they navigate the university landscape of more established disciplines and fields. Utilizing a three-round Delphi survey method, the current research examined expert opinion on authorship practices in sport management scholarship. Through a combination of open-ended, response, and Likert-type questions, the expert survey attempted to identify areas of consensus and non-consensus in an effort to determine the current status of publication practices in the field, as well as ascertain areas of need for future study and improvement. (shrink)

Philosophy is like a party that started over 2,500 years ago and is still going strong. When you take a philosophy class, you're invited to join this party; but walking into a party 2,500 years late can feel a little awkward. This book is meant to solve that problem. The best way to feel welcome is to focus on how funny philosophy is, simply because its ideals are so high that humans almost never manage to reach them. This book gives (...) three answers to the question "What is philosophy?" (1) Philosophy is a conversation that has been going on for over 2,500 years which has been full of comedy from the beginning and will continue to be funny forever if we do it right. (2) Philosophy is a very awkward business that has always been on the verge of going out of business. (3) Philosophy is something that makes almost everyone write very badly. In addition to this three-act comedy the book also contains two practical guides to being happy and successful in philosophy classes. (shrink)

Class Acts examines two often neglected aspects of Jacques Derrida's work as a philosopher, his public presentations at lectures and conferences and his teaching, along with the question of the "speech act" that links them. What, Michael Naas asks, is one doing when one speaks in public in these ways? The book follows Derrida's itinerary with regard to speech act theory across three public lectures, from 1971 to 1997, all given, for reasons the book seeks to explain, in Montreal. (...) In these lectures, Derrida elaborated his critique of J. L. Austin and his own subsequent redefinition of speech act theory. The book then gives an overview of Derrida's teaching career and his famous "seminar" presentations, along with his own explicit reflections on pedagogy and educational institutions beginning in the mid-1970s. Naas then shows through a reading of three recently published seminars-on life death, theory and practice, and forgiveness-just how Derrida the teacher interrogated and deployed speech act theory in his seminars. Whether in a conference hall or a classroom, Naas demonstrates, Derrida was always interested in the way spoken or written words might do more than simply communicate some meaning or intent but might give rise to something like an event. Class Acts bears witness to the possibility of such events in Derrida's work as a pedagogue and a public intellectual. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to generate a theoretical perspective and a political vocabulary capable of giving an account of political action proper in the context of modern democracy. The first step is that of tracing back to the origins of the theory and practice of modern democracy the appearance of the features that gave shape to the institutional constellation we now understand as democratic politics. This looking back from the perspective of the main institutions of contemporary democracy is (...) structured along the lines of the process that Lefort describes as a split of the theological and the political in early modern times. In Weber, this split takes the form of a multiplication and secularization of prophets, creating the need for a domesticated and democratized version of charismatic leadership that assumes normative standards in his idea of parliamentary democracy. Weber's solution is, of course, the opposite to that of Hobbes': the plurality of gods and demons manifested in the multiplication of prophets should be institutionalized, not eradicated. This dissertation shows that the breakdown of theological regimes and the birth of modern democracy is simply another way to describe the embracement of the fact of plurality. ;With Merleau-Ponty I thus give theoretical consistency to the emergence of modern democratic practices and institutions. In Habermas, on the other hand, I find the difficulties that a model that dismembers the strategic and communicative dimensions of human agency confronts when the task at hand is not that of a moral theory concerned with universal agreement but that of a political theory concerned with the socially enabled fact of plurality. Specifically, I show in my dissertation that Habermas's contempt for Austin's perlocutionary dimension of speech acts and his suggestion that Arendt's notions of action and speech are somehow parallel to his model spring from a still operating uneasiness with political speech and modern democracy in their phenomenal appearance. This dissertation concludes by showing that the theoretical consistency acquired with Merleau-Ponty does indeed provide a theoretical perspective and political vocabulary that puts in relief political action as a fundamental aspect of contemporary democratic politics. (shrink)

This paper argues that Thomas Hobbes?s theory contains an account of progressive defragmentation and unification of power, accompanied by the progression in human reasoning capacities. If the consequence of human nature is abandonment of natural condition and subjection to a sovereign, then similar principles should apply to the sovereigns themselves, since Hobbes sees them as continuing to exist in the state of nature. In turn, the relations between sovereigns must also lead to defragmentation of political authority, either by conquest or (...) through peaceful submission. Total defragmentation of power might also have eschatological consequences, as the unified power of one human being over the whole world would remove?external violence? as a cause of?the dissolution of a commonwealth? while the perfection of reason would progressively remove the?internal? causes. This is a hypothetical situation that could relate Hobbes?s description of the Kingdom of God from Leviathan to his wider political theory by marking the single sovereign representative of now immortal all-encompassing Leviathan as the Antichrist and thus announcing the second coming of Christ. nema. (shrink)

_The Incident at Antioch_ is a key play marking Alain Badiou's transition from classical Marxism to a "politics of subtraction" far removed from party and state. Written with striking eloquence and extraordinary poetic richness, and shifting from highly serious emotional and intellectual drama to surreal comic interlude, the work features statesmen, workers, and revolutionaries struggling to reconcile the nature and practice of politics. This bilingual edition presents _L'Incident d'Antioche_ in its original French and, on facing pages, an expertly executed English (...) translation. Badiou adds a special preface, and an introduction by the scholar Kenneth Reinhard connects the play to Paul Claudel's _The City_, Saint Paul and the early history of the Church, and the innovative mathematical thinking of Paul Cohen. The translation includes Susan Spitzer's extensive notes clarifying allusions and quotations and hinting at Badiou's intentions. An interview with Badiou encompasses the play's settings, themes, and events, as well as his ongoing literary and conceptual experimentation on stage and off. (shrink)

To justify attraction to Dominant Traditional Masculinities (DTM) and lack of attraction to non-aggressive men, some women defend opinions such as “there are no frigid women, only inexperienced men”. Such statements generate a large amount of sexual-affective insecurity in oppressed men and contribute to decoupling desire and ethics in sexual-affective relationships, which, in turn, reinforces a model of attraction to traditional masculinities that use coercion, thus perpetuating gender-based violence. New Alternative Masculinities (NAM) represent a type of masculinity that reacts to (...) reverse such consequences with communicative acts, in which they state that women who support such discourses have never met a NAM man or have never experienced a successful sexual-affective relationship where passion, love, desire, and equality are all included. This article presents data analyzing these communicative acts (exclusory and transformative; language employed and consequences) to ultimately find the key to NAM communication that would contribute to changing attraction patterns. The data was collected using communicative daily life stories of three heterosexual white men and one heterosexual white woman, between the ages of 30 and 40. Findings emphasize the importance of self-confidence manifested by NAM men when communicating about sex and facing these offensive mottos in the presence of other men and women. Findings also demonstrate that supportive egalitarian relationships encourage the emergence of self-confidence in NAM men and that NAM men's self-confident communicative acts foster healthy relationships and obliterate coercive ones. (shrink)

Agents sometimes act for normative reasons—for reasons that objectively favor their actions. Jill, for instance, calls a doctor for the normative reason that Kate is injured. In this article I explore a dispositional approach to acting for a normative reason. I argue for the need of epistemic, motivational, and executional dispositional elements of a theory of acting for a normative reason. Dispositions play a mediating role between, on the one hand, the normative reason and its normative force, and the action (...) on the other hand. Thereby, they help to deal with problem cases such as cases of deviant causal chains and improper instrumental motivation. (shrink)

Some decisions result in cognitive consequences such as information gained and information lost. The focus of this study, however, is decisions with consequences that are partly or completely noncognitive. These decisions are typically referred to as ‘real-life decisions’. According to a common complaint, the challenges of real-life decision making cannot be met by decision theory. This complaint has at least two principal motives. One is the maximizing objection that to require agents to determine the optimal act under real-world constraints is (...) unrealistic. The other is the precision objection that the numeric requirements for applying decision theory are overly demanding for real-life decisions. Responses to both objections are aired in the History section of this chapter. The maximizing objection is addressed with reference to work by Weirich and Pollock, while the precision objection is countered via a proposal by Kyburg and another by Gärdenfors and Sahlin. However, the Current Research section urges a different response to the precision objection by introducing a comparative version of decision theory. Drawing on Chu and Halpern’s notion of generalized expected utility, this version of decision theory permits many choices to be based on merely comparative plausibilities and utilities. Finally, the Further Research section undertakes an open-ended exploration of three of the assumptions upon which this form of decision theory (and many others) is based: transitivity, independence, and plausibilistic decision rules. (shrink)

A social insurance scheme against a short life seems impossible: ex ante (before lengths of life are known), it is hard to identify the persons who will be short-lived, and ex post (once lengths of life are known), it is often too late to compensate the short-lived. However, it is possible to insure persons against a short life by means of age-based statistical discrimination that favours the young in line with the Herod strategy: allocating the good things of life to (...) all young adults improves the situation of the unidentified persons who will die prematurely and reduces the deprivation due to an early death. This article examines three challenges questioning the capacity of the Herod strategy to reduce wellbeing deprivation due to a premature death. First, the limited substitutability between the quantity and the quality of life years makes an efficient insurance scheme against a short life incomplete. Second, the state cannot know ex ante the conception of the good life of the short-lived and must offer baskets of universal means that would improve all kinds of short lives. Such baskets will, under endowment effects, affect the adopted views about the good life, against the ideal of a neutral state. Third, the bias towards the future makes persons spontaneously reallocate the good things of life to later ages, which would defeat insurance against a short life. (shrink)

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) may be the most important health law statute in American history, yet much of the most prominent legal scholarship examining it has focused on the merits of the court challenges it has faced rather than delving into the details of its priority-setting provisions. In addition to providing an overview of the ACA’s provisions concerning priority setting and their developing interpretations, this Article attempts to defend three substantive propositions. First, I argue that the ACA is (...) neither uniformly hostile nor uniformly friendly to efforts to set priorities in ways that promote cost and quality. Second, I argue that the ACA does not take a single, unified approach to priority setting; rather, its guidance varies depending on the aspect of the health care system at issue (Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Medicare, essential health benefits) and the factors being excluded from priority setting (age, disability, life expectancy). Third, I argue that cost-effectiveness can be achieved within the ACA's constraints, but that doing so will require adopting new approaches to cost-effectiveness and priority setting. By limiting the use of standard cost-effectiveness analysis, the ACA makes the need for workable rivals to cost-effectiveness analysis a pressing practical concern rather than a mere theoretical worry. (shrink)

Persons and actions in Christian ethics -- Disruption of proper relation with God and others : sin and sins -- Intimacy with God and self-relation -- Fidelity to God and moral acting -- Truthfulness before God and naming moral actions -- Reconciliation in God and Christian life.

Novels in general use three different modes of reporting: narration, dialogue and description. Understanding that even with a given mode, such as the description of a stone, the relation between the diachronic flow of language and the synchronic focus of attention can be manipulated, we can still note that in general narration reports occurrences in a reading time considerably less than actual time. , dialogue reports occurrence in a reading time roughly congruent with actual time , and description reports (...) occurrences in a reading time considerably greater than actual time . Thus, in the interweaving of narration, dialogue and description a narrative not only defamiliarizes what it reports but guides the reader's consciousness through rhythms of correspondence between reading time and actual time. As long as we do not stay entirely in one mode—and we never do—these rhythms adjust the movement of our consciousness so that unconsciously at least we more or less approach synchronicity, depending on the particular techniques—but we never achieve it. Spatial form may be thought of as a tendency, but in ordinary language it is never achieved. Eric S. Rabkin is professor of English at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The author of Narrative Suspense, The Fantastic in Literature, and many articles on science fiction, he is also the coauthor of Form in Fiction and Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision. He contributed "Metalinguistics and Science Fiction" to the Autumn 1979 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 25 (2005) 49-65 [Access article in PDF] The Three Minds and Faith, Hope, and Love in Pure Land Buddhism Sharon Baker Southern Methodist University,Messiah College Generally, the Buddhist path to nirvana calls a person to leave the mundane life and live as a monk, a sage, or a saint who continually works toward the pure state, toward nirvana. The way to Buddhahood can take the practitioner (...) through the process of death and rebirth for many centuries until he attains enlightenment and nirvana. Hence, Pure Land Buddhism is good news to those forced by karma to live mundane lives keeping house, working a trade, raising children. In other words, Pure Land Buddhism is good news for the common person. Pure Land Buddhism, especially in the thought of Shinran and Tanabe, seeks to provide a straight and easy way for the "small, foolish beings," for the greatest of sinners and those who are most evil. Even the most evil person possessed by blind passions is grasped by the great compassion of Amida Buddha. This great compassion, as revealed in Amida's Vow, knows no limits. Even a person's karmic evil, deep and heavy as it is, is not oppressive for the one who is embraced by the love of Amida Buddha—love that never tires, blessing that constantly protects, compassion that never abandons. The love and compassion of Amida Buddha are realized through his Vow of Great Compassion. Shinran states that "the joy of knowing the wonder and benevolence of the Vow of great compassion that Amida established for us, beings of karmic evil, is boundless and can never be fully expressed, for it surpasses all thought and all words."1 The Vow of Great Compassion The Vow of Great Compassion does not take into consideration whether or not one is good or evil, young or old; only faith matters. Indeed, through faith, the Vow saves all sentient beings, especially those burdened with powerful sins and those torn by great evils. Believing in the Vow, therefore, does not depend upon any other good—no matter how hard he tries, no human being can ever be good enough for salvation without belief in the Vow of Great Compassion.2In an attempt to discover a salvation by faith not generated by an act of human will, Shinran is drawn to the three spiritual attitudes described in the Eighteenth Vow, which states: "If, when I attain Buddhahood, the sentient beings of the ten [End Page 49] quarters with sincere mind entrusting themselves, aspiring to be born in my land, and saying my Name even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment. Excluded are those who commit the five grave offenses and those who slander the right dharma."3 This is the Vow upon which true shinjin4 is based—the Vow of sincere mind and trust. Those who practice the Vow include all the good, the evil, and the foolish, who, after realizing shinjin, are certain of attaining salvation—that is, enlightenment in the Pure Land. Shinran states that "this shinjin is the very cause for the attainment of the supreme enlightenment."5 Birth in the Pure Land, along with supreme enlightenment, is assured for those who have been given true shinjin. Amida and the countless Buddhas in the ten quarters watch over believers and protect them so that they cannot be led astray into strange teachings or tormented by demonic forces. In fact, "Shinran might have said in the modern situation that just as assuredly as the sun rises in the morning, our enlightenment is guaranteed by the Vow."6It is important to note that faith in the Vow of Great Compassion is brought about only by the power and compassion of Amida Buddha. By using various compassionate means, Amida Buddha (and even Sakyamuni) awakens the supreme shinjin in people. Amida and Sakyamuni grasp the person in whom they have awakened shinjin and they never abandon him. There is no calculation on the part of the person whatsoever; there is only... (shrink)

In 'A Theory of Human Action' (1970) Alvin Goldman launched an attack on what has become known as the Anscombe-Davidson Identity Thesis. In brief, this is the thesis that our acts are our body movements, and that all the different effects of that movement do not entail that different acts have been performed, but only that an identical act has different descriptions. In her response to Goldman, Anscombe (1981) claims that Goldman is arguing at cross-purposes. I will argue that this (...) is partially true, but only because she accepts what I shall call the Symmetry Thesis. This thesis in turn is natural if you accept a third thesis called the Irreducibility Thesis. These three theses form a consistent set that the defenders of the Identity Thesis would accept and its detractors would deny. It follows that the best way to attack the Identity Thesis is to attack the Irreducibility Thesis on which it is based. I believe that this can be done and that Goldman is basically right, but I will not be concerned with a full defense of Goldman's method of individuating actions against its competitors. Rather, I want to show the grounds, some of them extralogical, upon which preference can be made. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Acting Person and Christian Moral Life by Darlene Fozard WeaverSameer YadavThe Acting Person and Christian Moral Life By Darlene Fozard Weaver WASHINGTON, DC: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2011. 215 PP. $32.95In this carefully argued and theologically subtle study of human moral agency, Darlene Fozard Weaver describes a large-scale shift in theological ethics away from an “act-centered” approach and toward a more “person-centered” approach. She catalogues the shift via (...) recent debates between those with “traditionalist” and “revisionist” attitudes toward the moral status of particular actions in Roman Catholic ethics. Whereas the traditionalist position claims that the intrinsic evil of particular acts is determinative of the moral blameworthiness of the acting person, revisionists hold that the moral status of any act is more fundamentally determined by the orientation of the person to his or her act. This revisionist movement toward a person-centric analysis reflects a wider trend that also includes Protestant ethics, particularly in the twentieth-century resurgence of virtue ethics prompted by MacIntyre and Hauerwas. [End Page 210]Against this backdrop, Weaver wishes to side neither with those traditional act-centric models that culminated in the regulation of personal acts found in pre–Vatican II penitential manuals nor with the more recent person-centric models that privilege the moral interiority of the acting person. Each, she argues, has its gains and losses. The traditional picture rightly gives our particular actions their own fundamental moral significance, but at the expense of tending toward a kind of Pelagianism. The revisionist picture recognizes the irreducibility of our subjective orientation to particular acts, but it leaves the moral significance of personal actions and our resources for navigating moral dilemmas problematically open-ended. Crucially, both pictures, with their narrow fixation on moral culpability, restrict the moral significance of personal actions.Weaver’s contribution is to sketch an account acknowledging the irreducibility of the fundamental orientation of the acting person to his or her acts, while attending to the way that particular actions retain their power for determining that orientation. She builds a picture of this reflexive relation between person and act by way of its instantiation in the relation of sin to particular sins; intimacy with God as bound up in our actual relations to self and others; fidelity to God as a matter not primarily of moral culpability but of moral responsibility in negotiating the particular demands that others place on us; truthfulness before God as the kind of naming of our actions required by the vision of fidelity shared by our community; and reconciliation with God as realized in the healing enabled by acts of forgiveness for our breaches of fidelity. Each moment in this development of her overall picture carefully builds upon the moment preceding it to produce a rich and compelling picture of human moral economy as an outworking of (rather than meriting of) divine grace.Throughout the book, Weaver’s theological interests in moral theorizing are stressed over the philosophical ones, and this may disappoint readers wondering how a theology of human action supervenes on issues such as (in) compatibilism about free will or the metaphysics of agent causation. Although Weaver’s refocusing of our attention on the significance of particular actions is salutary, her criticism of virtue-based approaches as incomplete is attenuated by her dependence upon the Hauerwasian conception of virtue to explicate the very notion of reflexivity that she defends. Such worries notwithstanding, Weaver has given us an extraordinarily fruitful framework for Christian moral theology. Moreover, it is expressed lucidly and makes excellent use of literary sources and current events to illustrate her analysis. Given its depth and accessibility, the book not only is required reading for Christian moral theologians but also deserves a wider readership from anyone interested in making theological sense of human agency. [End Page 211]Sameer YadavIndiana Wesleyan UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

I advocate Time-Slice Rationality, the thesis that the relationship between two time-slices of the same person is not importantly different, for purposes of rational evaluation, from the relationship between time-slices of distinct persons. The locus of rationality, so to speak, is the time-slice rather than the temporally extended agent. This claim is motivated by consideration of puzzle cases for personal identity over time and by a very moderate form of internalism about rationality. Time-Slice Rationality conflicts with two (...) proposed principles of rationality, Conditionalization and Reflection. Conditionalization is a diachronic norm saying how your current degrees of belief should fit with your old ones, while Reflection is a norm enjoining you to defer to the degrees of belief that you expect to have in the future. But they are independently problematic and should be replaced by improved, time-slice-centric principles. Conditionalization should be replaced by a synchronic norm saying what degrees of belief you ought to have given your current evidence and Reflection should be replaced by a norm which instructs you to defer to the degrees of belief of agents you take to be experts. These replacement principles do all the work that the old principles were supposed to do while avoiding their problems. In this way, Time-Slice Rationality puts the theory of rationality on firmer foundations and yields better norms than alternative, non-time-slice-centric approaches. (shrink)

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

This paper examines the recent prominent view in medical ethics that withdrawing life-sustaining treatment is an act of killing. I trace this view to the rejection of the traditional claim that withdrawing LST is an omission rather than an act. Although that traditional claim is not as problematic as this recent prominent view suggests, my main claim is that even if we accepted that withdrawing LST should be classified as an act rather than as an omission, it could still be (...) classified as letting die rather than killing. Even though omissions are contrasted with acts, letting die need not be, for one can let die by means of acts. The remainder of the paper is devoted to establishing this claim and addresses certain objections to it. (shrink)

The Roman philosopher Boethius is best known for the _Consolation of Philosophy_, one of the most frequently cited texts in medieval literature. In the _Consolation_, an unnamed Boethius sits in prison awaiting execution when his muse Philosophy appears to him. Her offer to teach him who he truly is and to lead him to his heavenly home becomes a debate about how to come to terms with evil, freedom, and providence. The conventional reading of the _Consolation_ is that it is (...) a defense of pagan philosophy; nevertheless, many readers who accept this basic argument find that the ending is ambiguous and that Philosophy has not, finally, given the prisoner the comfort she had promised. In _The Prisoner's Philosophy_, Joel C. Relihan delivers a genuinely new reading of the _Consolation_. He argues that it is a Christian work dramatizing not the truths of philosophy as a whole, but the limits of pagan philosophy in particular. He views it as one of a number of literary experiments of late antiquity, taking its place alongside Augustine's _Confessions_ and _Soliloquies_ as a spiritual meditation, as an attempt by Boethius to speak objectively about the life of the mind and its relation to God. Relihan discerns three fundamental stories intertwined in the _Consolation_: an ironic retelling of Plato's _Crito,_ an adaptation of Lucian's _Jupiter Confutatus,_ and a sober reduction of _Job_ to a quiet dialogue in which the wounded innocent ultimately learns wisdom in silence. Relihan's claim that Boethius's text was written as a Menippean satire does not rest merely on identifying a mixture of disparate literary influences on the text, or on the combination of verse and prose or of fantasy and morality. More important, Relihan argues, Boethius deliberately dramatizes the act of writing about systematic knowledge in a way that calls into question the value of that knowledge. Philosophy's attempt to lead an exile to God's heaven is rejected; the exile comes to accept the value of the phenomenal world, and theology replaces philosophy to explain the place of human beings in the order of the world. Boethius Christianizes the genre of Menippean satire, and his _Consolation_ is a work about humility and prayer. _“Acknowledging that the _Consolation of Philosophy_ is ‘over-familiar and under-read,’ Joel Relihan puts to the side old bromides about the work and instead pays careful attention to the narrative Boethius constructs, grounding his readings in the contexts the work cultivates, especially its Menippean elements. The result is perhaps the first satisfying reading of the _Consolation_ to be produced, a satisfaction felt also in the ways Relihan mirrors Boethius himself in the thoroughness of his scholarship and the elegance of his exposition. No one who studies Boethius will be able to ignore this book.“ — Joseph Pucci, Brown University _ "Anyone who has been fascinated, intrigued, or perhaps puzzled by the meaning, structure, or argument of Boethius's _Consolation of Philosophy_ will find Joel Relihan's new book a welcome addition to the study of this core text of the early medieval world whose influence extends to the present time. Relihan's study is a tour de force that belongs in the library of all those who appreciate Boethius's depth and subtlety. Fortune's wheel has indeed turned in the favor of those who wish to explore with Relihan the intricacies and brilliance of the _Consolation_." —_Fr. John Fortin, O.S.B., Saint Anselm College _. (shrink)

Over evolutionary time, humans have developed a selective sensitivity to features in the human face that convey information on sex, age, emotions, and intentions. This ability might not only be applied to our conspecifics nowadays, but also to other living objects (i.e., animals) and even to artificial structures, such as cars. To investigate this possibility, we asked people to report the characteristics, emotions, personality traits, and attitudes they attribute to car fronts, and we used geometric morphometrics (GM) and multivariate statistical (...) methods to determine and visualize the corresponding shape information. Automotive features and proportions are found to covary with trait perception in a manner similar to that found with human faces. Emerging analogies are discussed. This study should have implications for both our understanding of our prehistoric psyche and its interrelation with the modern world. (shrink)

The theme of _Signifying Acts _is that social acts are created by human agents engaging in signifying gestures and elic­iting determined responses—from which flow a number of consequences. This theme is developed by a critical synthesis of various strands of early and contemporary thought in symbolism, meaning, language, and grammar. These strands have been classified as pragma­tism and interactionism, structuralism and grammatical theory Perinbanayagam brings together for the first time the writings of G. H. Mead and his followers, who label (...) their efforts “symbolic interactionism,” and the re­cent developments in the philosophi­cal and anthropological studies of mind and meaning. Through his wide-ranging analysis, he demonstrates the sociologi­cal relevance of Chomsky, Derrida, and Searle and particularizes their contribu­tions to a more comprehensive theoreti­cal framework. The interdisciplinary scope of his thesis recalls Ernest Becker’s _Birth and Death of Meaning, _and his sty­listic flair will stimulate readers at all levels of sophistication. (shrink)

Although Merleau-Ponty’s early phenomenology of perception and his essays on art, politics, and language already showed an affinity between the aesthetic phenomena of expression and style and the political and cultural dynamics of society at large, this paper specifically focuses on his late theorizing of the notion of flesh and its relevance to his late understanding of politics and democracy. The emergence of flesh as a concept was contemporary to Merleau-Ponty’s break with Marxism as a philosophical model and with revolutionary (...) dialectics as a political project. It is by showing that such a break was consistently grounded on his theorizing of the being flesh of both the body and of society that this paper shows Merleau-Ponty’s unique contribution to democratic theory and to contemporary political philosophy. In the course of this analysis, it will become clear that in philosophically breaking with the position of a “no that is a yes”—i.e. the model of the revolution, which implies a total negation of the given that becomes a total affirmation of the new order (dictatorship) once in power—he would politically embrace the Weberian “heroic liberalism”—or his “non-communist left”—of parliamentary democracy. (shrink)