Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 2 Seiten: 837-860.

The act of animal killing affects the human psyche in manners that are culturally contingent. Throughout history, societal attitudes towards the taking of animal lives have mostly been based on deference and/or dominion. Postdomestic societies have evolved in fundamentally different ways. Meat production is abundant yet concealed, animals are categorized and stereotyped, and slaughter has become a highly disquieting activity. Increased awareness of postdomestic meat production systems raises a moral polemic and provokes disgust in some consumer segments. Overall, a heterogeneous (...) set of solutions has emerged to deal with the societal upset and cognitive dissonance caused by animal slaughter. This includes the so-called carnism approach, a rise in animal welfare programs, a market demand for reassuring narratives, a rehabilitation of the metier of farmers and butchers, crowd butchering, neo-ritualism and home slaughter, the biotechnological exploration of “cultured meat” and “pain-free meat”, entomophagy, “meatless meat”, and the increasing proliferation of vegan and vegetarian lifestyles. (shrink)

We give a definition, in the ring language, of Zp inside Qp and of Fp[[t]] inside Fp), which works uniformly for all p and all finite field extensions of these fields, and in many other Henselian valued fields as well. The formula can be taken existential-universal in the ring language, and in fact existential in a modification of the language of Macintyre. Furthermore, we show the negative result that in the language of rings there does not exist a uniform definition (...) by an existential formula and neither by a universal formula for the valuation rings of all the finite extensions of a given Henselian valued field. We also show that there is no existential formula of the ring language defining Zp inside Qp uniformly for all p. For any fixed finite extension of Qp, we give an existential formula and a universal formula in the ring language which define the valuation ring. (shrink)

The performance of music in early modern French and Italian music rooms typically created an aural impression of ‘Intimacy’ and ‘Clarity’ whereby the individual instruments could clearly be perceived spatially. These qualities arise from the close proximity of the audience to the performers and the acoustic characteristics generated by the room geometry. Generally, the rooms were rectangular with high ceilings, between 4 and 8 metres, with volumes between 200 and 1000 cubic metres. Such rooms, when occupied, have moderate reverberance, which (...) helps maintain the individuality of separate voices. The size and volume also give rise to short-delay reflections from the walls and ceiling, which enhance ‘Clarity’, ‘Intimacy’ and ‘Envelopment’. The acoustic characteristics of these rooms will be discussed in terms of current subjective and objective parameters developed for assessing concert venues. (shrink)

We introduce a very weak language L M on p-adic fields K, which is just rich enough to have exactly the same definable subsets of the line K that one has using the ring language. (In our context, definable always means definable with parameters.) We prove that the only definable functions in the language L M are trivial functions. We also give a definitional expansion $L\begin{array}{*{20}{c}} ' \\ M \\ \end{array} $ of L M in which K has quantifier elimination, (...) and we obtain a cell decomposition result for L M -definable sets. Our language L M can serve as a p-adic analogue of the very weak language (<) on the real numbers, to define a notion of minimality on the field of p-adic numbers and on related valued fields. These fields are not necessarily Henselian and may have positive characteristic. (shrink)

We prove a cell decomposition theorem for Presburger sets and introduce a dimension theory for Z-groups with the Presburger structure. Using the cell decomposition theorem we obtain a full classification of Presburger sets up to definable bijection. We also exhibit a tight connection between the definable sets in an arbitrary p-minimal field and Presburger sets in its value group. We give a negative result about expansions of Presburger structures and prove uniform elimination of imaginaries for Presburger structures within the Presburger (...) language. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper examines the early institutionalization of sociology in Belgium. It displays how different intellectual and social contexts bred their own research interests and research approaches. It shows, more particularly, how ideological affiliations and divisions defined the setting within which this new discipline had to develop in Belgium in the decades around 1900. As a consequence of the ideological controversies, sociology had difficulty gaining legitimacy as a theory-driven analysis of society. Most scholars in Belgium could not avoid taking an explicitly (...) normative position on society. This paper also displays how secularization and the reinforcement of the international level and its infrastructure gradually allowed for more academic autonomy for sociology in Belgium. (shrink)

We prove the triviality of the Grothendieck ring of a Z-valued field K under slight conditions on the logical language and on K. We construct a definable bijection from the plane K 2 to itself minus a point. When we specialized to local fields with finite residue field, we construct a definable bijection from the valuation ring to itself minus a point.

We introduce a new notion of tame geometry for structures admitting an abstract notion of balls. The notion is named b-minimality and is based on definable families of points and balls. We develop a dimension theory and prove a cell decomposition theorem for b-minimal structures. We show that b-minimality applies to the theory of Henselian valued fields of characteristic zero, generalizing work by Denef–Pas [25, 26]. Structures which are o-minimal, v-minimal, or p-minimal and which satisfy some slight extra conditions are (...) also b-minimal, but b-minimality leaves more room for nontrivial expansions. The b-minimal setting is intended to be a natural framework for the construction of Euler characteristics and motivic or p-adic integrals. The b-minimal cell decomposition is a generalization of concepts of Cohen [11], Denef [15], and the link between cell decomposition and integration was first made by Denef [13]. (shrink)

Talcott Parsons is often identified as the ‘master’ of mid-twentieth-century social theory. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, his writings were hardly any longer discussed, but mostly neglected. The American University is Parsons’s last monograph published during his lifetime. On the basis of extensive archival research, this paper discusses the conception, construction and publication of this monograph. The first section clarifies how and why some fine distinctions were made within ‘the team,’ viz. between co-author, collaborator and editorial associate. The second (...) section focuses on the two epilogues of this monograph, viz. Smelser’s epilogue to The American University and Parsons’s epilogue to Smelser’s coeval study on Public Higher Education in California, in which the tensions within ‘the team’ surfaced most visibly. The third section looks at the publication of the monograph and the failed attempts to complete related research projects. Altogether, this reconstruction of the making of The American University clearly illuminates the descending phase of Parsons’s scientific career. It also sheds light on the substantive problems of the work Parsons produced in the latter part of his life and career. (shrink)

We prove the triviality of the Grothendieck ring of a $\mathbb{Z}$-valued field K under slight conditions on the logical language and on K. We construct a definable bijection from the plane K$^2$ to itself minus a point. When we specialized to local fields with finite residue field, we construct a definable bijection from the valuation ring to itself minus a point.

This paper analyses the coevolution of the concept of 'Bildung' (inner-formation, selfcultivation) and the structures of education and society. Although a newcomer to the German language, with a still somewhat obscure meaning, 'Bildung' becomes a key concept in social discourse around 1800. In this paper, I will focus on the concept and its social role in a mainly European context. This paper will deal with the meaning of the concept and with the coevolution of 'Bildung' and societal structures.

This paper analyses the coevolution of the concept of 'Bildung' (inner-formation, selfcultivation) and the structures of education and society. Although a newcomer to the German language, with a still somewhat obscure meaning, 'Bildung' becomes a key concept in social discourse around 1800. In this paper, I will focus on the concept and its social role in a mainly European context. This paper will deal with the meaning of the concept and with the coevolution of 'Bildung' and societal structures.

Constructivism is very influential in education. However, its underlying ideas and assumptions have not yet been critically analysed sufficiently. In this paper, I argue that John Dewey’s analyses of the transaction of organism and environment can be read as an account of the construction processes that lie beneath all human activity. Dewey’s work anticipates, if it does not explicitly articulate, much of what is important and interesting about constructivist epistemology and constructivist pedagogy. The paper is devoted to a reconstruction of (...) the formulation of this transactional constructivism, and to an analysis of its consequences for a constructivist understanding of communication and education. (shrink)

The deliberative model of democracy, as presented by Jürgen Habermas and others, claims to reconstruct the normative content of the idea of democracy. However, since it overemphasises the epistemic facet of decision‐making, the model is unable to take into account other valuable aspects of democracy. This is shown in reference to two concrete phenomena from political reality: majority voting and the problem of the dissenter. In each case, the deliberative model inevitably fails to account for several normatively desirable features of (...) democracy, such as formal political equality and proper respect for the judgement of each citizen. (shrink)

This article offers an overview of the French political philosopher Claude Lefort's oeuvre, arguing that his work should be read as a normative or even universalist justification of democracy and human rights. The notion of history plays a crucial notion in this enterprise, as Lefort demonstrates that there is an ineluctable 'historical' or 'political' condition of human coexistence, a condition that can only be properly accommodated in a regime of democracy and human rights. This reading of Lefort is contrasted with (...) two other interpretations of his work. The first of these, by Sofia Nasstrom, is shown to overlook the importance of history in Lefort's understanding of democracy. The second, by Bernard Flynn, is shown to overlook the universalist implications of Lefort's theory. (shrink)

Many philosophers, past and present, have attempted to eradicate the notion of sovereignty. The most interesting and most ambitious attempt to do so, comes from those philosophers who claim that sovereignty is in principle incompatible with the rule of law. The purpose of this paper is to repel this latter attack. In order to do so, I investigate the analogy between sovereignty and individual autonomy. The resulting conception of sovereignty, ‘sovereignty as autonomy’, shows that sovereignty and the rule of law (...) are utterly compatible. At the same time, this conception conserves what I believe to be the normative core of our modern notion of sovereignty: when speaking of sovereignty, we invoke the perspective from which a political community can consciously understand itself as an autonomous agent. (shrink)

Education cannot mean that the young are the product of the activities of their teachers. At the same time, we do not speak of education if students would simply learn something irrespective of the activities of their teachers. In this paper we focus on the question: How is education possible? Our aim is to contribute to a social theory of education, a theory that does not reduce our understanding of educational processes and practices to underlying 'constituting elements' but rather tries (...) to understand the social nature of education as a reality sui generis. (shrink)

This article attempts to reconstruct a Lefortian account of the phenomenon of political commitment. In a democracy, the gap between the subject of commitment and its object, the domain of politics, is unavoidable. The result is an attitude towards political causes characterized by a two-way movement between an engaged perspective and a more distant, realist perspective. Although the contrast between these two perspectives is disenchanting, we, as democratic citizens, nevertheless have an obligation to hold on to both perspectives simultaneously. Justification (...) of this claim will rely upon a rereading of several key texts by Lefort, such as ‘La politique et la pensée de la politique’ (1963) and Un Homme en trop (1976), in which Lefort analyses the attitudes of his contemporaries toward the Algerian cause and the Soviet regime. This study also sheds new light on the rational impetus behind Lefort's break with Socialisme ou Barbarie and his gradual progression towards a philosophy of democracy. (shrink)

Ziel des Beitrages ist, die Bedeutung der Mysterien für das Denken des jungen Nietzsche, der unauffällig, aber dezidiert die Kernbegriffe seines Philosophierens - das Apollinische und das Dionysische, die Tragödie, die ästhetische Rechtfertigung der Welt - mit einer 'Geheimlehre' vervindet, auszuloten. Eine textnah Interpretation seiner Aussagen zur apollinischen bzw. dionysischen Mysterienordung zeigt, dass die tragische griechische Kultur im Mysterienvorgang als kultischem un institutionellem Geschehen begründet ist. Aus Nietzsches Analyse dieser die Metaphysik des Willens exemplarisch zum Ausdruck bringenden Kultur geht hervor, (...) dass ohne Mysterien der Wille sich nicht optimal entfalten kann. Diese Einsicht überträgt Nietzsche auch in die Sprache seines Philosophierens.The aim of the article is to fathom the meaning of mystery cults in Nietzsche's early thinking. in a discreet manner, he associates the key concepts of his philosophy - the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the tragedy, the aesthetic justification of the world - with a 'secret doctrine'. A close reading of his writings on the Apollonian and Dionysian 'mystery order' shows that the tragic Greek culture is founded on the mysteris as cultic and institutional happenings. Nietzsche's analysis of this culture, which gives expression to the metaphysics of the will in an exemplary fashion, reveals that without mystery cults the will cannot unfold itself optimally . Nietzsche translates this insight also into the language of his philosophy. (shrink)

In the course of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, ways of thinking in the Western world transformed in fundamental ways; even words that remained the same took on new meanings. In the field of the history of ideas, the period 1700–1850 is also called the ‘saddle-period’. Philosophers of history have argued that the new basic concepts that emerged at this time indicate how social reality has come to be comprehended in the modern era. Various segments of the population relied on them (...) to act, understand, interpret and reform reality. These concepts are crucial to the discursive constitution of the world—in the economy, politics, science, art, education and so on. They play their part in the dissolution of the ‘old’ world and the emergence of a ‘new’ one. They can thus also be studied with regard to their functioning as both factors in and indicators of evolutionary processes. This article deals with a small aspect of the historical co-evolution of concepts and structures in education. It examines the non-random character of the variations in the discourses on the social function of education, especially in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Dit boekt brengt negen opstellen samen van Gentse filosofen en godsdienstwetenschappers. Etienne Vermeersch, Freddy Mortier, Johan Braeckman met Stefaan Blancke, Rik Pinxten, Patrick Loobuyck, Balagangadhara Rao met Sarah Claerhout, Benjamin Biebuyck, Nel Grillaert, en Danny Praet leveren, elk vanuit hun eigen interesses en expertises, kritische bijdragen over de complexe relatie tussen christendom en filosofie: wijsgerige kritiek op het christendom en christelijk gebruik van de filosofie. Vanuit het ruimere perspectief van de interactie tussen wijsbegeerte, wereldbeeld en wetenschappen bestrijken de elf (...) auteurs de volledige periode van het vroege christendom tot het hedendaagse fundamentalisme. Het boek bevat zowel historische als theoretische benaderingen. Drie bijdragen hebben het werk en de impact van Nietzsche tot thema, drie bespreken verschillende aspecten van het fundamentalisme. Thema’s zoals het geloof in een hiernamaals, de relatie tussen christenen en niet-christenen, de impact van het christendom op het westerse wereldbeeld en de benadering van andere culturen, en de radicale kritiek van filosofen op het theïsme en de christelijke moraal maken van deze bundel een uitzonderlijk rijke collectie die lezers met diverse interesses zal aanspreken. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Philologus Jahrgang: 159 Heft: 2 Seiten: 301-326.

Pastoral power and techniques of the self: Foucault and the asceticism of the Desert Fathers This article argues that Foucault would probably have wanted to discuss a number of subjects and texts which are now almost completely lacking: the novelistic texts known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and some hagiographical sources. The Christian views on sexuality were sometimes less ‘orthodox’ and more extreme than what Foucault presented, probably under the influence of Paul Veyne. The Life of Anthony by (...) Athanasius contains a passage which is not analyzed thoroughly in the volume as it was published but which is a key text for the development of Christian hermeneutics and pastoral power. (shrink)

ArgumentThe scientific system is primarily differentiated into disciplines. While disciplines may be wide in scope and diverse in their research practices, they serve scientific communities that evaluate research and also grant recognition to what is published. The analysis of communication and publication practices within such a community hence allows us to shed light on the dynamics of this discipline. On the basis of an empirical analysis ofIsis, we show how the process of discipline-building in history of science has led its (...) practitioners to be socialized and sensitized in relatively strong intra-disciplinary terms – with minimal interdisciplinary openness. (shrink)

This article looks at the relation between the ideas of philosopher Claude Lefort and ethnologist Pierre Clastres. Both French authors worked in the same paradigm. They were convinced that politics is the “infrastructure” of society: all societies are politically constituted and can only be understood by interpreting the workings of political power. Yet they strongly disagreed on the dividedness of society. Clastres believed that a good solution to the problem of power is possible, while Lefort believes that the presence of (...) power points to the impossibility of any society to coincide with itself. This article also discusses the way they both use the expression “the place of power” and asks to what extent non-Western societies were, both for Clastres and for Lefort, ever more than just a foil to present and illuminate their strongly held theoretical beliefs. (shrink)

This essay starts by reviewing Claude Lefort’s writings on totalitarianism, a theme that runs like a red thread through his oeuvre and plays a key role in the different stages of his intellectual development. The analysis of the USSR is a central interest of Lefort and his colleagues at Socialisme ou Barbarie (and inspires them to adopt an explicitly “political” approach against the “economism” of their fellow Marxists); the problem of totalitarianism features prominently in Lefort’s theory of democracy and human (...) rights (where it functions as the “flipside” of democracy); and the theme holds Lefort’s attention well after the events of 1989. The emphasis of this essay, however, is not on the chronology of Lefort’s trajectory, but on the methodological role of totalitarianism in his theoretical framework. Lefort’s account of totalitarianism serves him as a tool to dissect the symbolic fabric of modern society. In Arendt’s view, totalitarian rule reveals something of the essence of modernity, as a movement towards ever increasing technical mastery. For Lefort, by contrast, totalitarian tendencies arise as an attempt to close off the experience of indeterminacy that has been opened up by political modernity. He shows that the totalitarian “imaginary” (which he dissects in psychoanalytic terms) presupposes yet deliberately inverts the very ideas that sparked the democratic revolution and that are central to the self-representation of democratic societies. In consequence, democracy is continuously at risk of degenerating into totalitarianism. Importantly, the totalitarian threat, which Lefort believes to be the main threat to modern society, only becomes visible by adopting a specifically “political” perspective. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we continue to understand and to interpret our society in “political” terms, that is, in reference to the symbolic constellation of collective power. (shrink)

This article attempts to reconstruct a Lefortian account of the phenomenon of political commitment. In a democracy, the gap between the subject of commitment and its object, the domain of politics, is unavoidable. The result is an attitude towards political causes characterized by a two-way movement between an engaged perspective and a more distant, realist perspective. Although the contrast between these two perspectives is disenchanting, we, as democratic citizens, nevertheless have an obligation to hold on to both perspectives simultaneously. Justification (...) of this claim will rely upon a rereading of several key texts by Lefort, such as ‘La politique et la pensée de la politique’ (1963) and Un Homme en trop (1976), in which Lefort analyses the attitudes of his contemporaries toward the Algerian cause and the Soviet regime. This study also sheds new light on the rational impetus behind Lefort's break with Socialisme ou Barbarie and his gradual progression towards a philosophy of democracy. (shrink)

This paper critically compares a deliberative system based on parliamentary elections (an electoral system) and a deliberative system based on sortition (a lottocratic system). Both systems are analyzed in three dimensions. The epistemic dimension concerns the rational quality of the democratic process. The power dimension concerns the distribution of power and the extent to which citizens genuinely control all decisions. The motivational dimension, finally, concerns citizens’ identification with the decision-making process and their willingness to abide by its outcomes. We argue (...) that an electoral system is, in all three dimensions, normatively superior to a sortition-based system. Most prominently, we claim that electoral mechanisms provide visibility to the decision-making process. This enables a form of interactive representation in which citizens and their representatives engage in a joint process of opinion and will formation. Sortition, in contrast, is characterized by a democratically much poorer form of descriptive representation. The selected citizens are a representative sample of the wider citizenry, but they deliberate in a forum that remains mostly disconnected from that wider citizenry and therefore cannot shoulder the process of collective self-government. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate a class of theories that attempt to justify democracy and human rights on the basis of a specific political anthropology. These theories belong to what could be called contemporary French liberalism, as exemplified by Claude Lefort, Marcel Gauchet, and Pierre Rosanvallon. These thinkers share the important intuition that human coexistence is rooted in a fundamental “political” and “historical” condition. Although this condition can be illustrated by meansof empirical examples, I will argue that their argument should (...) be taken to mean that societies are necessarily caught up in this condition. In a second step I will consider the normative consequences of this thesis. The key idea is that ignoring this fundamental condition inevitably leads to pathological consequences, as can be illustrated in reference to both predemocratic societies (e.g. non-Western premodern societies) and postdemocratic societies (e.g. totalitarian regimes). It is only democracies, so they contend, that are able to deal with this condition in a “correct” way, for here this condition is not overlooked or repressed but is openlyrecognized and even institutionally protected. In the final part of my paper I will argue that this line of reasoning offers a promising alternative for the many strands of foundationalism that dominate contemporary political theory, even if it remains beset by a number of weaknesses. (shrink)

The classical account of federalism is bipartite. Federal systems are understood to have a dual nature: on the one hand, there is the central government, and on the other hand, there are the constituent units. We argue instead for a tripartite model of federalism. In this model, a third institutional pillar is added to federal systems. This third pillar deals exclusively with matters related to the institutional architecture of the system. We argue for tripartite federalism on three grounds: a tripartite (...) structure would be better suited to accommodate political communities where citizens might currently feel misrecognized by the central government, it would provide a more efficient way to adjust the federal architecture and it would be able to do so in a more democratic manner. We conclude our article with a reflection on the distance between our ideal-typical tripartite model and actual reality. (shrink)