In Survivance des lucioles, Georges Didi-Huberman cites sections from a letter in which Pier Paolo Pasolini describes an encounter with a swarm of fireflies. The sight of the fireflies triggers reflections on various topics on the part of Pasolini. However, at the end of his life, Pasolini lamented the fact that fireflies had disappeared in modern society, serving as a metaphor for the fact that he had lost all hope in the consumerist society in which he was living. Pasolini’s reflections (...) on fireflies illustrate Georges Didi-Huberman’s theories on the current state and politics of images in contemporary society. In this article, several key features of the politics of images, according to Didi-Huberman, are clarified, in particular, the role of pathos and imagination. It is on the role of pathos and imagination that Didi-Huberman’s views will diverge from the theories of other prominent theorists of images, such as Jacques Rancière, Roland Barthes, W.J.T. Mitchell and Bruno Latour. By clarifying these diverging views, the theories of Didi-Huberman can be formulated more precisely. (shrink)

We are living in an age of crisis—or an age in which everything is labeled a crisis. Financial, debt, and refugee “crises” have erupted. The word has also been applied to the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and many other international events. Yet the term has contradictory political and strategic meanings for those challenging power structures and those seeking to preserve them. For critics of the status quo, can the rhetoric of crisis be used to (...) foment urgency around issues like climate change and financialization, or does framing a situation as a “crisis” play into the hands of the existing political order, which then seeks to tighten the leash by creating a state of emergency? Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past years, the protest movements that have risen up in response, and the use of the term in political discourse. Tariq Ali, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela McRobbie, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Saskia Sassen, and Joseph Vogl offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new social movements have offered, alongside an exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Roberto Esposito on theories of community. Sparring over crucial developments in these past years of catastrophe and the calamity of everyday life under capitalism, they shed light on how crises and the discourse of crisis can both obscure and reveal fundamental aspects of modern societies. (shrink)

In this text, Georges Didi-Huberman responds, in letter-form, to the critical reflections about his work formulated by Jacques Rancière in “Images Re-read: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Method.” Didi-Huberman disagrees with Rancière’s analysis that images are “passive” and that the words which accompany them are “active.” Instead, he agrees with Merleau-Ponty’s view, which postulates that any analysis of images that seeks to disentangle its elements will render the image unintelligible. In opposition to Rancière’s presentation of his work, Didi-Huberman argues that his method is (...) one of tracing the mutually entangled implications of images. Furthermore, Didi-Huberman challenges Rancière to articulate what exactly “the sensible” means when he uses the phrase “distribution of the sensible.” While Rancière distrusts the reliance on pathos and emotions when it comes to analysing images, Didi-Huberman argues that “the sensible” will always involve the body with all its pathos, emotions and gestures. (shrink)

In this text, Jacques Rancière critically discusses the work of Georges Didi-Huberman on images. He disagrees with various claims seemingly made by Didi-Huberman about images, such as that they can “take position” or that they are “active.” Rancière argues that Didi-Huberman adds another form of dialectics to the simpler form of dialectics adopted by Bertolt Brecht and Harun Farocki in their works, namely one that also involves a layering of different temporalities. However, both in Brecht’s War Primer and in Didi-Huberman’s (...) analysis of it, all the potencies credited to images as such are actually potencies of the words that accompany the images. Rancière comes to the conclusion that to “put images in motion,” as Didi-Huberman wants to do, or to regard them as being “active,” he has to put words, his own poetic and extensive writings, in motion. (shrink)

In this text, Jacques Rancière critically discusses the work of Georges Didi-Huberman on images. He disagrees with various claims seemingly made by Didi-Huberman about images, such as that they can “take position” or that they are “active.” Rancière argues that Didi-Huberman adds another form of dialectics to the simpler form of dialectics adopted by Bertolt Brecht and Harun Farocki in their works, namely one that also involves a layering of different temporalities. However, both in Brecht’s War Primer and in Didi-Huberman’s (...) analysis of it, all the potencies credited to images as such are actually potencies of the words that accompany the images. Rancière comes to the conclusion that to “put images in motion,” as Didi-Huberman wants to do, or to regard them as being “active,” he has to put words, his own poetic and extensive writings, in motion. (shrink)

In this text, Jacques Rancière critically discusses the work of Georges Didi-Huberman on images. He disagrees with various claims seemingly made by Didi-Huberman about images, such as that they can “take position” or that they are “active.” Rancière argues that Didi-Huberman adds another form of dialectics to the simpler form of dialectics adopted by Bertolt Brecht and Harun Farocki in their works, namely one that also involves a layering of different temporalities. However, both in Brecht’s War Primer and in Didi-Huberman’s (...) analysis of it, all the potencies credited to images as such are actually potencies of the words that accompany the images. Rancière comes to the conclusion that to “put images in motion,” as Didi-Huberman wants to do, or to regard them as being “active,” he has to put words, his own poetic and extensive writings, in motion. (shrink)

These days, the radicalization of young people is above all viewed as a security risk. Almost all research into this phenomenon has been carried out from a legal, criminological or socio-psychological perspective with a focus on detecting and containing the risks posed by radicalization. In the light of the political developments since September 11, 2001, this is entirely understandable but perhaps not altogether wise. Research and theory development from a pedagogical perspective can also make a significant contribution towards a better (...) understanding of radicalization processes and possibly offer new points of departure for intervention strategies. On the basis of five typical cases, the authors examine the role of educators, social workers and teachers, and the problems they face when dealing with young people with extreme ideals. This article attempts to provide insight into the pedagogical conditions for the development of extreme ideals and suggests starting points for developing effective countermeasures. (shrink)

A recent controversy about neural networks allegedly capable of detecting a person’s sexual orientation raises the question of whether all research on homosexuality should be permitted. This paper considers two arguments for limits to such research, and concludes that there are good reasons to limit at least the dissemination of applied research on the etiology of homosexuality. The paper then briefly sketches how this could work, and looks at three objections against these limitations.

In this paper, we will address anonymity, privacy and trust issues that arise during the research on a communication platform for multi-modal transport. Though most logistic information is currently available in electronic form, it is not widely accessible yet to all the parties concerned with transport. The major goal of a communication platform is to improve the conditions for exchanging information, which should lead to better organisation/collaboration within the transport sector. We need to merit credibility by faithfully modelling all the (...) relevant real world interactions. Therefore, we opted for a connectivity solution in which software agents act as representatives of the parties involved. All agents can be equipped with human-like skills and qualities such as intelligence, autonomy, and the ability to cooperate, coordinate and negotiate. We will demonstrate how cooperation between different transport parties can be achieved without necessarily putting all the sensitive information on the web. (shrink)

Despite its uniform appearance, the cerebellar cortex is highly heterogeneous in terms of structure, genetics and physiology. Purkinje cells (PCs), the principal and sole output neurons of the cerebellar cortex, can be categorized into multiple populations that differentially express molecular markers and display distinctive physiological features. Such features include action potential rate, but also their propensity for synaptic and intrinsic plasticity. However, the precise molecular and genetic factors that correlate with the differential physiological properties of PCs remain elusive. In this (...) article, we provide a detailed overview of the cellular mechanisms that regulate PC activity and plasticity. We further perform a pathway analysis to highlight how molecular characteristics of specific PC populations may influence their physiology and plasticity mechanisms. (shrink)

Secondary schools are well placed to avert radicalization processes toward extremism because such trajectories often begin in adolescence. Adolescents are in the process of forming their identities, and most adolescents are idealistic, which makes them susceptible to groups that passionately pursue utopian visions. To avert the path toward extremism, Doret de Ruyter and Stijn Sieckelinck propose to balance a prevention approach with a positive educative ethos that is sensitive to the emotions involved in students' quest for meaning in life (...) and identity formation. This involves schools being places where all students experience that they matter and where they can express their passion for their ideals and experiment with their identities without being ridiculed; at the same time, schools must guide students in learning that not everything they value will be accepted and that they must also take into account the interests and rights of others. The schools' role is thus complex and precarious, and teachers are in a position of navigating a politically sensitive minefield daily. Therefore, any theoretical proposition regarding what schools can realistically do to prevent extremism must be informed by everyday educational practice. (shrink)

In this volume we present the proceedings from the fourth international Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST IV, November 5-8, 2003), which focussed ...

Conscientious objection and the limits of vertical toleration in the liberal state Liberal states tend to tolerate certain conscientious objectors, but not others. They tolerate doctors who conscientiously refuse to perform abortions, but do not extend the same toleration to civil servants who conscientiously refuse to register same-sex marriages. In this article, I analyse the attitude of liberal states to different claims of conscience in terms of vertical toleration, and its limits. Contrary to a prevailing political theoretical argument, I submit (...) that there is space for vertical toleration – that is, toleration by the state – in the contemporary liberal state. Yet, this space is limited. It only opens up when individuals’ practices prima facie contravene core liberal values. Whenever that is not the case, as with conscientious objection to military service, the lens of vertical toleration is not the appropriate one. But in relation to other claims of conscience, such as of doctors against abortion, the attitude of liberal states can be described in terms of vertical toleration. The practice finally reveals that certain conscientious objectors, particularly civil servants who refuse to register same-sex marriages, are not tolerated by the liberal state. Their practices exceed the limits of vertical toleration. This article explains why the prevailing practice in liberal states, as described, gets it right. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about the role of religion in the public sphere often neglect the historical heritage of secularization theory. This neglect is addressed in La querelle de la sécularisation by the French author Jean-Claude Monod. With him, I follow the path of secularization theory from Hegel to Blumenberg. A forgotten protagonist, Erik Peterson, is brought back to light. Furthermore I describe two classical theories: the transfer thesis and the emancipation thesis. I argue that most thinkers do not simply fit either (...) frame. This complexity is also conspicuous in the 20th century debate, which centers around the ambivalent concept of eschatology. In the Löwith-Blumenberg debate, Löwith’s position is much more sophisticated and closer to Blumenberg’s than it is usually assumed. Their philosophical position with regard to secularization theory turns out to depend on a different approach to eschatology: an ‘immanent’ versus a ‘transcendent’ one. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 2 Seiten: 385-422.

The Prophetic hadith “pray with your leader,” which G. H. A. Juynboll argued originated with Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj, urges Muslims to observe the prayer both at its appointed time and with an imam who delays its performance. An isnād analysis that factors in the different readings of the tradition could not reproduce Juynboll’s result and yielded significantly earlier dates of origin for the oldest two variants: the early 60s/680s and the early 80s/700s. It is argued that the tradition was invented (...) and distributed in reaction to activists who disapproved of Umayyad religious practice, especially the postponement of the ṣalāt. Two of the regime’s representatives in Iraq, the governors Ibn Ziyād and al-Ḥajjāj, were publicly accused of delaying the ṣalāt at the time the tradition was circulated. The tradition constituted thus an early articulation of the quietism that would later become a characteristic of Sunnism. (shrink)

In this article I want to construct in a simple and systematic way an ethical theory of animal equality. The goal is a consistent theory, containing a set of clear and coherent universalized ethical principles that best fits our strongest moral intuitions in all possible morally relevant situations that we can think of, without too many arbitrary elements. I demonstrate that impartiality with a level of risk aversion and empathy with a need for efficiency are two different approaches that both (...) result in the same consequentialist principle of prioritarianism. Next, I discuss that this principle can be trumped by an ethic of care principle of tolerated partiality, and a deontological principle of basic right. These three principles represent different kinds of equality that can be applied to animal ethics. Finally, the predation problem leads to the introduction of a triple-N-principle that is related to the value of biodiversity. (shrink)

Moderate pluralism is a popular position in contemporary philosophy of biology. Despite its popularity, various authors have argued that it tends to slide off off into a radical form of pluralism that is both normatively and descriptively ueptable. This paper looks at at the case of biological species classification, and evaluates a popular way of avoiding radical pluralism by relying on the shared aims and norms of a discipline. The main contention is that while these aims and norms may play (...) an important role in the legitimacy of species classifications, they fail to fend off radical pluralism. It follows from this that the legitimacy of species classifications is also determined by local decisions about the aims of research and how to operationalize and balance these. This is important, I argue, because it means that any acceptable view on the legitimacy of classification should be able to account for these local decisions. (shrink)

This article presents an argument for veganism, using a formal-axiomatic approach: a list of twenty axioms are explicitly stated. These axioms are all necessary conditions to derive the conclusion that veganism is a moral duty. The presented argument is a minimalist or core argument for veganism, because it is as parsimonious as possible, using the weakest conditions, the narrowest definitions, the most reliable empirical facts and the minimal assumptions necessary to reach the conclusion. If someone does not accept the conclusion, (...) logical consistency requires that s/he should be able to point at axiom on which s/he disagrees. The argument exposes hidden assumptions and provides a framework for an overview of the philosophical literature on animal rights and vegetarianism / veganism. (shrink)

Some recent policy-oriented publications have put forward a third category of environmental values, namely relational or eudaimonic values, in addition to intrinsic and instrumental values. In this debate, there is, however, much confusion about the content of such values. This paper looks at a fundamental debate in ethics about a third category of reasons besides reasons from morality and self-interest, labelled as reasons of love, care or meaningfulness. This category allows us, first, to see the relation between relational and eudaimonic (...) values, and, second, to make clear and applicable distinctions between the relational valuing of nature and moral or instrumental valuing. (shrink)

In the last decade, the study of moral heuristics has gained in importance. I argue that we can consider speciesism as a moral heuristic: an intuitive rule of thumb that substitutes a target attribute (that is difficult to detect, e.g. “having rationality”) for a heuristic attribute (that is easier to detect, e.g. “looking like a human being”). This speciesism heuristic misfires when applied to some atypical humans such as the mentally disabled, giving them rights although they lack rationality. But I (...) argue that it is not necessarily irrational or inconsistent to hold on to this heuristic rule, because we have to take time and knowledge constraints, uncertainty aversion and emotional costs into account. However, this “heuristic defense” of speciesism uses a target attribute (rationality) that has implications of disrespect towards some atypical humans. Therefore, based on notions of impartiality and compassion, I argue for a morally better target attribute: sentience (“having a sense of well-being”). “Being a vertebrate” is suitable as a corresponding heuristic attribute because it is easy to detect and has a strong correlation with the target attribute of sentience. (shrink)

The main claim of this thesis is that value-judgments should play a profound role in the construction and evaluation of species classifications. The arguments for this claim will be presented over the course of five chapters. These are divided into two main parts; part one, which consists of the two first chapters, presents an argument for a radical form of species pluralism; part two, which comprises the remaining chapters, discusses the implications of radical species pluralism for the role of values (...) in species classification. The content of the five chapters is as follows. Chapter 1 starts with a discussion of the theoretical assumptions concerning species and natural kinds that form the broad framework within which the arguments of the thesis are placed. The aim of this chapter is to introduce a set of relatively uncontroversial assumptions that frame the rest of the thesis. On the basis of these assumptions, chapter 2 presents an argument for radical species pluralism. The chapter substantiates this argument with a broad range of examples, and compares this position to other forms of species pluralism. Chapter 3 returns to the main interest of the thesis, namely, the role of values in species classification. It introduces the notion of values and presents an argument for the value-ladenness of taxonomy on the basis of the considerations in the first two chapters. It then sketches three important views on values in science in the literature. Chapter 4 argues that the case presented in chapter 3 provides strong support for one of these views, called the ‘Aims View’, and against two other prominent views, called the ‘Epistemic Priority View’ and the ‘Value-Free Ideal’. The resulting view, in line with the Aims View, is that value-judgments should play a particularly substantial role in species classification. Chapter 5 then considers the popular assumption that these value-judgments in taxonomy commonly take the shape of generally accepted classificatory norms, and argues that this assumption is not tenable. Finally, a brief concluding chapter points at some implications of the claims and arguments in this thesis. (shrink)

Abusive supervision has been shown to have significant negative consequences for employees’ well-being, attitudes, and behavior. However, despite the devastating impact, it might well be that employees do not always react negatively toward a leader’s abusive behavior. In the present study, we show that employees’ organizational identification and abusive supervision interact for employees’ perceived cohesion with their work group and their tendency to gossip about their leader. Employees confronted with a highly abusive supervisor had a stronger perceived cohesion and engaged (...) in less gossiping behavior when they identified more strongly with their organization. Our findings illustrate that organizational identification functions as a buffer for those confronted with an abusive supervisor. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that the concept of natural kinds should be eliminated because it does not play a productive theoretical role and even harms philosophical research on scientific classification. We argue that this justification for eliminativism fails because the notion of ‘natural kinds’ plays another epistemic role in philosophical research, namely, it enables fruitful investigation into non-arbitrary classification. It does this in two ways: first, by providing a fruitful investigative entry into scientific classification; and second—as is supported by (...) bibliometric evidence—by tying together a research community devoted to non-arbitrary classification. The question of eliminativism then requires weighing off the benefits of retaining the concept against its harms. We argue that the progressive state of philosophical work on natural kinds tips this balance in favour of retaining the concept. (shrink)

It is well known that taxonomists rely on many different methods and criteria for species delimitation, leading to different kinds of groups being recognised as species. While this state of relative disorder is widely acknowledged, there is no similar agreement about how it should be resolved. This paper considers the view that the disorder in species classification should be resolved by a system of taxonomic governance. I argue that such a system of governance is best seen as a combination of (...) standardisation, unification and regulation, each of which can be implemented in different forms. I investigate the forms that these three components should take for taxonomic governance by looking into two successfully governed classification systems, namely, virus classification and enzyme classification. The last part of the paper then defends the governance view against five objections. (shrink)