This study delves into the unexplored intersection of Socinianism, a religious movement challenging Christian orthodoxy in the Early Modern period, and Tacitism, a political discourse inspired by Tacitus. Both fostered critical thinking, intertwining in nuanced ways. Socinianism’s theological skepticism questioned established beliefs, while Tacitism scrutinized historical and political accounts. Their controversial nature resulted in covert existence among elite intellectuals, shaping socio-political discourse. Socinianism’s theological nonconformity, akin to Tacitism’s critique of traditional political narratives, often sparked conflicts with authorities, revealing the intricate (...) relationship between religion and politics in the Early Modern Era and influencing the development of secular thought. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a critical map of toleration as it is displayed in contemporary democracy. It does so by presenting three conceptions of toleration to which current practices of toleration can be traced, and, precisely, these are the standard notion, the political conception based on the neutrality principle, and toleration as recognition. The author argues that the latter is the appropriate conception to address the politically relevant issues of toleration arising in pluralistic democracy, while the first is adequate (...) only for social relations. In order to illustrate this argument, she presents a case of a contested and never solved request for a place of worship by the Muslims of Vercelli which represents an example of a very restricted and minimal interpretation of the standard notion, labeled ‘disrespectful tolerance’. The case is meant to show that unacceptable forms of toleration are still practised, and that the standard notion, here interpreted in the most minimal and negative way, is inappropriate for democratic politics. (shrink)

This paper traces the intellectual trajectories of the first stand-alone theories of action, understood as both axiologically neutral and quasi-scientific from a methodological point of view. I argue that the rise of action theory of this kind corresponds to a particular moment of dissatisfaction within Western thought, and as such, it tells us far more about the history of philosophy than the subject itself. I conclude by explaining why subsequent failures to provide an acceptable theory of action are not accidental. (...) On the contrary, such failures owe themselves probably to the fact that formulating a theory of action is neither propitious nor useful. Thus, the most valuable lesson we can learn from philosophical desires for a theory of action is that we should take co-action as the starting point in our normative investigations, rather than positing action simpliciter as a problem to solve. That is, we should move away from propounding a theory of action, and instead focus on a paradigm shift, whereby we move away from a representational, towards a co-actional, model of action. (shrink)

The article is devoted to historico-philosophical investigation of the grounds of universalism of special type. This universalism, inherent in transcendental thinking, was radicalized in quasi-transcendental discourse of Jacques Derrida. It is established that explicit critique of universalism in deconstructive philosophy is aimed at “logo-centric” paradigm of universality which is questioned by (quasi)transcendental philosophy. Constitutive function of difference and otherness in establishment of transcendental and especially quasi-transcendental universality was brought to light. It was shown that in (quasi)transcendental discourse singularity is involved (...) into the sphere of universal, whereas “dogmatic” universalism brought singularity and/or particularity outside, thus questioning its own claims. Tracing transcendentalist tendency to balance status and significance of universal and particular (singular), the author concludes that relation between them makes possible constituting hyper-universality of special type. Universal implications of the Derrida’s notion “quasi-transcendental” are defined. It was determined that one of the main factors constituting universalism of quasi-transcendental type is the deconstruction of binary thinking, accomplished first of all with the help of principles: differance, insolvability (aporia) and trace. Among them insolvability implies universality revealing the overlap and mutual conditioning of alternative (at a glance) elements. Instead, the trace conditions superiority of logo-centric alternatives “primary-secondary” and “presence-absence”. (shrink)

Studying student migration trends is a significant task in studying human capital development as one of the leading factors in sustainable socio-economic development. The migration potential of students impacts the opportunities and prospects for sustainable development. The study of factors influencing the migration behavior of students acquires special significance in this article. The interpersonal competencies of the population impact its migration potential. Migration processes impact the differentiation of regions in terms of human capital. This article is based on theoretical and (...) practical research on human capital, its formation, development, and migration as a factor in human capital development. The practical part of the study presents an analysis of data obtained from a sociological study of the factors that determine internal and international migration. An anonymous sociological survey of students in Ekaterinburg, Kursk, and Tomsk (Russia) was conducted in several stages. The first stage was implemented in October and December 2020 (N = 958). The second stage was implemented in October and November 2021 (N = 960). This study allows for tracing how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the migration potential of students and their desire for a satisfactory career path. (shrink)

This monograph examines the origins of modern and modernist moral confusion and the deterioration of the Judeo-Christian values and contemporary boundaries between Right and Wrong. It traces the ethical shift to the ideas of Hobbes and Bentham, the peculiar universe of Schopenhauer and Dostoevsky, the new religion of Tolstoy and the destroyed God of Nietzsche, ending with the psychoanalytical commandments of Freud and the mire of sexual identity of Foucault and Paglia.

The present article analyses the research papers devoted to changes in industrial workers'states of Ukraine during 1905-1914. Current understanding of the basic principles of historiographical studies stipulates a many-sided approach to the studied problem. The analysis and generalization of extensive sweep of historical papers belonged to the historians of several generations outstand as an essential component. The presented article is devoted to presentation of the social and economic, political, ethnic changes in the environment of industrial workers of Ukraine in 1907-1914 (...) in the papers of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern historians. It is no coincidence that the workers of Ukraine came into view of the researchers- a change-over to capitalistic business model took place in consequence of economic growth and due to industrial advance of separate regions of Russian Empire in which there are two new classes: owners of enterprises - bourgeoisie and wage and salary workers - proletariat. A problem of the growth of a number of industrial workers in Ukraine in the period after revolution 1905-1907 in the terms of evolution of value judgments of this issue in the environment of historian was considered in the pages of the research. That fact that the overwhelming majority of industrial workers definitively severed ties with land and semi- agricultural sector was not remained out of view of the researchers. In the vast majority of papers there was traced the unified tendency- in estimating of the socio-economic state of industrial workers a salary level and unemployment index are considered. It should be emphasized that historians of the Soviet time pointed up the enterprises' drive against demonstration of labour solidarity, strike movements and trades unions. In contradistinction to them the modern researchers draw attention not to repressive-punitive measures of the government and enterprises but to democratic ways of search of understanding between two social classes. The foreign researchers do not leave aside the problems of the research of formation and development of industrial workers in the industrial regions of Russian Empire. They pointed out that progressive transformations were executed not through the capitalists' excessive jealousy for the state of wage workers and in the first instance for the purpose of increase in incomes by the intensive method of economy management. Consequently the following stages of research of changes in working environment in Ukraine during 1907-1914 can be distinguished in the following way - pre-revolutionary authors concerned themselves with accumulation of statistical data, reminiscences of parties involved in the events, descriptive materials which just stated the facts; the historians of the Soviet period gradually deviate from accumulation of information to its research, analysis, systematization and fusion that was most pronounced in the 70th -80th of the ХХ for a period of creation of collective papers; modern researchers basing on best practice of their predecessors consider transformation in the working environment in new perspective without ideological overrun of the Soviet period. At present there is necessity of creation of generalising historiographical papers the task of which consisted in systematization and generalization of the best practice of several generations of historians on the problem of industrial workers' state in Ukraine during 1907-1914. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, (...) this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy. (shrink)

This article focuses on trans-linguistic relationships between the German aphoristic writings of Israeli, Hebrew poet, and rabbi Elazar Benyoëtz and his personal library, which is one of the last and largest private book collections in Israel to contain the German-Jewish literary canon. By reading traces from the library’s marginalia and paraphernalia, analyzed here for the first time, the article presents five case studies that sketch Benyoëtz’s transformation during the 1960s and 1970s from a Hebrew poet into the most influential contemporary (...) writer of aphorisms in German. The article also presents points of departure for future research into the development of the Archiv Bibliographia Judaica, the largest encyclopedia of Jewish authors in the German language. (shrink)

One of the most interesting phenomena in the history of the English language is the remarkable rise of the word right, in its many interrelated senses and uses. This article tries to trace the changes in the meaning and use of this word, as well as the rise of new conversational routines based on right, and raises questions about the cultural underpinnings of these semantic and pragmatic developments. It explores the hypothesis that the `discourse of truth' declined in English (...) over the centuries; that the use of `right' and `wrong' as parallel concepts increased; and it notes that the use of right as an adjective increased enormously in relation to the use of true. Originally, right meant `straight', as in a right line. Figuratively, perhaps, this right in the sense `straight' was also used in an evaluative sense: `good', with an additional component building on the geometrical image: `clearly good'. Spoken of somebody else's words, “right” was linked with `true'. But in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries right appears to have begun to be used more and more with reference to thinking rather than speaking. The association of right with thinking seems to have spread in parallel with a contrastive use of right and wrong — a trend apparently encouraged by the influence of the Reformation, especially within its Calvinist wing. Another interesting development is that over the last two centuries or so the discourse of `right' and `wrong' appears to have found a competitor in a discourse of `cooperation' and mutual concessions. Judging by both the frequency and range of its use, the word right flourished in this atmosphere, whereas wrong was increasingly left behind. This article traces the transition from the Shakespearean response “Right.”, described by the OED as `you are right; you speak well', to the present-day “Right.” of non-committal acknowledgement and it links the developments in semantics and discourse patterns with historical phenomena such as Puritanism, British empiricism, the Enlightenment and the growth of democracy. (shrink)

Le relief de la vision. Mouvement, profondeur et cinéma dansLe monde sensible et le monde de l’expressionEst-il possible d’établir une connexion entre Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression et la pensée du dernier Merleau-Ponty? De quelle manière une formulation germinale de la réflexion ontologique serait-elle présente dans le cours de 1953? Et quels sont les éléments de contact et de convergence qui permettent de retracer un tel lien?J’ai l’intention de proposer cette hypothèse à partir d’une considération du thème (...) de la vision dans son rapport au mouvement, esquissant les points dans lesquels ce lien émerge et se montre, tant de manière latente que de manière manifeste. Je voudrais montrer comment, dans le développement de ce sours, d’un côté, le mouvement est défini dans sa valeur ontologique et en vient à exprimer la relation même qui lie le corps percevant et le monde perçu et, de l’autre côté, comme le thème de l’expérience scopique arrive à éclairer le rapport entre perception et expression pour en dévoiler le caractère chiasmatique.Si les recherches menées par Merleau-Ponty dans la Phénoménologie de la perception avaient délimité le rapport d’inhérence et de co-implication entre le percevant et le perçu, les notes de cours du Monde sensible et monde de l’expression en viennent à désigner un «double mouvement» entre le sens et le sensible, ou bien un mouvement d’expression et d’empiètement de l’un dans l’autre, «réciproque» et «à double sens», dans lequel nous pouvons entrevoir une préfiguration du rapport chiasmatique et réversible qui lie le voyant et le visible dans l’ontologie merleau-pontienne de la chair. Il existe une trame qui relie le cours de 1953 avec la réflexion du dernier Merleau-Ponty, particulièrement avec L’œil et l’esprit. J’ai parcouru à nouveau les trois modes, ou plutôt les trois mouvements de la vision qui émergent à l’état germinal dans les notes du cours.- Le thème de la vision en profondeur comme découverte du rapport actif-passif entre le voyant et le visible, lié à la dimension scopique comme ouverture au lien entre vision et désir.- La notion d’œil spirituel que Merleau-Ponty emprunte à Paul Schilder, comme concept clé pour la conception de la vision dans L’œil et l’esprit, qui représente en outre un lien fondamental entre l’expérience scopique et la conception libidinale du corps propre, en syntonie profonde avec le rôle de la pulsion scopique chez Lacan.- Le thème du mouvement dans le cinéma comme point culminant de ces références à la vision, à la profondeur, au relief, et qui émergera à quelques années de distance, avec la peinture, dans L’œil et l’esprit et dans le cours sur L’ontologie cartésienne et l’ontologie d’aujourd’hui.The Depth of Vision: Movement, Depth, and Cinema in The Sensible World and the World of ExpressionIs it possible to establish a connection between The Sensible World and the World of Expression and the final thought of Merleau-Ponty? In what manner would a germinal formulation of ontological reflection be present in the 1953 course? And what are the elements of contact and convergence that allow us to tracing out such a link? I intend to put forward this hypothesis from a consideration of the theme of vision in its relation to movement, sketching the points in which this link emerges and shows itself, both in a latent and a manifest way. I would like to show, in the development of this course, on the one hand, how movement is defined in its ontological value and comes to express the very relation which links the perceiving body and the perceived world, and, on the other hand, how, as the theme of optical experience happens to bring to light the relation between perception and expression in order to unveil its chiasmatic character.If the research conducted by Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception had delimited the relation of inherence and co-implication between the perceiving and the perceived, the course notes of The Sensible World and the World of Expression come to designate a “double movement” between sense and the sensible, or, a “reciprocal” or “bi-directional” movement of expression and encroachment, in which we can catch a glimpse of a prefiguration of the chiasmatic and reversible relation which links the seer and the visible in the Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh.There is a web which links the 1953 course with the reflection of the final Merleau-Ponty, particularly with Eye and Mind. I have again gone through the three modes, or rather the three movements of vision which emerge in a germinal state in the course notes.- The theme of vision in depth as the discovery of an active-passive relation between the seer and the visible, linked to the optical dimension as the opening to the link between vision and desire.- The notion of the spiritual eye that Merleau-Ponty takes from Paul Schilder, as the key concept for the conception of vision in Eye and Mind, which in addition represents a fundamental link between optical experience and the libidinal conception of one’s own body, which is profoundly in sync with the role of scopic impulse in Lacan.- The theme of movement in film as the culminating point of these references to vision, to the depth, to the being in relief, or depth perception, which will emerge in some distant years, with painting, in Eye and Mind and in the course on Cartesian Ontology and Ontology Today. (shrink)

Themes of Christian martyrdom were central to popular political mobilization in El Salvador, as in much of Latin America, during the 1970s and 1980s. The story of Christ's sacrifice provided a powerful narrative for explaining injustice and political violence, a frame for interpretation as well as action during the twelve-year Salvadoran civil war, which ended in 1992 by a negotiated settlement. In the first part of this article we trace the politics of martyrdom and sacrifice through the war. The (...) final sections of the article examine the place of narratives of martyrdom and sacrifice in post-civil war El Salvador. While most Salvadorans today continue to experience high levels of inequality, poverty, and violence, the narratives of martyrdom and sacrifice that animated the revolutionary movements and liberation theology of the 1980s have lost much of their resonance. We suggest that the dispersion of both the perceived sources of, and the imagined solutions to, injustice contribute to the diminution in the importance of Christian narratives of martyrdom and sacrifice in El Salvador today. (shrink)

This paper offers an explanation for subjects’ lack of confidence in vaccines’ safety, which in turn is widely recognized as one of the main determinants of vaccine hesitancy. I argue that among the psychological roots of this lack of confidence there is a kind of intuitive thinking that can be traced back to a specific superstitious belief: the belief that “it is bad luck to tempt fate”. Under certain conditions, subjects perceive the choice to undergo vaccinations as an action that (...) “tempts fate”, and this leads them to overestimate its risks. When an action is perceived as “tempting fate”, indeed, its possible negative outcomes are anticipated as highly aversive, and as such they capture subjects’ imagination, thereby feeling more subjectively probable. This has important consequences for practical pro-vaccine interventions. Part of what makes an action perceived as “tempting fate” is its being free, arbitrary, and departing from one’s typical behavior: insofar as vaccine hesitancy is driven by beliefs about tempting fate, then, we can predict the success of interventions that make vaccinations nearly mandatory, or build vaccination opportunities into health care routines as opt-out, rather than opt-in options, making them closer to something that subjects passively accept rather actively seek. (shrink)

In the summer and autumn of 2015, I met with activists in Athens and Thessaloniki, with the aim of collaboratively producing a conceptual mapping of LGBTQ social movement discourses. My point of entry was the use and signification of “racism” in LGBTQ discourses (and more generally in common parlance in Greek) as a superordinate or “umbrella” concept that includes “homophobic” and “transphobic” but also “misogynist,” “ageist,” “ableist,” and class- or status-based prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, in addition to that, of course, (...) based on “race” or “ethnicity.” As a political theorist whose work over the past decade has focused on the concept of intersectionality, its origins in US Black feminist thought, and its transnational travel beyond the Anglo-American context in which it originated, I wanted to examine how this use of “racism” relates to the concept of “intersectionality” which is now emergent in the Greek social movement context, in particular in LGBTQ and feminist discourses, yet which has not been engaged by academics, neither in the nascent and struggling field of gender studies, nor in legal theory. How do LGBTQ activists define the referential scope and semantic contents of these concepts, based on what knowledges grounded in lived experiences, and on what kinds of social movement strategies? How do these concepts and their theoretical underpinnings reflect or direct activists’ political resistance to the widespread violence that they identify within and on the borders of Greek society? Do they enable coalition-building with other minoritised groups targeted by institutional and interpersonal “racism”? In approaching these questions, I wanted to trace the ways in which my interlocutors produce theories, through which social conditions of racial and heteropatriarchal power are made visible, are explained, and are contested—conditions that they identify with the institutions—“nation, religion, and family”—that make up what they termed the “triptych” or the “syntax of power.” What emerged in my conversations with activists were vivid accounts of the atmospheric violence facing LGBTQ people in Greece, its institutional and interpersonal manifestations, both banal and extreme. Indeed, many activists defined violence as the quintessence of oppression as such, and as what links various systems or forms of oppression—or, “racisms”—to one another. In what follows, I draw on these conversations not to answer the questions with which I set out, but, primarily, those that my interlocutors generated, which concern, ultimately, the unlivability of queer and trans lives—the violence LGBTQ people face and resist, particularly at the intersections of youth, poverty, disability, rurality, racialisation, criminalisation, and patriarchy. (shrink)

Since 2015, the ‘refugee crisis’ is possibly the most photographed humanitarian crisis in history. Photographs taken, for instance, in Lesvos, Greece, and Bodrum, Turkey, were instrumental in generating waves of public support for, and populist opposition to “welcoming refugees” in Europe. But photographs do not circulate in a vacuum; this book explores the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis,’ showing how the reproduction of images is structured by, and secures hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and ‘race,’ essential to the functioning of (...) bordered nation-states. Taking photography not only as the object of research, but innovating the method of photographìa— the material trace of writing/grafì with light/phos—this book urges us to view images and their reproduction critically. Part theoretical text, part visual essay, "Reproducing Refugees" vividly shows how institutional violence underpins both the spectacularity and the banality of ‘crisis.’ This book goes about synthesising visual studies with queer, feminist, postcolonial, post-structuralist, and post-Marxist theories. "Reproducing Refugees: Photographìa of a Crisis" offers theoretical frameworks and methodological tools to critically analyse representations, both those circulated through hegemonic institutions, and those generated from ‘below’. It carves a space between logos and praxis, ways of knowing and ways of doing, by offering a new visual language that problematises reified categories such as that of the ‘refugee’ and makes possible disruptive, alternative, resistant perceptions. The book contributes to the fields of migration and border studies, critically engaging visual narratives drawn from migration movements to question dominant categories and frameworks, from a decolonial, no-borders, queer feminist perspective. (shrink)

Can social phenomena be understood by analyzing their parts? Contemporary economic theory often assumes that they can. The methodology of constructing models which trace the behavior of perfectly rational agents in idealized environments rests on the premise that such models, while restricted, help us isolate tendencies, that is, the stable separate effects of economic causes that can be used to explain and predict economic phenomena. In this paper, I question both the claim that models in economics supply claims about (...) tendencies and also the view that economics, when successful, necessarily follows this method. When economics licenses successful policy interventions, as it did in the case of the Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions, its method is not to study tendencies but rather to study the phenomenon as a whole. Key Words: economic models • tendencies • economic experiments • policy making • John Stuart Mill. (shrink)

The 12 chapters cover 6 questions: I. What is the relationship between memory and imagination? II. Do memory traces have content? III. What is the nature of mnemonic confabulation? IV. What is the function of episodic memory? V. Do non-human animals have episodic memory? VI. Does episodic memory give us knowledge of the past?

The book traces how Green consciousness became skewed in political practice, preventing it from attracting support commensurate with popular feeling.

The works by Graham Priest that I'm most familiar with are those of the 1980’s. I understand they belong to the logical part of his writing, as presented by the organizers of the “Towards Graham Priest” meeting at Szczecin University on 20 June, 2012. Myself, I read Priest’s works to be imprecise, to say the least. Thelack of precision is to be traced particularly in his interpretations of Alfred Tarski’s heritage. This applies to Tarski’s main points, namely: semantically closedlanguages, the (...) T-scheme, and the appreciation of natural language. The strange thing about it is that Priest does not mind other people expressing views opposite to his own, but admits he cannot determine which contradictions are true and gives only vague indications about how to judge the criticisms. (shrink)

The article discusses the transformation of the concept of History as it can be traced in the writings of Günther Anders. Anders is primarily known as a critique of modern technology specifically of the atomic bomb, which made him a mentor for the first anti-nuclear movement in West-Germany in the late 1950s. His historical thinking was therefore mainly perceived in its post-historic and apocalyptic dimensions. A closer look at his earlier writings reveals not only that his questioning of the modern (...) concept of History began long before the “ontological cesura” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The article discusses two unpublished philosophical manuscripts as well as passages from his Californian diaries, both dating from 1940/41 and focussing the concept of progress. To follow his thoughts from two different angles – historical philosophical inquiry (however fragmented) and the literary form of his diary – gives us insight in his specific methodology of writing coined “Gelegenheitsphilosophie”. This specific form between “journalism and metaphysics” enables Anders to review abstract philosophical concepts on the basis of everyday observation. In the crucial year 1941 Anders reviews progress-thought from the perspective of a Hollywood film studio, raising questions of tradition, authenticity and technological progress in cultural production. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the development of Native American constitutionalism in the early twentieth century. Specifically, I focus on the first constitutional government of the White Earth Nation, located in northwestern Minnesota, which in the period from 1913 to 1927 was part of a larger confederative arrangement, called the General Council of the Chippewa. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of this inter-reservation government for the preservation of White Earth Anishinaabe cultural continuity from which (...) revitalization efforts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century grew. Using archival resources, I pay attention to Anishinaabe governing practices and their ethical dimension that can be understood in the light of Anishinaabe philosophy which was an integral part of everyday life. My findings suggest that the course of institutional development set by the creation of the General Council in 1913 influenced the path of White Earth governance for the rest of the century. (shrink)

Students of the relations between Greeks and Persians in classical antiquity usually depend entirely on Greek authors, as there are no extensive narrative texts among the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenid kings, our extant Oriental sources for the history of the Persian empire. Hence modern scholars have raised the question of the reliability of the Greek sources and emphasized the need to reveal the ideology and presuppositions of the Greek writers. For, if language embodies social reality, the assimilation of information (...) is conditioned by the character of the mind, individual or collective, which comprehends the data within its own terms of reference, fits them into its own set of concepts and records them in that form. Thus, it has been argued that ‘the impression we get of the Persians in the Greek authors is in some ways a deceptive one. Too much emphasis is laid on what is pejorative’, that the labelling of Persia ‘as an Oriental Monarchy: a state and society ruled less by rational actions than by the writing and caprices of its king and court… is to be traced back directly to the Greek sources on Persian history’; and that the ‘discourse of barbarism’ which projected upon the Persians ‘the opposite of qualities admired’ in the Athenian society, ‘is ultimately to be referred to the ideology binding together democratic Athens and her empire’. (shrink)

The first part of the paper characterises two new non-extensional functors: functor of counterfactual implication and functor of causal implication. The latter functor was used by Arthur W. Burks in his early considerations on the construction of a system of the logic of causal propositions, the formal inscription of conditional propositions in the colloquial language and the language of empirical sciences. The second part traces down the mutual relations between the functors of counterfactual implication, causal implication, material implication and strict (...) implication. Special attention is paid to the fact that causal implication implies material implication (a converse relationship does not occur), and strict implication implies causal implication (a converse relationship does not occur). (shrink)

Radical enactivism, an increasingly influential approach to cognition in general, has recently been applied to memory in particular, with Hutto and Peeters New directions in the philosophy of memory, Routledge, New York, 2018) providing the first systematic discussion of the implications of the approach for mainstream philosophical theories of memory. Hutto and Peeters argue that radical enactivism, which entails a conception of memory traces as contentless, is fundamentally at odds with current causal and postcausal theories, which remain committed to a (...) conception of traces as contentful: on their view, if radical enactivism is right, then the relevant theories are wrong. Partisans of the theories in question might respond to Hutto and Peeters’ argument in two ways. First, they might challenge radical enactivism itself. Second, they might challenge the conditional claim that, if radical enactivism is right, then their theories are wrong. In this paper, we develop the latter response, arguing that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, radical enactivism in fact aligns neatly with an emerging tendency in the philosophy of memory: radical enactivists and causal and postcausal theorists of memory have begun to converge, for distinct but compatible reasons, on a contentless conception of memory traces. (shrink)

Intrigued by the so-called “rebellion of the poor,” this paper traces back the current South African concern with popular protest to its reconfiguration during the last years of the apartheid order. Focusing on the discourse around grassroots resistance in the mid- to late-1980s, I begin by showing how, in juxtaposition to an ideal notion of civil society, popular mobilization had been largely delegitimized and the emancipatory politics of ungovernability recast as antidemocratic by the first few years of the post-apartheid regime. (...) In deploying particular notions of violence and culture, this discursive shift, I suggest, fed into reconstructing the ungovernable subject as the racial other of the new South Africa’s citizenry. The second part of the paper mobilizes Foucault’s genealogy of liberalism to draw parallels between this process and the liberal effort to resolve the potentially conflicting principles of governing the economic subject and the subject of rights within the realm of civil society. Finally, via the postcolonial critique of liberal notions of civility and their rootedness in racial thinking, I suggest that civil society secures the governability of the population through rendering the potentially disruptive freedom of the people as the excess freedom of the racialized other. (shrink)

This article argues that Stanley Cavell's notion of moral perfectionism must be understood, within the American cultural context, as deeply intertwined with myths of heroic American masculinity. It traces connections between Cavell's descriptions of moral perfectionism, the transcendentalist authors on whom he relies, and writings about the myth of the American frontier hero. When understood as a tradition of masculinity, it becomes possible to trace moral perfectionism across much wider areas of American cinematic culture than Cavell's reading suggests; Good (...) Will Hunting is used as an example which further illuminates the relationship between moral perfectionism and American masculinities. Psychoanalysis, a major feature of Good Will Hunting as well as an important aspect of Cavellian moral perfectionism, must also be revisited in terms of the differences in its popular mythologisation for men versus for women. (shrink)

Based on qualitative analysis of the Soviet press and official state documents, this article argues that the Communist Party was, counter intuitively, an agent of capitalist dispositions in the Soviet Union during 1970s-1980s. Understanding the spirit of capitalism not simply as an ascetic ethos but in broader terms of the cult of individualism, I demonstrate that the Soviet party-state promoted ideas and values of individuality, self-expression, and pleasure seeking in the areas of work and consumption. By broadening our conception of (...) the spirit of capitalism, tracing the formation of capitalist dispositions as well as institutions, and showing that the culture of capitalism can come from within the old regime, I further the agenda of neoclassical sociology of studying varieties of origins, paths, and destinations of modern capitalisms. (shrink)

The intersection between quantum theory, metaphysical spirituality, and Indian-inspired philosophy has an established place in speculative scientific and alternative religious communities alike. There is one term that has historically bridged these two worlds: “Akasha,” often translated as “ether.” Akasha appears both in metaphysical spiritual contexts, most often in ones influenced by Theosophy, and in the speculative scientific discourse that has historically demonstrated a strong affinity for the brand of monistic metaphysics that Indian-derived spiritualities tend to foster. This article traces the (...) relationship between these groups with special attention to the role of Indian concepts and terminology. More specifically, it argues that Akasha-as-ether comes to operate in a manner that bridges gross matter with the notion of a subtle material and transpersonal mind—a version of panpsychism allowing for a coherent quantum monism. (shrink)

Medicine is often criticized in science and technology studies (STS) for its dominating measuring practices. To date, the focus has been on two areas of “metric work”: health-care workers and metric infrastructures. In this article, I step back into the training of clinicians, which is important for understanding more about how practices of measurement are developed. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in a Dutch medical school to look at how a ubiquitous and mundane tool––measuring tapes––is embodied by medical students as (...) they learn to coordinate their sensory knowledge. In doing so, they create their own bodies as the standard or measure of things. Unpacking educational practices concerning this object, I suggest that tracing the making of measuring bodies offers new insights into medical metric work. This also speaks to the growing interest in STS in sensory science, where the body is fashioned as a measuring instrument. Specifically, two interrelated contributions build on and deepen STS scholarship: first, the article shows that learning is an embodied process of inner-scaffold making; second, it suggests that the numerical objectification of sensory knowing is not a calibration to “objectivity machines” but rather to oscillations between bodies and objects that involve sensory-numerical work. (shrink)

The article introduces theories of epistemic justification to the problems of understanding in communication. Two dominant approaches in contemporary epistemology — foundationalism and coherentism — are applied in intercultural discourse. Since the intended meaning of utterances in communication is reached through inference, beliefs about the intended meaning are justified with respect to the evidence of communicative behaviour and context. Tracing the difficulties of intercultural dialogue, the article argues that the coherentist method of justification is more useful than foundationalist one. Coherentism (...) is consistent with the open-mindedness and unprejudiced reasoning, both of which are crucial parts of intercultural competency. (shrink)

The subject of this contribution concerns the evolution of Eco’s thought on the problem of the false, from the first writings (in which the sign is just what can be used to lie) to the reflections of the late 1980s on the strength of the false, in a more culturological perspective. The essay will therefore trace an evolution that establishes in Eco’s theory a continuity between reflection on falsehood, reflection on falsification and the theory of fiction, while in a (...) second time it will retrace all of Eco’s narrative going to highlight how all novels have to do with the false, or at least with the non-verifiability of the true. From this point of view, it will be argued that novels are the best place for Eco to affirm the strength of the false, for the nomothetic power of fictions. (shrink)

The Jewish Mother, or Jiddische Mamme, is one of the most popular images of the Jewess in mid-19th and 20th century. Linked to the biblical Jewish women and mothers, arises a complex negative-grotesque stereotype, which is connected to the traditional image of the Jewess as,,home-keeper“ and was developed by the Shtetl-literature into a bitter and inapproachable,,family provider“. Finally, the overprotective and manipulative Jewish Mother is an integral part of American literature, film and comedy. The paper will trace these changes (...) of meaning and also analyse the Jewish Mother in the framework of the different presentations and representations of the Jewish woman. (shrink)

SUSANNE UUSITALO,ANNA AXELIN | : Infants born to opioid-dependent women are typically admitted to neonatal intensive-care units for management of neonatal abstinence syndrome, and their treatment requires medical decision making. It is not only the infants’ vulnerability, in terms of their incompetence and medical condition, that is present in those circumstances, but also the mothers’ situational vulnerability, which arises with the possibility of their engagement in medical decision making regarding their infants. Vulnerability is a concept that has often, if (...) not always, been traced back to individuals. In this paper, we suggest that in some cases evaluations and attributions of vulnerability to either individuals or populations fall short of capturing all aspects of vulnerability. We ask whether this individual-based evaluation is sufficient for identifying all the vulnerabilities arising in the situation. Moreover, we suggest that the “unit” of vulnerability attribution, typically a person who is a likely target of harm and/or moral violations, should not simply be reduced to the individual. Rather, the unit should in some cases be seen as constituted by an entity that is interpersonal in nature. The kind of real vulnerability that we identify in this paper is inherently embedded in a dyadic relationship, and notions of vulnerability that decompose social relations into individuals run the risk of missing the vulnerability in question. We elaborate this kind vulnerability by discussing of role of opioid-dependent mothers in decision making about their infants’ treatment. | : Les nourrissons nés de femmes dépendantes aux opioïdes sont généralement admis dans des unités de soins intensifs néonatals pour la prise en charge du syndrome d’abstinence néonatale, et leur traitement nécessite une prise de décision médicale. Ce n’est pas seulement la vulnérabilité des nourrissons, en termes d’incompétence et de dépendance médicale, qui est présente dans ces circonstances, mais aussi la vulnérabilité situationnelle des mères, qui découle de la possibilité de leur participation à la prise de décision médicale concernant leurs enfants. La vulnérabilité est un concept qui a souvent, sinon toujours été relié à des individus. Dans cet article, nous suggérons que, dans certains cas, les évaluations et les attributions de vulnérabilité aux individus ou aux populations ne permettent pas de saisir tous les aspects de la vulnérabilité. Nous demandons si cette évaluation individuelle est suffisante pour identifier toutes les vulnérabilités qui apparaissent dans la situation. De plus, nous suggérons que l’« unité » d’attribution de la vulnérabilité, généralement une personne qui est une cible probable de dommages ou de violations morales, ne devrait pas simplement être réduite à l’individu. Au contraire, l’unité devrait dans certains cas être considérée comme une entité de nature interpersonnelle. Le type de vulnérabilité réelle que nous identifions dans cet article est intrinsèquement intégré dans une relation dyadique, et les notions de vulnérabilité qui décomposent les relations sociales en individus risquent de manquer la vulnérabilité en question. Nous développons ce type de vulnérabilité en discutant du rôle des mères dépendantes aux opioïdes dans la prise de décision concernant le traitement de leurs enfants. (shrink)

Many Big Science projects and networks experience conflict. A plethora of disciplines have examined conflict causes in science collaboration and Big Science, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of why conflicts emerge. Yet, so far, there is no theoretical model that explains which mechanisms connect conflict cause and outbreak in Big Science. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature on science collaboration and Big Science as well as on scholarship on strategic action fields (SAFs), I address this blind spot by proposing a model (...) that outlines which mechanisms induce and fuel conflict in Big Science projects and networks. Five interlinked mechanisms – attribution of threat or opportunity, mobilization of resources, coalition-building, boundary deactivation and innovative action – are central to it. Tracing these mechanisms in conflictual episodes which emerged in three typical, yet most-different, Big Science cases – the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER), the Human Brain Project (HBP) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) – this study also provides a proof of concept for the model. (shrink)

In recent publications on the Enlightenment, Baruch Spinoza is often associated with the radical “fringe,” advocating against Christianity and giving rise to the incipient process of secularization. In this paper, it is argued that we should look for Spinoza’s influence on the Enlightenment in his ideas inspiring heterodox theologians: radical reformers aiming to “rationalize” revelation but not to dismiss it altogether. Several cases of such thinkers are adduced and shortly discussed: Jarig Jelles, Johan Christian Edelmann, Carl Friedrich Bahrdt and Immanuel (...) Kant. Finally, three ways of conceptualizing the relation between Enlightenment and religion are sketched to address the question whether the sources of secularization can indeed be traced back to the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Ideas about heredity and evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. New findings in molecular biology challenge the gene-centered version of Darwinian theory according to which adaptation occurs only through natural selection of chance DNA variations. In Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb argue that there is more to heredity than genes. They trace four "dimensions" in evolution -- four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic. These systems, they argue, can (...) all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Evolution in Four Dimensions offers a richer, more complex view of evolution than the gene-based, one-dimensional view held by many today. The new synthesis advanced by Jablonka and Lamb makes clear that induced and acquired changes also play a role in evolution.After discussing each of the four inheritance systems in detail, Jablonka and Lamb "put Humpty Dumpty together again" by showing how all of these systems interact. They consider how each may have originated and guided evolutionary history and they discuss the social and philosophical implications of the four-dimensional view of evolution. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors engage the contrarieties of the fictional "I.M.," or Ifcha Mistabra -- Aramaic for "the opposite conjecture" -- refining their arguments against I.M.'s vigorous counterarguments. The lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. (shrink)

Post-normal science is presented by its proponents as a new way of doing science that deals with uncertainties, value diversity or antagonism, and high decision stakes and urgency, with the ultimate goal of remedying the pathologies of the global industrial system for which, according to Funtowicz and Ravetz, existing science forms the basis. The authors critically examine whether PNS can fulfill this claim in the light of empirical and theoretical work on politics and policy making. The authors credit PNS as (...) an innovative frontrunner in raising important issues regarding the limited problem-solving capacity of ‘‘normal science’’ and ‘‘professional consultancy.’’ Yet, the authors notice that PNS lacks important considerations about the governance of problems and aspects of participatory and deliberative democracy. PNS in effect implies that methodological ‘‘ratiocination’’ would prevail over political deliberation and democratic interaction and that merely changing scientific input in public policy making would have the power to change its outcomes. This scientistic hubris can be traced back to PNS’s origin in concerned scientists’ activism, which in effect accessed the political arena through the scientific entrance. The authors conclude that the art of politics needs to come back into the discussion on environmental problems if societal change is to occur. (shrink)

On Being and Becoming offers a new approach to existentialist philosophy and literature, as responding to competing demands for universal truth and the defense of the irreducible singularity of the individual. On Being and Becoming traces the heterogeneity of existentialist thinking beyond the popular wartime philosophers of the Parisian Left Bank, demonstrating their critical dependence on sources from the nineteenth century and their complements in modernist works across the European continent and beyond. While quintessentially modern, existentialism inherits ideas of the (...) past and anticipates challenges of the present. Despite its individualism, existentialist attention to the human self is related to conceptions of world, others, the earth, and the more encompassing concept of being. The predominance of ideas of authenticity, individuality, and self-determination makes any existentialist manifesto self-contradictory, while existentialist thinkers above all wanted to make their philosophy relevant to concrete human existence as it is lived. Prevailing models of existential authenticity life tend to overlook the rich diversity of its prospects, which, as this volume shows, involve not only anxiety, absurdity, awareness of death and of the loss of religious reassurances, but also hope, the striving for happiness, and a sense of the transcendent—all of these grounded our human capacity to create meaning. In spite of the diversity of existentialism, all of its thinkers recognize the self as becoming, and recognize the courage and creativity human individuality demands. On Being and Becoming elaborates pragmatic and philosophical relevance of existentialism for being human in the contemporary world. (shrink)

This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition (...) of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution. (shrink)

Self-reported data are regarded by medical researchers as invalid and less reliable than data produced by experts in clinical settings, yet individuals can increasingly contribute personal information to medical research through a variety of online platforms. In this article we examine this ‘participatory turn’ in healthcare research, which claims to challenge conventional delineations of what is valid and reliable for medical practice, by using aggregated self-reported experiences from patients and ‘pre-patients’ via the internet. We focus on 23andMe, a genetic testing (...) company that collects genetic material and self-reported information about disease from its customers. Integral to this research method are relations of trust embedded in the information exchange: trust in customers’ data; trust between researchers/company and research subjects; trust in genetics; trust in the machine. We examine the performative dimension of these trust relations, drawing on Shapin and Schaffer’s discussion of how material, literary and social technologies are used in research in order to establish trust. Our scepticism of the company’s motives for building trust with the self-reporting consumer forces us to consider our own motives. How does the use of customer data for research purposes by 23andMe differ from the research practices of social scientists, especially those who also study digital traces? By interrogating the use of self-reported data in the genetic testing context, we examine our ethical responsibilities in studying the digital selves of others using internet methods. How researchers trust data, how participants trust researchers, and how technologies are trusted are all important considerations in studying the social life of digital data. (shrink)

This study focuses on the interdisciplinary issue of language corpora mining for the purpose of cultural analytics. The authors utilize the comparative cross -cultural approach to highlight the dynamics of “revolution” concept throughout two and a half centuries. They study concept application through the word occurrence in five languages by the means of Google Books Ngram Viewer and trace the waves of concept “popularity”. Most of the word application peaks can be corresponded to the political events called “revolutions” but (...) there is also an exception. (shrink)

For better and worse, our world has been transformed by Big Data. To understand digital traces generated by individuals, we need to design multidisciplinary approaches that combine social and data science. Data and social scientists face the challenge of effectively building upon each other’s approaches to overcome the limitations inherent in each side. Here, we offer a “data science perspective” on the challenges that arise when working to establish this interdisciplinary environment. We discuss how we perceive the differences and commonalities (...) of the questions we ask to understand digital behaviors, and how our methods may complement each other. Finally, we describe what a path toward common ground between these fields looks like when viewed from data science. (shrink)

The contributions to this special issue trace back to a conference entitled “Language: The Limits of Representation and Understanding” that was held at the University of Erfurt, August 30th to September 1st, 2012. We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support.

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the review: "Fortunes of Feminism" is a collection of essays authored by Nancy Fraser between 1985 and 2010 and prefaced by a narrative about the rise, decline, and potential resurgence of “second-wave socialist feminism.” Divided into three corresponding parts (“Feminism Insurgent,” “Feminism Tamed,” and “Feminism Resurgent?”) it contains some of Fraser’s best known essays, which, although admittedly “not written with [the] aim” of tracing historical shifts in recent feminist movements, have nevertheless (...) been “organized” into a volume which claims to do just that... (shrink)

Academic interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be traced back to the 1930s. Since then an impressive body of empirical data and theory-building has been amassed, mainly located in the fields of management studies and business ethics. One of the most noteworthy recent conceptual contributions to the scholarship is Midttun’s (Corporate Governance 5(3):159–174, 2005 ) CSR-oriented embedded relational model of societal governance. It re-conceptualises the relationships between the state, business, and civil society. Other scholars (In Albareda et al. Corporate (...) Governance 6(4):386–400, 2006 ; Business Ethics: A European Review 17(4):347–363, 2008 ; Lozano et al., Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility, 2008 ) have recently successfully used the model as the basis for their analytical framework for researching CSR activities in a large number of western European countries. While this research offers valuable insights into how CSR is operationalised, it also suffers from a number of significant limitations. To develop a stronger analytical framework with which to explore CSR, this article draws more deeply on political science literature concerned with governance and public policy analysis. This represents the main purpose of this article. In addition, this article also addresses a second and more modest aim: to reflect on the ways in which relational governance-inspired frameworks could be adapted and applied to politico-economic systems where state-industry-third sector relations differ from those found in North America and Western Europe. Both lines of argument are illustrated using vignettes from a case study of the Evenkia Hydro-Electric Station building project in the Russian Federation. (shrink)

Codicology, also known as ‘the archaeology of the book’, is the study of manuscripts as physical objects. It is a discipline that studies manuscripts with a predominantly historical orientation. This essay explores the sequel to the most famous literature before and after Islamic epic story and the link between Islamic signs and literature review. The greatest pre-Islamic mysteries in the history of Moslem literature and its religious effects were disused, which were solved by manuscript studies and some case studies. The (...) research method is based on the position story and finding the Islamic signs of the research to confirm the Islamic signs in the history and its changes over time. Therefore, in this research, religious symbols in the history of literature have been studied. The authors try to reach a new knowledge regarding the foundations of this school by tracing the history of religious literature. Furthermore, the connection between culture and religious literature is made by examining the Islamic religion mysteries sample. The symbolism and explanation of codes and elements in art works have been studied and the role of myths and metaphors in semantic analysis and religious concepts has been discussed. Finally, the effect of the Islamic events in literature review and art development is discussed.Contribution: This study provides further insights into the relationship between theology and literature through a historical literature review. (shrink)

Tensions between migration enforcement and migrants’ health and rights have gained renewed urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article critically analyses how the pandemic has affected detained and deportable people in Sweden. Building on an activist methodological approach and collaboration, based on a survey conducted inside Swedish detention centres during the pandemic and the authors’ research and activist engagement with migrants who are detained or legally stranded in Sweden, we argue that migration authorities’ inadequate measures to protect detained and deportable (...) people during the pandemic is a case of governance through ignorance enabled by structural racism. The article traces how this ignorance operates on a structural, institutional and micro-level, enabling public disregard and political irresponsibility for the harmful effects of migration enforcement. A broader aim of the article is to challenge the structural, societal and epistemic ignorance of the conditions for detained and deportable persons and to contribute to political change. (shrink)

Starting from the analysis of Marx’s Chapter 26 of the first volume of Capital, this article describes Marxian emphasis on the extremely violent aspects—a list of the main cases is also provided—of the so-called “enclosures” as fundamental procedures that favored the “primitive accumulation”, that is, the first social and economic step that led to capitalism. The “enclosures” that characterized the primitive accumulation process, violently expropriating peasants, razing their cottages and dwellings, are illustrated in detail. At the same time, we will (...) describe what we call the “moral bubble”, created by the narratives—morally edifying—about enclosures, only devoted to the emphasis on the positive economic and social outcomes: the moral bubble acts as a powerful conceptual device capable of concealing the violence that accompanies enclosures. The second part of the article stresses the fact that the mechanism of enclosures can be traced back not only to violently expropriating common lands in which the peasants flourished but also to the violent processes against women to have them basically reduced to machines for the production of new workers, in the framework of the new “patriarchy of the wage”. The importance of the so-called “new enclosures” is further delineated after having shown how enclosures express the historical and general tendency of capitalistic accumulation and not only of the primitive one. The violent aspects of primitive accumulation, and so of primitive enclosures, are described as the main characters of every phase of the recent capitalist globalization, marked by continuous and unprecedented assault on the commons, perpetrated by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, coronavirus lockdown and, currently, also by the paradoxical economic effects of the interplay between the green era and Ukraine war–global food and energy crisis. Finally, the last section provides insight on what we called the “terminal enclosure” related to the aggression of the ultimate common good: water. (shrink)

The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent’s (...) perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account. (shrink)