The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) objectives are an integral part of the overall objectives of the European Union and the policy area has developed from a purely intergovernmental form of cooperation in the days of the European political cooperation to an area in which the member states have increasingly accepted new forms of institutionalization. CFSP decisions are taken by the General Affairs Council, consisting of the ministers for foreign affairs of the member states. In spite of the growing (...) pains in the development of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the European Union has made significant strides in deploying crisis management operations. However, the issue of defining success of the CSDP is no longer measured in terms of merely launching missions, ensuring mission output, and gathering operational experience. Whenever a common policy does not prove possible, member states are free to pursue their own national foreign policies. (shrink)

Sexually reproducing metazoans establish a cell lineage during development that is ultimately dedicated to gamete production. Work in a variety of animals suggests that a group of conserved molecular determinants act in this germ line maintenance and function. The most universal of these genes are Vasa and Vasa‐like DEAD‐box RNA helicase genes. However, recent evidence indicates that Vasa genes also function in other cell types, distinct from the germ line. Here we evaluate our current understanding of Vasa function and its (...) regulation during development, addressing Vasa's emerging role in multipotent cells. We also explore the evolutionary diversification of the N‐terminal domain of this gene and how this impacts the association of Vasa with nuage‐like perinuclear structures. (shrink)

According to embodied theories of language (ETLs), word meaning relies on sensorimotor brain areas, generally dedicated to acting and perceiving in the real world. More specifically, words denoting actions are postulated to make use of neural motor areas, while words denoting visual properties draw on the resources of visual brain areas. Therefore, there is a direct correspondence between word meaning and the experience a listener has had with a word's referent on the brain level. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have provided (...) evidence in favor of ETLs; however, recent studies have also shown that sensorimotor information is recruited in a flexible manner during language comprehension (e.g., Raposo et al. ; Van Dam et al., ), leaving open the question as to what level of language processing sensorimotor activations contribute. In this study, we investigated the time course of modality-specific contributions (i.e., the contribution of action information) as to word processing by manipulating both (a) the linguistic and (b) the action context in which target words were presented. Our results demonstrate that processes reflecting sensorimotor information play a role early in word processing (i.e., within 200 ms of word presentation), but that they are sensitive to the linguistic context in which a word is presented. In other words, when sensorimotor information is activated, it is activated quickly; however, specific words do not reliably activate a consistent sensorimotor pattern. (shrink)

We examine the processes involved in the escalation of a plant closure from a local concern to a perceived organizational moral failure that commands national attention. Our empirical case covers the controversy over the decision of telecommunications giant Nokia to close a plant in Germany, despite having received significant state subsidies, and the relocation of production to Hungary and Romania. We conducted an inductive study that utilizes a semiotic analysis to identify how various actors framed the controversial plant closure and (...) sought to cast it as moral failure. Our analysis uncovered two distinctive moral framings of the plant closure and revealed how key actors used evocative labels to frame these events in moral terms. These moral framings drew in additional stakeholders, generated more widespread media coverage, and turned the case into an organizational moral failure in the eyes of the national public. We contribute to the literature on organizational moral failure by theorizing its escalating process and elaborating why and how local events may become moral issues of interest to broader stakeholder groups. (shrink)

According to embodied theories of language (ETLs), word meaning relies on sensorimotor brain areas, generally dedicated to acting and perceiving in the real world. More specifically, words denoting actions are postulated to make use of neural motor areas, while words denoting visual properties draw on the resources of visual brain areas. Therefore, there is a direct correspondence between word meaning and the experience a listener has had with a word's referent on the brain level. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have provided (...) evidence in favor of ETLs; however, recent studies have also shown that sensorimotor information is recruited in a flexible manner during language comprehension (e.g., Raposo et al. ; Van Dam et al., ), leaving open the question as to what level of language processing sensorimotor activations contribute. In this study, we investigated the time course of modality‐specific contributions (i.e., the contribution of action information) as to word processing by manipulating both (a) the linguistic and (b) the action context in which target words were presented. Our results demonstrate that processes reflecting sensorimotor information play a role early in word processing (i.e., within 200 ms of word presentation), but that they are sensitive to the linguistic context in which a word is presented. In other words, when sensorimotor information is activated, it is activated quickly; however, specific words do not reliably activate a consistent sensorimotor pattern. (shrink)

In this paper, we engage in a philosophical investigation of how blockchain technologies such as cryptocurrencies can mediate our social world. Emerging blockchain-based decentralised applications have the potential to transform our financial system, our bureaucracies and models of governance. We construct an ontological framework of “narrative technologies” that allows us to show how these technologies, like texts, can configure our social reality. Drawing from the work of Ricoeur and responding to the works of Searle, in postphenomenology and STS, we show (...) how blockchain technologies bring about a process of emplotment: an organisation of characters and events. First, we show how blockchain technologies actively configure plots such as financial transactions by rendering them increasingly rigid. Secondly, we show how they configure abstractions from the world of action, by replacing human interactions with automated code. Third, we investigate the role of people’s interpretative distances towards blockchain technologies: discussing the importance of greater public involvement with their application in different realms of social life. (shrink)

In this paper, we engage in a philosophical investigation of how blockchain technologies such as cryptocurrencies can mediate our social world. Emerging blockchain-based decentralised applications have the potential to transform our financial system, our bureaucracies and models of governance. We construct an ontological framework of “narrative technologies” that allows us to show how these technologies, like texts, can configure our social reality. Drawing from the work of Ricoeur and responding to the works of Searle, in postphenomenology and STS, we show (...) how blockchain technologies bring about a process of emplotment: an organisation of characters and events. First, we show how blockchain technologies actively configure plots such as financial transactions by rendering them increasingly rigid. Secondly, we show how they configure abstractions from the world of action, by replacing human interactions with automated code. Third, we investigate the role of people’s interpretative distances towards blockchain technologies: discussing the importance of greater public involvement with their application in different realms of social life. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explain the relationship between Life-world (Lebenswelt) and the concepts of Originality (Originalität) and Primordiality (Primordialität) founded in Edmund Husserl’s philosophy developed in the 20’s. In order to achieve this goal, we need to begin with a transcendental phenomenological analysis to then gain access to Ontology of the World in general. Therefore, we must explain how Transcendental Philosophy relates to Transcendental Aesthetics and how it phenomenologically labels all that is outside of theory and reflection (...) (i.e., the Natural World) as a precondition to all theoretical classifications. This way the Life-world could explain the relationship between the Originality and Primordiality as proto-datum that is the base of all human acts genetically describable. (shrink)

The spectrum of religious experience and spirituality in contemporary postmodern, postsecular and religiously pluralized Western culture is extremely broad. Is it possible to trace the development, the shifts, breaches and patterns of religious and spiritual transcendence in this deeply diversified context? In this volume, a heuristic model of four types of transcendence is proposed and discussed. The four types are immanent transcendence, radical transcendence, radical immanence and transcendence as alterity. Of each type two examples from contemporary cultural discourses, ranging from (...) theology and philosophy to popular culture are presented and the viability of the model as such is critically assessed. The pairs of examples show how different kinds of content are given to the same type. By illuminating this dialectic between formal categories of notions of transcendence and their specific content in various areas of culture, the book can aid further exploration of the preconditions, possibilities, difficulties and limitations of relating to and expressing (a) sense(s) of transcendence within a postmodern world. (shrink)

This paper provides a systematic literature review, analysis and discussion of methods that are proposed to practise ethics in research and innovation. Ethical considerations concerning the impacts of R&I are increasingly important, due to the quickening pace of technological innovation and the ubiquitous use of the outcomes of R&I processes in society. For this reason, several methods for practising ethics have been developed in different fields of R&I. The paper first of all presents a systematic search of academic sources that (...) present and discuss such methods. Secondly, it provides a categorisation of these methods according to three main kinds: ex ante methods, dealing with emerging technologies, intra methods, dealing with technology design, and ex post methods, dealing with ethical analysis of existing technologies. Thirdly, it discusses the methods by considering problems in the way they deal with the uncertainty of technological change, ethical technology design, the identification, analysis and resolving of ethical impacts of technologies and stakeholder participation. The results and discussion of our literature review are valuable for gaining an overview of the state of the art and serve as an outline of a future research agenda of methods for practising ethics in R&I. (shrink)

This review discusses Vincent Blok’s book Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method. Blok’s daring and important argument is that Heidegger has been misunderstood by contemporary philosophers who dismiss his thinking as correlationism; but that at the same time there lies something at the core of Heidegger’s thinking that prevents it from unleashing its true innovative potential; namely a logic of unity. To move beyond this logic of unity, Blok aims to rediscover and redefine the potential of Heidegger’s philosophical method by characterising (...) it along the lines of interrogative intention and creativity of world-interest. This move allows Blok to think about Earth in the age of global warming in a way that was not possible in Heidegger’s work, providing a positive concept of the Earth’s materiality as uncorrelated being that guides the way to a future environmental ethics. The review discusses the main contributions of the book, and also three criticisms, which concern the justification of choices for certain perspectives, the unfulfilled promise of moving from philosophical theory to more practically oriented guidance, and unclarities concerning the alternative that Blok puts forward as an answer to his criticism of Heidegger’s method. (shrink)

This paper examines the tension between the mainstream belief in international law as a source of objectivity distinct from politics and its new stream critics that question the validity of such a distinction. It is argued that, as a type of language, international law is not distinct from politics as a function of objectivity, but rather by the fact that it serves the international community’s thymos. The phenomena of global administrative law and NATO’s use of force in Kosovo are analyzed (...) as examples of how the thymos drives international law. Building on feminist theories of international law, the article sets forth a vision of international law as the primary communicative device for the international community’s thymos. (shrink)

RESUMEN: El texto pretende desmitificar que los sesgos son elementos negativos dentro de la toma de decisiones. Por tanto, es factible que los sesgos formen parte del razonamiento probatorio a través de la abducción, para lo cual en muestra se analizan dos casos de feminicidio suscitados en la jurisdicción mexicana e interamericana.ABSTRACT: The text aims to demystify that biases are negative elements in decision making. Therefore, it is feasible that the biases form part of the probative reasoning through abduction. Specifically, (...) they are analyzed two cases of feminicide of mexican and interamerican jurisdiction. PALABRAS CLAVE: ciencia, sesgos, abducción, interpretación, género.KEYWORDS: science, bias, abduction, interpretation, gender. (shrink)

This article forms part of a study which was inspired by the ever-growing need for significance expressed both by my life coaching and pastoral therapy clients as well as the need for existential meaning reported both in the lay press and academic literature. The study reflected on a life that matters with a group of co-researchers in a participatory action research relationship. The study has been positioned within pastoral theology and invited the theological discourse into a reflection of existential meaning. (...) Adopting a critical relational constructionist epistemology, the research was positioned within a postmodern paradigm. The implications for meaning and research were explored and described. This article tells the story of how spirituality was positioned in the narratives of meaning by my fellow researchers. (shrink)

Jeremiah 18:1–12 is a favourite passage often quoted and preached from pulpits. This prose passage however is much more complicated than taken at the face level. A one-dimensional reading misses the intricacies of these verses. The potter scene in verses 1–4 has its first application in verses 5–6 and again in verses 11–12. It is a question how verses 7–10 relate to the other sections in this narrative. The argument presented in this article is that verses 18:7–10 present a different (...) theological viewpoint and serves to clarify what is to be understood what שׁוב in verse 4 implies in real terms. This illustrates that the biblical text is organic and not static, and shows instances of ongoing interpretation within the text itself.Contribution: This article offers original research in the field of biblical studies, more specifically in the field of the Old Testament. This is in line with the scope of HTS Theological Studies. The article aims at indicating that detail textual analysis reveals the complexity of the text tradition we are dealing with. (shrink)

In several recent papers ([7], [8]) Bas van Fraassen has suggested that the structure of a scientific theory might be more appropriately represented by his “semantic view of theories” than by the traditional “syntactic view.” Under the syntactic view, to characterize a theory one provides “a finite list of sentences given to count as axioms, plus a finite set of syntactic transformations, of an effective character, given to generate the set of all theorems from these axioms.” ([8], p. 305) The (...) set of all such theorems is identified with the theory, and contains the set of all claims made by the theory about physical systems. Under the semantic approach, however, one “does not view a physical theory as… a kind of Principia Mathematica cum nonlogical postulates.” ([7], p. 337) Rather, “all the resources of mathematical English” are used to construct a theoretical framework, and “the theoretical reasoning of the physicist is viewed as ordinary mathematical reasoning concerning this framework.”. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, one is drawn to engage with texts that deal with the topic of human suffering. Two texts will be considered in this article. The first is the novel The Plague by Albert Camus, and the second is the Bible. Two characters in Camus’ work will be discussed as representatives of different theological and scriptural responses to the issue of widespread human suffering. Following a literary analysis research methodology, this article argues that Christian responses to (...) the COVID-19 pandemic are not dissimilar to the perspectives held by Dr Rieux and Fr Paneloux. Theodicy is engaged with either a perspective that questions the Divine in the light of the suffering of the innocent or a perspective that subjects itself to a state of surrender to ‘the God who knows best’. The article then offers a third perspective, one held by Camus himself, suggesting that the question of theodicy could be reimagined from the notion of the absurdity of life.Contribution: This article provides a theological reflection on common Christian responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses Camus’ novel, “The Plague” as a backdrop to differentiate between a deistic and a science-faith approach to suffering. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that language comprehenders derive lexical-semantic meaning by mentally simulating perceptual and motor attributes of described events. However, the nature of these simulations—including the level of detail that is incorporated and contexts under which simulations occur—is not well understood. Here, we examine the effects of first- versus third-person perspective on mental simulations during sentence comprehension. First-person sentences describing physical transfer towards or away from the body modulated response latencies when responses were made along a front-back axis, consistent (...) with the action-sentence compatibility effect. This effect was not observed for third-person sentences. The ACE was observed when making responses along a left-right axis for third-person, but not first-person sentences.sentences did not show an ACE along either axis. These results show that perspective is a detail that is simulated during action sentence comprehension, and that motoric activations are flexible and affected by the pronominal perspective used in the sentence. (shrink)

Primarily because of recent studies , there has been a revaluation of Kierkegaard’s view of art and the aesthetic. This article distinguishes between the ethical aesthetics of the pseudonym B in Either/Or and Kierkegaard’s theological aesthetics. It will show that, while imagination and appropriation are core concepts in both forms of aesthetics, that Kierkegaard’s view of radical transcendence – the qualitative distinction between God and human beings – is the norm only for his theological aesthetics. As a central anthropological category, (...) imagination ensures the necessary condition that art is important regardless of the stage of life . Kierkegaard is not an iconoclast; it is not the image that is at issue but the use to which it is put . Hermeneutically, the relationship between the work of art and the public has to do with appropriation, with response. Radical transcendence is the norm for the use of the imagination and art in the Christian religion and also determines indirect communication by connecting it to Christology. (shrink)

What does theology have to do with art in this modern period? To make clear why art and religion can be related in a positive way, the question of why art is of value will be posed . Subsequently some examples will be critically discussed of how art and religion have been related in theological aesthetics . Finally, in dialogue with the positions discussed, I will develop my own approach to theological aesthetics.

Paul Ricœur has been one of the most influential and intellectually challenging philosophers of the last century, and his work has contributed to a vast array of fields: studies of language, of history, of ethics and politics. However, he has up until recently only had a minor impact on the philosophy of technology. Interpreting Technology aims to put Ricœur’s work at the centre of contemporary philosophical thinking concerning technology. It investigates his project of critical hermeneutics for rethinking established theories of (...) technology, the growing ethical and political impacts of technologies on the modern lifeworld, and ways of analysing global sociotechnical systems such as the Internet. Ricœur’s philosophy allows us to approach questions such as: how could narrative theory enhance our understanding of technological mediation? How can our technical practices be informed by the ethical aim of living the good life, with and for others, in just institutions? And how does the emerging global media landscape shape our sense of self, and our understanding of history? These questions are more timely than ever, considering the enormous impact technologies have on daily life in the 21st century: on how we shape ourselves with health apps, how we engage with one-another through social media, and how we act politically through digital platforms. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a critique of value sensitive design (VSD) and to propose an alternative approach that does not depart from a heuristic of value(s), but from virtue ethics, called virtuous practice design (VPD).Design/methodology/approachThis paper develops a philosophical argument, draws from a philosophical method (i.e. virtue ethics) and applies this method to a particular case study that draws from a narrative interview.FindingsIn this paper, authors show how an approach that takes virtue instead of value as (...) the central notion for aiming at a design that is sensitive to ethical concerns can be fruitful both in theory and in practice.Originality/valueThis paper presents the first attempt to ground an approach aimed at ethical technology design on the tradition of virtue ethics. As such, it presents VPD as a potentially fruitful alternative to VSD. (shrink)

This article explores the notions of a good life as understood in religion and psychology. The markers of altruism and empathy are identified. The effect the use of social media has on brain chemistry is then explored and used in trying to answer the question as to whether technology is hampering our ability to live a good life. The notions of the rise of narcissism and the decline in empathy are also discussed.

Some books can be said to represent ‘new beginnings’, opening up new spaces for academic discourse and new methods and perspectives. Shannon Vallor’s Technology and the Virtues can rightfully be claimed to be one of those books. There is much about this book that is not only laudable but also urgent. First, it has managed to firmly establish virtue ethics as a tradition worthy of consideration in the field of ethics of technology. Other authors have suggested such a turning, but (...) none have done it so far in a manner that can live up to the comprehensiveness of Technology and the Virtues. Second, the book has served the virtue ethics tradition well in convincingly arguing for its... (shrink)

Trauma is left, right and centre in the whole book of Nahum. The book reflects the oppression and hardship that Judah had experienced at the hands of the imperial power Assyria. For many a reader, the violent and derogative content of this book is in itself a traumatic experience. In this article, the focus is on Nahum 2:2–11 (Masoretic Text [MT]), which depicts the downfall of Nineveh and its traumatic effects on its citizens. Besides the analysis of the text, a (...) reading from trauma theory is made to enhance insights into the text. It is argued that the text served the purpose of offering hope to the people of Judah who relied on Yahweh for relief from their own traumatic experiences. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of technology, in particular mediation theory, has largely neglected language and has paid little attention to the social-linguistic environment in which technologies are used. In order to reintroduce and strengthen these two missing aspects we turn towards Ricoeur’s narrative theory. We argue that technologies have a narrative capacity: not only do humans make sense of technologies by means of narratives but technologies themselves co-constitute narratives and our understanding of these narratives by configuring characters and events in a meaningful (...) temporal whole. We propose a hermeneutic framework that enables us to categorise and interpret technologies according to two hermeneutic distinctions. Firstly, we consider the extent to which technologies close in on the paradigm of the written text by assessing their capacity to actively configure characters and events into a meaningful whole; thereby introducing a linguistic aspect in the theory of technological mediation. Secondly, we consider the extent to which technologieshave the capacity to abstract from the public narrative time of actual characters and events by constructing quasi-characters and quasi-events, thereby introducing the social in our conception of technological mediation. This leads us to the outlines of a theory of narrative technologies that revolves around four hermeneutic categories. In order to show the merits of this theory, we discuss the categories by analysing paradigmatic examples of narrative technologies: the bridge, the hydroelectric power plant, video games, and electronic money. (shrink)

Since the Romantic period, painters have no longer made use of traditional Christian iconography to express religious transcendence. Taking their cue from Schleiermacher’s Reden Über die Religion , painters have sought for new, personal ways to express religious transcendence. One example is Caspar David Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea . Rosenblum argues, in his Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition , that there is a parallel between Friedrich and the abstract expressionist Rothko with respect to the expression to religious (...) transcendence. In this article I investigate how the experience of transcendence that Rothko’s paintings want to evoke is to be described. Is it an experience of the sublime in the Romantic tradition? Is it the evocation of the ultimate in accordance with Tillich’s broad concept of religion? Does it display affinity between Rothko and the first generation of abstract painters such as Kandinsky and Malevich? Or is it a transcendent experience that cannot be situated so easily within the options supplied? After determining Rothko’s understanding of transcendence, some issues will be brought up that could be fruitful for Christian theology. (shrink)

The quickening pace of technological development on a global scale and its increasing impact on the relation between human beings and their lifeworld has led to a surge in philosophical discussions concerning technology. Philosophy of technology after the “empirical turn” has been dominated by three approaches: actor-network theory, critical theory of technology and postphenomenology. Recently, scholars have started to question the philosophical roots of these approaches. This paper critically questions Ihde’s early adoption of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology in postphenomenology. First, (...) the paper clarifies the central contributions of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology to postphenomenology. It then uses Heidegger’s early work on Aristotle to argue that Ihde’s notion of “use context” is based on a distorted account of Heidegger’s notion of the “totality of relevance”. Correspondingly, it contends that this has led to a misinterpretation of Heidegger’s technology critique. Second, an alternative reading of Heidegger’s ideas concerning technology is offered. This reading traces Heidegger’s use of the concept of telos in the totality of relevance to his discussion of Aristotelian virtue. It is subsequently shown how the question of the temporality of the mode of being of virtue is related to the notion of authenticity, which lies at the heart of Heidegger’s philosophy. Finally, the paper argues that postphenomenology could gain from philosophers who targeted Heidegger’s central notion of authenticity, notably Arendt and Ricoeur. (shrink)

Some fictions deliberately omit all fictional statements about the mental functioning of fictional agents. This presents an interpretive dilemma, as when we read fiction we ought to reconstruct the fictional minds of characters significant to the plot. Fictions that present the reader with an opaque fictional mind resist the general imaginative project prescribed by fiction-making and seem to demand a novel approach to imagining their fictional entities. Such fictional entities demand the reader commit to one of at least two different (...) ways of imagining nothing about a fictional mind, without explicitly authorizing either. One approach has already been described by H. Porter Abbott. Another can be extracted from Simone De Beauvoir, whose ethics of ambiguity is well suited to dealing with fictional entities about which nothing is fixed nor determined. (shrink)

This article analyses the topic of presence in modern and contemporary religious art by means of the work of two artists. Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory (1951-1962) will be compared to the Buddhism-inspired works of Antony Gormley. Sutherlands Christ in Glory is intended to show Christ’s presence to the involved observer: the invisible Christ can become present through interaction with Christ in Glory in the same way that Christ becomes present through prayer. Viewed in connection with other works by Gormley, (...) Land, Sea, and Air II (1982) is intended to show presence to the viewer, the body as presence. This concerns an attitude of quiet concentration and awareness in connection with the ‘elemental’ world. Theologically speaking, the difference between Christ in Glory and Gormley’s works is as follows: the Christian tradition views the human being as a creation of God. He or she lives in his or her presence only in dependence on God. For Gormley, it has to do with a presence without God the creator. The human being is present as body and awareness in a world in which everything is uncertain. There is an unmistakable difference in their views of presence, but that does not mean, as we will see, that Gormley’s work cannot be fruitful for the Christian religion. Gormley’s Sound II in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral points the involved observer to the importance of the renewal of life after baptism through meditation as an important part of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

The use of the noun שָׁלוֹם in the Book of Jeremiah, as it occurs in prophetic proclamations, is of interest for this article. From an overview of a number of passages, it seems that the utterances in Jeremiah 4:10 and 23:17 are contradictory. In Jeremiah 4:10, Jeremiah utters the phrase שָׁלוֹם יִהְיֶה לָכֶם, but in 23:17 he rebukes prophets for proclaiming the very same message. The author argues that the prophet Jeremiah, as he is portrayed in the Book of Jeremiah, (...) developed in his thinking and reaction to matters in correspondence to political and social changes that occurred in the history of Judah. A case is argued that 4:10 should be assigned to the prophet Jeremiah. Contribution: This article offers original research in the field of biblical studies, more specifically, in the field of the Old Testament. This is in line with the scope of HTS Theological Studies. The article aims at addressing a contradictory pronouncement in Jeremiah 4:10 and 23:17 regarding שָׁלוֹם prophecies in the Book of Jeremiah. The issue of false שָׁלוֹם prophecies and the danger of such proclamations are at the heart of the discussion. (shrink)

Religion is undergoing a transformation in current Western society. In addition to organized religions, there is a notable movement towards spirituality that is not associated with any institutions but in which experiences and notions of transcendence are still important. Transcendence can be described as God, the absolute, Mystery, the Other, the other as alterity, depending on one's worldview. In this book, these shifts in the views of transcendence in various areas of culture such as philosophy, theology, art, and politics are (...) explored on the basis of a fourfold heuristic model (proposed by Wessel Stoker)"--Back cover. (shrink)

The invention of Bitcoin in 2008 as a new type of electronic cash has arguably been one of the most radical financial innovations in the last decade. Recently, developer communities of blockchain technologies have started to turn their attention towards the issue of governance. The features of blockchain governance raise questions as to tensions that might arise between a strictly “on-chain” governance system and possible applications of “off-chain” governance. In this paper, we approach these questions by reflecting on a long-running (...) debate in legal philosophy regarding the construction of a positivist legal order. First, we argue that on-chain governance shows striking similarities with Kelsen’s notion of a positivist legal order, characterised by Schmitt as the machine that runs itself. Second, we illustrate some of the problems that emerged from the application of on-chain governance, with particular reference to a calamity in a blockchain-based system called the DAO. Third, we reflect on Schmitt’s argument that the coalescence of private interests is a vulnerability of positivist legal systems, and accordingly posit this as an inherent vulnerability of on-chain governance of existing blockchain-based systems. (shrink)