At the century's end, societies all over the world are throwing off the yoke of authoritarian rule and beginning to build democracies. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones be bygones? Transitional Justice takes this question to a new level with an interdisciplinary approach that challenges the very terms of the contemporary debate. Ruti Teitel explores the recurring dilemma of how regimes should respond to evil (...) rule, arguing against the prevailing view favoring punishment, yet contending that the law nevertheless plays a profound role in periods of radical change. Pursuing a comparative and historical approach, she presents a compelling analysis of constitutional, legislative, and administrative responses to injustice following political upheaval. She proposes a new normative conception of justice--one that is highly politicized--offering glimmerings of the rule of law that, in her view, have become symbols of liberal transition.Its challenge to the prevailing assumptions about transitional periods makes this timely and provocative book essential reading for policymakers and scholars of revolution and new democracies. (shrink)

Among the most prominent and significant political and legal developments since the end of the Cold War is the proliferation of mechanisms for addressing the complex challenges of transition from authoritarian rule to human rights-based democratic constitutionalism, particularly with regards to the demands for accountability in relation to conflicts and abuses of the past. Whether one thinks of the Middle East, South Africa, the Balkans, Latin America, or Cambodia, an extraordinary amount of knowledge has been gained and processes instituted through (...) transitional justice. No longer a byproduct or afterthought, transitional justice is unquestionably the driver of political change. In Globalizing Transitional Justice, Ruti G. Teitel provides a collection of her own essays that embody her evolving reflections on the practice and discourse of transitional justice since her book Transitional Justice published back in 2000. In this new book, Teitel focuses on the ways in which transitional justice concepts have found legal expression, especially through human rights law and jurisprudence, and international criminal law. These essays shed light on some of the difficult choices encountered in the design of transitional justice: criminal trials vs. amnesties, or truth commissions; domestic or international processes; peace and reconciliation vs. accountability and punishment. Transitional justice is considered not only in relation to political events and legal developments, but also in relation to the broader social and cultural tendencies of our times. (shrink)

One of the most complex and uncertain areas of international legal doctrine concerns how to deal with the aspiration of a people to achieve self-determination through the establishment of a new state and the related claim to a specific territory over which statehood is to be exercised. Recently, when the General Assembly of the United Nations referred to the International Court of Justice the question of the legality of the declaration of independence by Kosovar Albanians, the Court was given an (...) opportunity to clarify and develop the law on external self-determination. Instead, the Court answered extremely narrowly, confining its analysis to the legality of the act of declaration without determining any consideration of international legal norms applicable to the act of secession that was being proposed. This article intends to fill the gap left by the ICJ’s decision: first by critiquing the inadequacy and tensions visible in the existing doctrine and second by examining how recent developments in international law may allow for a more normatively coherent approach to the problem. (shrink)

This paper first argues that we can bring out a tension between the following three popular doctrines: (i) the canonical reduction of metaphysical modality to essence, due to Fine, (ii) contingentism, which says that possibly something could have failed to be something, and (iii) the doctrine that metaphysical modality obeys the modal logic S5. After presenting two such arguments (one from the theorems of S4 and another from the theorems of B), I turn to exploring various conclusions we might draw (...) in light of these results, and argue that none comes cost free. In the course of laying out possible responses to my arguments, we'll have a chance to evaluate various doctrines about the interplay between contingency and essence, as well as develop some alternative reductions of metaphysical modality to essence. I don't decisively come down in favor of one response over the others, though I say some things that point towards the conclusion that essence has no role to play in reducing metaphysical modality. (shrink)

Formal criteria of theoretical equivalence are mathematical mappings between specific sorts of mathematical objects, notably including those objects used in mathematical physics. Proponents of formal criteria claim that results involving these criteria have implications that extend beyond pure mathematics. For instance, they claim that formal criteria bear on the project of using our best mathematical physics as a guide to what the world is like, and also have deflationary implications for various debates in the metaphysics of physics. In this paper, (...) I investigate whether there is a defensible view according to which formal criteria have significant non-mathematical implications, of these sorts or any other, reaching a chiefly negative verdict. Along the way, I discuss various foundational issues concerning how we use mathematical objects to describe the world when doing physics, and how this practice should inform metaphysics. I diagnose the prominence of formal criteria as stemming from contentious views on these foundational issues, and endeavor to motivate some alternative views in their stead. (shrink)

The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...) of this consensus position. My second aim is to show what form substantivalism must take in order to uphold the consensus while addressing this challenge. The result is a novel "plenitudinous" substantivalist view, which predicts that certain modal facts about spacetime are vague or indeterminate. I then argue against this view on independent grounds, concluding that substantivalists should reject the consensus position. The paper also discusses the way forward for substantivalists in light of this conclusion. (shrink)

The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including the General Theory of Relativity. The argument has given rise to an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime that delivers the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent extant replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. As part of my argument, (...) I show that threats to determinism of the sort brought out by the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then use these results to propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I go on to argue that once we realize what an essentialist doctrine about spacetime must look like in order to address the hole argument, we should reject all such doctrines, because they can't fulfill their ambition of improving on standard modal replies to the argument. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some general morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about (i) whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and (ii) the relationship between essence and modality. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in the (...) metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

Background independence begins life as an informal property that a physical theory might have, often glossed as 'doesn't posit a fixed spacetime background'. Interest in trying to offer a precise account of background independence has been sparked by the pronouncements of several theorists working on quantum gravity that background independence embodies in some sense an essential discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and a feature we should strive to carry forward to future physical theories. This paper has two goals. (...) The first is to investigate what a world must be like in order to be truly described by a background independent theory given extant accounts of background independence. The second is to argue that there are no non-empirical reasons to be more confident in theories that satisfy extant accounts of background independence than in theories that don't. The paper concludes by drawing a general moral about a way in which focussing primarily on mathematical formulations of our physical theories can adversely affect debates in the metaphysics of physics. (shrink)

Most of our best scientific descriptions of the world employ rates of change of some continuous quantity with respect to some other continuous quantity. For instance, in classical physics we arrive at a particle’s velocity by taking the time-derivative of its position, and we arrive at a particle’s acceleration by taking the time-derivative of its velocity. Because rates of change are defined in terms of other continuous quantities, most think that facts about some rate of change obtain in virtue of (...) facts about those other continuous quantities. For example, on this view facts about a particle’s velocity at a time obtain in virtue of facts about how that particle’s position is changing at that time. In this paper we raise a puzzle for this orthodox reductionist account of rate of change quantities and evaluate some possible replies. We don’t decisively come down in favour of one reply over the others, though we say some things to support taking our puzzle to cast doubt on the standard view that spacetime is continuous. (shrink)

Author's note -- The posthumanist universal : between precarity and rebellion -- The bad habits of critical theory : on the rigid rituals of thought -- Why some things matter more than others : a lacanian explanation -- Rupture or resignation? : lacanian political theory vs. affect theory -- Socrates's mistake : lacanians on love, lacan on agálmata -- Is suffering an event? : badiou between nietzsche and freud -- Bibliography -- Index.

Mari Ruti offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of queer theory, including debates about affect theory, subjectivity, negativity, defiance, agency, and bad feelings. She gives an accessible yet theoretically rigorous account of the political divisions that have animated the field in the last decade. In particular, Ruti argues that contemporary efforts by queer theorists to grapple with negativity and bad feelings challenge our society's normative understanding of the good life and have the potential to transform ethical (...) theory and practice. (shrink)

Organisms that share the capability of storing information about experiences in the past have an actively generated background resource on which they can compare and evaluate more recent experiences in order to quickly or even better react than in previous situations. This is an essential competence for all reaction and adaptation purposes of living organisms. Such memory/learning skills can be found from akaryotes up to unicellular eukaryotes, fungi, animals and plants, although until recently, it had been mentioned only as a (...) capability of higher animals. With the rise of epigenetics, the context-dependent marking of experiences at both the phenotype and the genotype level is an essential perspective to understand memory and learning in all organisms. Both memory and learning depend on a variety of successful communication processes within the whole organism. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Heeding the call of our character may mean acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, for they carry a great deal of creative energy. Ruti shows it is precisely this energy that makes us inimitable and irreplaceable.

The singularity of being -- The rewriting of destiny -- The ethics of the act -- The possibility of the impossible -- The jouissance of the signifier -- The dignity of the thing -- The ethics of sublimation -- The sublimity of love -- Conclusion: the other as face.

In “The Brokenness of Being,” Mari Ruti investigates the impact that trauma can have on being. Informed by her own experience of breast cancer, Ruti argues that there are some traumatic experiences that entirely change one’s symbolic coordinates. She calls these types of experiences benchmark traumas. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ruti boldly explores how encountering a benchmark trauma forced her to recognize the brokenness of her being. She theorizes that this recognition reveals the split in the subject. (...) Encountering this brokenness, as she calls it, at the heart of being can be completely debilitating. However, Ruti argues, there is a way to engage rather than repress this impossible reality. She theorizes that creativity is the one human expression that can grapple authentically with the split in the subject. To explore this idea, she collaborates with painter Dwight Smith. Smith’s twenty-two paintings respond to the benchmark trauma of the death of his twenty-two-year-old daughter. The twenty-two paintings are positioned throughout the manuscript and are in conversation with Ruti’s theory. Ruti is fascinated by both the paintings and Smith’s process, which is similar to her own. For Ruti and Smith, their creativity is how existential engagement takes shape. (shrink)

This essay considers the divergent efforts of Judith Butler, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek to arrive at a postmetaphysical conception of ethics that would sidestep the pitfalls of traditional Western humanism yet still possess universal applicability. Butler approaches this task through her ethics of precarity, which posits vulnerability as a foundation for a generalizable ethics of relationality in the Levinasian vein. Badiou and Žižek, in turn, work from a more Lacanian perspective, attempting to leap directly from the singular to the (...) universal by bypassing the particular. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, I propose that posthumanist theory needs to reconsider its resistance to a priori norms, for such norms do not need to be metaphysically grounded to be ethically compelling and politically useful. (shrink)

Levinas and lacan, two giants of contemporary theory, represent schools of thought that seem poles apart. in this major new work, mari ruti charts the ethical terrain between them. even as ruti outlines the major differences between levinas and judith butler on the one hand and lacan, slavoj z̆iz̆ek, and alain badiou on the other, she proposes that underneath these differences one can discern a shared concern with the thorny relationship between the singularity of experience and the universality (...) of ethics. -- from back cover. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 1, Page 69-81, March 2012.

Written with substance and compassion, The Summons of Love restores the enlivening and transformative possibilities of romance.

Lee Edelman's controversial book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive represents the most recent articulation of the so-called “antisocial thesis” in queer theory. This thesis–which emerges...

Michael G. Titelbaum presents a new Bayesian framework for modeling rational degrees of belief—the first of its kind to represent rational requirements on agents who undergo certainty loss.

The Latin language is uncharacteristically rich when it comes to describing witches. A witch may be called acantatrixorpraecantrix, asacerdosorvates. She may bedocta,divina,saga, andmaga, avenefica,malefica,lamia,lupula,strix, orstriga. She may be simplyquaedam anus. The available terms are copious and diverse, and the presence of such an abundant differential vocabulary might suggest that Latin made clear linguistic distinctions between various witch types. It would seem a reasonable expectation thatpraecantrices, a word evocative of those who sing of events before they happen, would be concerned with (...) divinatory practices, whileveneficae, given the term's close relationship to the word for poison, would deal in potions or philtres, leaving thelamiae orstriges to function as quasi-demonic bogeys posing threats to the lives of small children. However, this expectation of semantic and morphological concordance remains unfulfilled following any concerted attempt to correlate a witch's title with her function. Because of this disjuncture, this paper proposes to demonstrate not only the inaccuracy of the Latin vocabulary in articulating the functional differences between various witches, but also to assert the essential uniformity of witch characters in so far as each witch is, in essence, a blank canvas onto which a myriad of fears and anxieties may be mapped. (shrink)

The Gnostic World is an outstanding guide to Gnosticism, designed as a collection of critical studies by experts to both widen and deepen study in Gnostic movements and strands of speculation as a discrete "World" of human socio-spiritual life from the distant past until today. An international team of contributors examines these manifestations in a variety of contexts, from the ancient pre-Christian to the contemporary. The volume considers the intersection of Gnosticism with Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Indic practices and beliefs, (...) and also with such new religious movements as Theosophy, Scientology, Western Sufism, and the Nation of Islam. This illustrated handbook will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and researchers of Gnostic doctrine and history. (shrink)

How scientific assumptions point to God -- How laws of nature point to God -- How physical constants points to God -- How a grand unified theorypoints to God -- How the big bang points to God -- How genetics points to God -- How evolution points to God -- How neuroscience points to God -- How behavioral science points to God -- How semantics points to God -- How logic and math point to God -- How Gödel's theorem points (...) to God. (shrink)

Excerpt from Zur Psychologie des Asthetischen Genusses Die erste Erfahrung, auf der uberhaupt die Existenz berechtigung einer Wissenschaft wie der Asthetik beruht, ist die, da durch Einwirkung gewisser Objekte auf unsere Sinne ein Wohlgefallen in uns erzeugt wird, das wir unmittelbar und mit ziemlicher Sicherheit von allen anderen Arten des Wohlgefallens unterscheiden. Wenn wir versuchen, diesen zunachst nur gefiihlten Unterschied zu begrifi'licher Klarheit emporzuheben, so bemerken wir, da das asthetische Wohl gefallen durch zwei Eigenschaften charakterisiert und von allen anderen Arten (...) des Glucksgefiihls geschieden ist: erstens knupft es sich nicht an Elementarvorstellungen also ein fache Empfindungen sondern an Vorstellungskomplexe, und zweitens setzt es nicht die reale oder gedachte Erfullung einer zielsetzenden Tatigkeit voraus, sondern hat sein Ziel allein in sich selbst. Durch die erste Bestimmung unterscheidet es sich von sinnlichen Lustgefuhlen, durch die zweite von allen anderen Arten des Wohlgefallens, die wir aus leicht ersieht lichen Grunden als praktisch bezeichnen wollen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)