bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spinoza’s Jewish Modernities
Authors: Schwartz Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.
The First Modern Jew
Authors: Schwartz Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

This chapter skips ahead fifty years from the previous chapter to find the roots of the heroic and prototypical image of Spinoza in the historical fiction of the young Berthold Auerbach (1812–1882), using his engagement with the Amsterdam heretic in the 1830s as a lens for exploring tensions in early Reform Judaism between organic and revolutionary visions of religious change. It contends that his 1837 historical novel, Spinoza, ein historischer Roman (Spinoza, a Historical Novel), when studied against the backdrop of his previous Jewish writings, evinces a very personal—but also very contemporary—tug-of-war between two different visions of Jewish modernity: one more reformist and accommodating of a religious framework for change, the other more uncompromisingly radical.
A Rebel against the Past, A Revealer of Secrets
Authors: Schwartz Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

This chapter traces the migration of Spinoza's Jewish reception eastward into the Hebrew Enlightenment of Central and Eastern Europe, concentrating on the writings of the Galician-born maskil (or Jewish enlightener) Salomon Rubin (1823–1910), the most zealous champion of Spinoza in nineteenth-century Hebrew letters and the first to translate the Ethics (1677) into Hebrew. It shows how, for all his emphasis on the trailblazing nature of Spinoza, Rubin also portrays the heretic as the offspring of an esoteric legacy of speculation embedded within Jewish thought. Rubin's Spinoza reveals tensions between a rebel against Jewish tradition and a revealer of its secrets.
Spinoza Redivivus in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Schwartz Daniel B.
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter considers the current vogue in appropriations of Spinoza. Broadly speaking, the chapter finds in the recent literature two basic positions on Spinoza's place in the world of Jewish secularism: the “presentists,” who seek to vouch for Spinoza's anticipation of the modern, secular Jew and drive home his relevance to the contemporary culture wars; and the “contextualists,” who look askance at interpretations of Spinoza as a Jewish precursor, judging such readings guilty of everything from historical anachronism at the very least to a groundless “Judaizing” of the Amsterdam philosopher more problematically. This chapter, as with the rest of this volume, maintains a contextualist stance, and discusses this position in more depth in the larger context of the contemporary revival of Spinoza in modern Jewish culture.
Power and Violence
Authors: Reemtsma Jan Philipp
Published: November 2017

This chapter paints a picture of modernity as a fragmented and legally regulated power structure underwritten by a state monopoly on violence. This power structure allows functional differentiation to thrive and determines modernity's practices of social trust. It also defines the risks: institutions licensed to use violence that cannot themselves be controlled by violence; the deregulation of the entire power structure should those institutions turn against the state; the subversion of the power structure when too much of the population participates in violence. These risks can be described as crises of trust, and crises of trust are always crises of trust about the trust of others.
Delegitimation/Relegitimation
Authors: Reemtsma Jan Philipp
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that violence is a scandal to those who suffer it and to those who suffer vicariously with them, but for everyone else, it depends on the culture. For us children of modernity, violence contains something shockingly archaic and our shock shapes the way we use the word. To call something “violent” is to denounce it, to call it into question by inquiring into its legitimacy. We must keep in mind, however, that our attitudes toward violence are symptoms of modernity and the result of a historical upheaval. Every animal species requires some form of aggression to survive; as such, the term belongs to the province of biology and behavioral studies. The issue is to what extent a form of civilization understands aggressive manifestations as violent and characterizes them as permitted, prohibited, or mandated.
Violence and Communication
Authors: Reemtsma Jan Philipp
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that those who talk about the violence they commit speak the language of legitimation. The language will vary depending on whether it is uttered in zones where violence is permitted (or assumed or declared to be permitted), or whether it is uttered in zones where violence is prohibited. In either case, the language of legitimation is not all excuses and lies. People want to account for their actions, and to do this they must generally conform (or believe they must generally conform) to the language spoken by those around them. Those who use a language of violence that does not keep to the mandated/prohibited/permitted distinction precipitate a breakdown in communication. Language that lies outside this framework can convey meaning only when it is also directed at some other person who shares the speaker's assumptions and with whom the breakdown forms a communicative unity.
Setting the Frame Chronologically
Authors: Snodgrass Anthony
Published: November 2017

This chapter lays out the chronological framework for the history of hoplite warfare. It discusses the impact that the studies of Homeric warfare have had on the orthodoxy. This chapter considers the problems posed by the evidence of iconography and archaeology, especially the dedications of actual armor in the sanctuaries at Olympia and Delphi, and the various philological and historical approaches that scholars have applied to the literary sources. It also notes the potential significance that a certain evolutionary model for the creation of the Homeric epics has when historians use the poems to understand archaic warfare and its relation to the polis. While reaffirming a gradualist position on the hoplite reform, the chapter also underscores the often overlooked common ground among scholars involved in the debate.
Attraction and Enchantment
Authors: Wells Peter S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter is devoted to fibulae, which are clothing pins that operated on the same principle as the modern safety pin. The style of fibulae changed relatively rapidly throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, and they have long been used as the principal chronological indicator for a given grave or settlement. Of all of the common objects preserved from late prehistoric Europe, fibulae are the most attractive, in the sense that even today people are drawn to them, finding them intriguing to look at. The reason that they are so appealing is that they embody a number of the visually commanding features outlined in Chapter 2. In their shapes, they are unlike anything in nature and thus immediately seize our attention. In addition, fibulae had a unique property among material culture items of late prehistoric Europe. In order to operate a fibula—to attach it to a garment—the user had to apply considerable force with the thumb and forefinger to the pin in order to lift the end out of the catch. Then, after sliding the pin through a textile garment or removing it from one, he or she released the pin to sit in the catch again. No other objects required this kind of bodily manipulation in order to serve their intended purposes.
New Media in the Late Iron Age
Authors: Wells Peter S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes coins and writing in late prehistoric Europe. The development of coinage in temperate Europe and the first regular signs of writing are innovations that share some important features. Both were introduced from outside the region, specifically from the Mediterranean world, toward the end of the Middle Iron Age. Although both had existed in the Mediterranean world for centuries before their introduction and adoption in temperate Europe, both appear in temperate Europe at about the same time, during the third century BC and more abundantly during the second and first centuries. They were both adopted at a particular time in Europe's developmental trajectory, and under specific economic and political circumstances.
Changing Patterns in Objects and in Perception
Authors: Wells Peter S.
Published: November 2017

The preceding chapters examined three categories of objects—pottery, fibulae, and swords with their scabbards—and two ways of manipulating objects—arrangements in graves and performances involving human bodily action with objects—over the two-thousand-year period from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The focus has been on visual aspects of objects and the changes in their visual character over time. This chapter synthesizes the material laid out in chapters 5 through 10. It draws attention to the consistency of the patterns in the visual character of material culture in each of the three main periods of time considered in this book, and to the character of the changes that took place in the fifth century BC and in the second century BC.
Contacts, Commerce, and the Dynamics of New Visual Patterns
Authors: Wells Peter S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the extent to which communities in temperate Europe became increasingly integrated into the larger world of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, and how the process of integration worked. Major changes in the visual structure and patterning of objects took place in the context of major changes in the relationship between societies in temperate Europe and societies in the Mediterranean basin, in Asia, and in Africa. The changes emerged internally, from within the societies of temperate Europe. They were in no sense “caused by” outside societies, nor by trade relations with outside societies. The changes in the visual character of fifth-century-BC objects resulted principally from the expanded dissemination of ideas, embodied in new objects, styles, motifs, and designs. The changes in the second century BC resulted mainly from the expansion of commerce—of trade in goods.
What Influences Local Voters’ Electoral Choices?
Authors: Oliver J. Eric , Ha Shang E. , Callen Zachary
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines what individual voters know about local elections and what factors shape their voting choices. After reviewing how and why we might expect that local voting behavior may differ from presidential voting behavior, it examines a unique dataset of over 1400 voters in thirty different smaller communities that focuses on these questions in particular. In line with their “homevoter” identities, most local voters typically have high knowledge levels about candidates and express a great deal of interest in local affairs. But because of this, local voters tend to employ different criteria than national ones. They are far more likely to base their votes on specific issues or incumbent performance and less likely to utilize heuristics like partisanship or candidate charisma, although this varies somewhat with the size, scope, and bias of their community. Local voters are also more likely to embody the normative expectations of the informed and rational citizen of classical democratic theory.
Power to the People
Authors: Kander Astrid , Malanima Paolo , Warde Paul
Published: November 2017

This book examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century—fueled by coal and steam engines—redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. It offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand.
Knowing Full Well
Authors: Sosa Ernest
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the epistemic normativity that constitutes our knowledge. It introduces two of Plato's best-known dialogues, which are both inquiries about knowledge. The Theaetetus inquires into its nature; the Meno into its value. Each dialogue, the chapter suggests, involves the same basic question: What sort of normativity is constitutive of our knowledge? A belief that falls short of knowledge is thereby inferior. It is better to know than to get it wrong, of course, and also better than to get it right just by luck. The chapter then asks what is involved in such an evaluation, and in addressing this question the chapter draws out a solution for both Platonic problems.
Deflationism
Authors: Burgess Alexis G. , Burgess John P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the debate over deflationism versus inflationism regarding the question “What do the different truths about different topics all have in common, to make them all truths?” Deflationists are typically committed to three theses about the phrase “is true,” usually called the natural language truth predicate. First, applying the truth predicate to something is equivalent to just saying it. Second, the equivalence principle is a sufficient account of the meaning of the truth predicate. Third, an account of the meaning of “true” is a sufficient account of the nature of truth. The chapter first considers Frank P. Ramsey's redundancy theory before discussing other radical and moderate theories, the disquotationalism of W. V. Quine, slogans associated with deflationism, and the alethic notion of reference.
A Politicized Minority
Authors: Laurence Jonathan
Published: November 2017

This chapter addresses the growth of Political Islam and transnational religious NGOs in Western Europe. While the European receiving states were granting a de facto monopoly of religious representation to the diplomatic envoys of immigrants' sending states, competing networks of well-organized activists with a more conservative, politicized view of Islam also flourished on the margins of religious community life. Political-Islam federations also provided prayer spaces, imams, lecturers, and social activities and established what may best be described as an Islamist subculture. Although such organizations may represent a relatively small membership base in terms of the local Muslim population, they often control a sizable proportion of the registered Muslim religious associations and prayer spaces where mosque-going Muslims congregate to socialize and pray.
The Domestication of State-Mosque Relations
Authors: Laurence Jonathan
Published: November 2017

This chapter addresses the failures of the “outsourcing” phase described briefly in Chapter 2, and other events and issues that prompted European interior ministries to wrest control of state–mosque relations from their foreign-ministry counterparts and undertake efforts to bring Islam to the table. First, there is a discussion of socioeconomic indicators of integration, followed by the growing problem of foreign government control over Muslims' religious life, an increasingly felt inadequacy of prayer space and imams, and finally, the rise of Political-Islam activism and Islamist terrorism. Then, the chapter delves into the first of two phases of these efforts that culminated in the establishment of Islamic Councils in the ten European states with sizable Muslim populations.
Free Market Fairness
Authors: Tomasi John
Published: November 2017

Can libertarians care about social justice? This book argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, the book presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, the book argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, it encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, the book offers a “market democratic” conception of social justice: free market fairness. It argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberties and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to this book, free market fairness is social justice, American style. The book offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice—one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.
Thinking the Unthinkable
Authors: Tomasi John
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the process of “thinking the unthinkable,” which for high liberals means considering the possibility that the basic moral commitments of late twentieth-century liberal philosophers, while undoubtedly high, were defectively narrow. The phrase “thinking the unthinkable” is associated with the New Labour movement in Britain during the 1990s; it refers to the party's reconceptualization of even the most basic planks of their platform. For Labour leaders, thinking the unthinkable was an exercise in practical political strategy. The chapter first considers economic growth in the United States and in western liberal democracies before discussing liberal arguments for economic exceptionalism in relation to populism and political philosophy. It then explains how a thick conception of economic liberty intersects with democratic legitimacy and concludes by reflecting on the possibility for a realization of liberal justice that is normatively fuller and more ambitious than that of high liberalism—this is the essence of market democracy as opposed to social democracy.
Market Democracy
Authors: Tomasi John
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines market democracy, a hybrid approach to liberal theory building that combines a concern for private individual economic liberty with a commitment to social justice. As such, market democracy offers an alternative to both classical liberalism and to high liberalism. After explaining exactly what market democracy is, the chapter considers its conceptual space. In particular, it explores why market democracy asserts that economic freedoms should be treated as basic but not absolute, and why it thus allows taxation in support of a limited range of social service programs. The chapter then compares the views espoused by advocates of libertarianism, classical liberalism, and modern or high liberalism. It also looks at market democracy as a research program, its institutional requirements, and the challenges that it faces from both the left and from the right.
Free Market Fairness
Authors: Tomasi John
Published: November 2017

This chapter defends a “market democratic” interpretation of justice as fairness that it calls free market fairness, with a particular focus on institutions. The discussion encompasses the difference principle, fair equality of opportunity, fair value of political liberties, and the rest of the first principle guarantee of basic liberties. Market democracy is explored in light of some secondary considerations of justice: the just savings principle, environmental justice, and duties of international aid. The chapter also examines how free market fairness interprets the component of justice as fairness in question and how that interpretation compares to John Rawls' social democratic interpretation. Finally, it asks whether market democratic regimes can satisfy the distributional requirements of free market fairness.
Population-Based Survey Experiments
Authors: Mutz Diana C.
Published: November 2017

Population-based survey experiments have become an invaluable tool for social scientists struggling to generalize laboratory-based results, and for survey researchers besieged by uncertainties about causality. Thanks to technological advances in recent years, experiments can now be administered to random samples of the population to which a theory applies. Yet until now, there was no self-contained resource for social scientists seeking a concise and accessible overview of this methodology, its strengths and weaknesses, and the unique challenges it poses for implementation and analysis. Drawing on examples from across the social sciences, this book covers everything you need to know to plan, implement, and analyze the results of population-based survey experiments. But it is more than just a “how to” manual. This book challenges conventional wisdom about internal and external validity, showing why strong causal claims need not come at the expense of external validity, and how it is now possible to execute experiments remotely using large-scale population samples. Designed for social scientists across the disciplines, the book provides the first complete introduction to this methodology and features a wealth of examples and practical advice.
Population-Based Survey Experiments
Authors: Mutz Diana C.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter traces the development of population-based experiments and highlights some of their advantages over traditional experiments and surveys. There is a tendency to think about population-based survey experiments as simply a hybrid methodology that melds certain characteristics of surveys and experiments. But to say this tells nothing about which advantages and disadvantages of each methodology are inherited. The chapter argues that population-based survey experiments are instead more akin to an agricultural hybrid that produces something that was not present in either of the two original plants. To the extent that population-based survey experiments can be implemented with effective treatments and with the same degree of control over random assignment as in the lab, it is the only kind of research design capable of straightforwardly estimating population average treatment effects without complex statistical machinations.
Treatments to Improve Measurement
Authors: Mutz Diana C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates population-based experiments designed to improve measurement. These are descendants of the early split-ballot approach, also geared toward improving measurement of attitudes and behaviors, but the approaches are now far more sophisticated and complex. The experimental treatments discussed here are not designed to test a specific theoretical hypothesis so much as to improve measurement. Although the chapter makes a distinction between testing hypotheses and improving measurement, in many cases the fundamental hypothesis of a study is that a measure is flawed in some systematic way. Three general approaches to improving measurement are evident in population-based experiments: the “item count technique,” alteration of the inferential process, and techniques involving anchoring as a means of improving measurement.
Vignette Treatments
Authors: Mutz Diana C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the process of vignette treatments. Vignettes offer the possibility of easily executing complex, multi-dimensional factorial designs. Although the vignette approach can certainly be used for very simple studies as well, the trade-offs that they impose—namely, the introduction of what are essentially hypothetical people and situations—may be most beneficial when studying more complex theories. Vignettes could be considered a subspecies of direct treatment in that the interventions are essentially what they appear to be on the surface. The goal of vignette treatments is to evaluate what difference it makes when the actual object of study or judgment, or the context in which that object appears, is systematically changed in some way.
More Than Just Another Method
Authors: Mutz Diana C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses how population-based survey experiments can be especially valuable to more particularistic research because the target of applicability is known and specified. With particularistic research, population-based survey experiments are important not so much to explore boundaries of generalizability as to establish that the empirical cause and effect relationship works as predicted on the targeted population. By increasing the variety of experimental subjects, the settings in which research is done, and the kinds of treatments and measures that are utilized, population-based survey experiments may produce greater awareness of the boundaries of various social science theories. Whether this kind of activity is welcome or not, it remains an important contribution to social science knowledge.
Varieties of Aboutness
Authors: Yablo Stephen
Published: November 2017

A few philosophers have tried to think systematically about subject matter. Gilbert Ryle thought a sentence was about the items mentioned in it. Nelson Goodman thought it was about the items mentioned in certain consequences. David Lewis was the first to consider subject matters as entities in their own right, and the first to link a sentence's subject matter to what it says, as opposed to what it mentions. Lewisian subject matters are equivalence relations on, or partitions of, logical space. A sentence S is wholly about m if its truth-value in a world w is fixed by how matters stand m-wise in w. But he never identified anything as the subject matter of sentence S—the one it is exactly about. This chapter defines it as the m that distinguishes worlds according to S's changing ways of being true in them. Subject anti-matter is defined analogously, and S's overall subject matter is the two together. Aboutness comes out independent of truth-value, as we would hope. A sentence is not about anything different from its negation.
Inclusion in Metaphysics and Semantics
Authors: Yablo Stephen
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that parts are subject to a principle of upward difference transmission: tweaking them makes for variation in their containing wholes. The principle is highly schematic; different differences are passed along according to the sort of entity involved. If x and y are material objects, intrinsic variation in x makes for intrinsic variation in y. If they are properties, it is changes in how they are exemplified that percolate up. If they are statements, it is variation in how they are true. This provides a second route to our conception of content-parts as consequences whose ways of being true “change less quickly.” Sometimes A and B are given, and we can apply the definition directly. Other times only A is given, and our task is to construct the part of A that concerns the given subject matter.
Saturn
Authors: Ingersoll Andrew P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter compares the climate of Saturn with that of Jupiter. Both Jupiter and Saturn have no oceans and no solid surfaces, but they have lightning storms and rain clouds that dwarf the largest thunderstorms on Earth. Saturn's weather is normally very calm, but every 20–30 years a giant storm erupts. These storms last for a few months and then disappear. In contrast, Jupiter's giant storms endure without change for decades or centuries. Saturn's winds are stronger than Jupiter's. The chapter first reviews the variables that might control the planets' climates before discussing how the climates actually differ. It examines Saturn's rotation, giant storms, effective radiating temperature, electrostatic discharges and lightning, enrichment relative to solar composition, helium raindrops, moist convection and conditional instability, and ortho-para instability.
Uranus, Neptune, and Exoplanets
Authors: Ingersoll Andrew P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the climates of Uranus, Neptune, and exoplanets. Uranus spins on its side, which allows a comparison between sunlight and rotation for their effects on weather patterns. In contrast to Venus, Uranus is only weakly affcted by tides from the Sun because it is so far away. Models of planet accretion give a gradual clumping of small bodies into medium-sized bodies and then into large bodies, until finally only a few large bodies are left. The final collisions, which involved these large bodies, would have been quite violent and were capable of knocking Uranus on its side. After providing an overview of Uranus's rotation, insensitivity to seasonal cycles, and wind profile, the chapter considers Neptune's winds, effective radiating temperature, and Great Dark Spot. It also explains the radial velocity method and the transit method of detecting extrasolar planets.
Foundational Visions of Indies Islam, 1600–1800
Authors: Laffan Michael
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the very hazy notions of Islam that were formed in the course of the first voyages of the 1590s, emphasizing the place of Protestantism in the evolving understanding of Islam and its problematic relationship with the East India Companies. In the wider East, there was a deepening understanding of the cultures and religions of the Indies based on hard experience. More can be gleaned from letters sent home than from the print record, a fact that may probably be attributed more to the perception that information on such subjects was of limited utility in the metropole than to a lack of knowledge per se. However, early Dutch views of Islam were shaped less by historical knowledge than by “sound conviction.” As the seventeenth century wore on, that conviction would come to rest on the Protestant notion of a return to the text.
Hardenings and Partings, 1919–1942
Authors: Laffan Michael
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows how, with the rise of a national movement couched by some of the actors in terms of Islam, the advisors and their reformist fellow-travelers would be blamed and marginalized by a reactionary colonial state, just in time for the Japanese occupation. The disastrous events of the Afdeeling B and its aftermath did not immediately destroy the relationship between the colonial advisors and the state, but they showed only too clearly that matters modern were not resolved. They also empowered forces whose ascent would result in the practical excommunication of the Office for Native Affairs from key decisions impacting the lives of Indonesians disabused of the promises of colonial tutelage. The campaigners of Sarekat Islam and related bodies would be forced to withdraw as well from a political field increasingly dominated by nationalist and communist agitators, who directed their rhetorical attacks at those they believed had engendered the pervasive backwardness of Indonesians.
The End of a Mirage
Authors: Granville Brigitte
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes the learning trajectory that led economists and policymakers to regard controlling inflation as a priority and to pursue this goal of greater price stability more effectively. It focuses on one particular episode in the history of macroeconomic controversy—namely, how a set of economic ideas shifted the general conduct of monetary policy that had prevailed since John Hicks's interpretation (1937) of John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). This “new” thinking about inflation and monetary policy reacted against the contemporary orthodoxy because the prevailing theory had proved to be unsatisfactory in analyzing the changing nature of the economy.
The Coordination of Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Authors: Granville Brigitte
Published: November 2017

In considering the components of effective monetary policies to control inflation, the previous chapters have highlighted the decisive role played by credibility and shown how credibility can be established and enhanced through rules-based policy frameworks and independent agencies to implement such regimes. This chapter examines how the same test of credibility, hence supportive public expectations, must also be passed by fiscal policy. For if this fiscal test is failed, even the best designed monetary policy efforts will be unavailing. It also shows how transparent rule-based inflation targets can facilitate resolution of the most intractable fiscal problems. At the time of writing, such problems were most apparent in several of the countries that use the euro. Attempts to address concerns about their solvency by fiscal tightening were having the counterproductive effect of damaging growth, hence further increasing their debt-to-GDP ratios, and all the while raising the likelihood of a social and political backlash against higher taxes and spending cuts.
Applied Nutrition
Authors: Simpson Stephen J. , Raubenheimer David
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows how the Geometric Framework has been applied to design nutritional regimes for agricultural and companion animals, and to manage the nutritional environment of endangered species. Clearly, the pervasiveness of nutrition extends beyond fundamental biology, to a wide range of problems that demand scientifically designed management solutions. There are many examples, but among the most important is the need to feed production animals (agriculture), to feed companion animals, to conserve endangered species, and to manage the impacts of the rapidly changing human diet on health. In each case, the key to this approach is to depict the animal, the environment, and the interaction between animal and environment in terms of nutrients. In conservation ecology, these nutrient-level depictions should not be considered an alternative to analyses that focus on foods—both food- and nutrient-level analyses are important.
The Geometry of Human Nutrition
Authors: Simpson Stephen J. , Raubenheimer David
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the methods of nutritional geometry on the modern human diet, applying the geometric approach to an analysis of a key aspect of human nutrition: the topical subject of human obesity. This analysis leads to three conclusions. First, the available evidence suggests that humans can regulate macronutrient intake, but that the intake target contains a built-in component for fat storage. Failure to use this stored fat promotes obesity. Second, when humans are faced with imbalanced diets, protein intake is prioritized. When the ratio of protein to carbohydrate in the diet is lower than optimal, it is easier to gain the required amount of protein—and hence overconsume fat and carbohydrate—when foods are high in energy density, present in great variety, and easily available throughout the day. Lastly, the regulation of nutrient intake in humans has evolved “assuming” a higher level of energetic expenditure than is usual today.
A Virtue for Courageous Minds
Authors: Craiutu Aurelian
Published: November 2017

Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, this book examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. The book begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. It then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. The book looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. It traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. The book demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and it challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, the book reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.
Antagonistic Figures
Authors: Tolan John , Veinstein Gilles , Laurens Henry
Published: November 2017

This chapter delineates all the forms of antagonism that, at the ideological level, irremediably pitted the Christians and Muslims against each other. The Christians had rejected Islam from its first appearance and continued to do so throughout the Middle Ages. Initially, they even denied it the status of religion, seeing it only as a heresy or a form of paganism or idolatry. When they had to consider Islam a religion, they could only denounce it, given that Christianity alone was true. In addition to being false, Islam was also a mortal danger: as a universal religion, it claimed to be superior to Christianity and intended to take its place. It was thus imperative to stand up to Islam and combat it by every means. The very survival of Christianity was at stake, and therefore humanity's salvation.
The Age of Reform
Authors: Tolan John , Veinstein Gilles , Laurens Henry
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the reformation of the Muslim state. By the Enlightenment period, the state's survival depended on it, in order to remain within the framework of the European balance of powers, which had become global via the Indian route. Although the need for reforms was a European imperative, given the universalization of its norms, it also corresponded to the needs of the societies being transformed. The chapter thus analyzes the processes under way, what was imposed collectively and forcibly by the great powers, what evolved in synchronism between Europe and the Muslim world (with the two finding similar solutions to similar problems), and what resulted from one side influencing or borrowing from the other.
The Age of Empire
Authors: Tolan John , Veinstein Gilles , Laurens Henry
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the progress of direct European rule in Islamic countries during the late nineteenth century. Whereas France was concerned with constituting a huge African bloc with the primary and avowed motive of preserving its rank as a major power, Great Britain confined itself to the desire to control the Indian route. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire embarked on a policy of reconsolidating the empire on the basis of a modernizing Muslim authoritarianism. In an empire where the share of the Muslim population had grown considerably, with the loss of the Balkan provinces and the continuous influx of Muslim refugees, there was a revival of caliphal as well as Islamic influence. At the same time, the authorities continuously developed the tools of modernity.
Making Volunteers
Authors: Eliasoph Nina
Published: November 2017

Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We have all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? This book offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. The book reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach. With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. The book describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their résumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. The book looks at adult “plug-in” volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. It indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers. The book illustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective.
Participating under Unequal Auspices
Authors: Eliasoph Nina
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows what happens when two different sets of youth volunteers are supposed to meet as equals in the civic engagement projects. Disadvantaged youth often overhear the public speeches about them, documenting their programs' effectiveness in preventing crime, drug abuse, and pregnancy. So it makes sense when they speak of themselves as outcomes and variables; they understand that they themselves are considered the main problem to solve. Non-disadvantaged youth assume, in contrast, that they are supposed to solve the problems of distant others. The two sets of volunteers cannot talk about this inequality together, but they have to know about it in order to make sense of action in the programs.
Tell Us about Your Culture: What Participants Count as “Culture”
Authors: Eliasoph Nina
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows how the terms “culture” and “diversity” are used by the Snowy Prairian participants. Because these terms are used so constantly, they end up meaning everything and yet nothing. While empowerment talk summons these participants to draw on their unique cultures, no culture quite seems to fit the purpose. All of them are deemed too difficult to understand, or are considered too sexist, racist, hierarchical, inaccessible, constraining, frozen, or ossified. Participants furthermore had to “cleanse” their cultures before allowing them to enter the open, flexible, optional, transparent, and egalitarian civic arena. While the term “cultural diversity” has never led to explorations of anyone's religion, history, or language, this chapter shows that this cleansing still has an effect. It makes the differences feel transparent, weightless, and easy to doubt.
On What There Isn’t (But Might Have Been)
Authors: Stalnaker Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with some preliminary methodological remarks—about the aim and value of reduction in philosophical analysis, about thinking of the evaluation of philosophical theses in terms of costs and benefits, and about the contrast between realistic and anti-realistic accounts of a philosophical theory. It then discusses what possible worlds are and what the problem is about merely possible individuals. It argues that possible worlds are properties and not representations. It then takes an extended look at some examples of properties that are simpler and easier to think about than possible worlds but that share some of the features of possible worlds, construed as properties. It uses the analogy developed to motivate a metaphysically innocent account of the domains of other possible worlds. It defends a view that is committed to making sense of the contingent existence of individuals and properties, of propositions, and even of possible worlds themselves. The chapter concludes by sketching a problem that an account of this kind faces, a problem that will be addressed in Chapter 2.
Merely Possible Possible Worlds
Authors: Stalnaker Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter first sketches a minimal theory of propositions—one that ascribes to propositions just the structure that anyone who is willing to talk of propositions at all must ascribe to them. It extends the minimal theory by adding some assumptions about the modal properties of propositions and possibilities, and then sketches a general model of logical space that makes room for merely possible possibilities. Next, it considers the relation between models and the reality that they purport to model and the extent to which our theory of propositions and possibilities provides a realistic semantics. Finally, it responds to some arguments against the thesis that propositions may exist contingently.
Disentangling Semantics from Metaphysics
Authors: Stalnaker Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the dialectic of the interaction between modal semantics and modal metaphysics. It begins by looking at three examples of places where semantic and substantive issues interact, and where it is contentious whether a problem calls for a semantic or a metaphysical solution. The first example is an argument from a semantic premise to a metaphysical conclusion that is fallacious; the second is a case of a semantic decision with a metaphysical motivation. The third example is a puzzle where it is controversial whether the puzzle should have a semantic or a metaphysical solution. In this case, it is argued that the metaphysical response is unnecessary—the puzzle is best dissolved on semantic grounds. After discussing these three examples, the chapter considers a specific semantic question about how the quantifiers should work in our modal quantification theory and the way that this question interacts with metaphysical questions about the nature of the modal reality that the language aims to describe. This will lead us to a consideration of more general questions about ontological commitment.