bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Investigating dative external possessors in the history of English
Authors: Allen Cynthia L.
Published: November 2019

This chapter outlines the methodology used in gathering data for dative external possessors and internal possessors in Old and Early Middle English. Parsed electronic corpora of texts from these periods were searched for all ative external possessors of body and mind possessa playing different grammatical relations, using a list of forms of lemmas referring to these concepts. A second set of searches for internal possessors produced data allowing a comparison of internal possessors and dative external possessors. These searches used the same forms for inalienable possessions but were restricted to verbs likely to represent a situation in which the possessor was highly affected. Various problems that arose in gathering the data, such as the problem syncretism of cases can present in gathering the data, are discussed.
Body and dative external possessors in Old English
Authors: Allen Cynthia L.
Published: November 2019

This chapter documents the use of dative external possessors in Old English with words referring to the human body or parts of it and compares this with the use of internal possessors. It is shown that with subject and object possessa, dative external possessors were nearly restricted to situations in which the possessor was adversely affected, but they were in variation with internal possessors even in the earliest English in these situations, a variation that cannot be attributed to Latin influence. The widely held belief that dative external possessors were dominant over internal possessors in OE is probably due to the fact that previous studies have not distinguished possessa in the role of object of preposition, where the possessor did not have to be affected from other roles. The chapter establishes differences between the poetry and prose texts.
Changes and explanations
Authors: Allen Cynthia L.
Published: November 2019

This chapter evaluates proposals that have been put forward to explain the loss of dative external possessors in English. The leading explanation using internal developments as a trigger links the syntactic change with a morphological one, namely the loss of the dative as a separate case. This explanation cannot explain the early decline of the construction and offers no explanation for why internal possessors should have become the rule in dialects retaining rich case marking at the same time as ones which had lost the dative case. Of the explanations based on language contact, the Celtic Hypothesis is the only one with any serious plausibility. The evidence suggests that Celtic learners of English did not fail to learn the dative external possessor construction, but they may have been instrumental in its initial decline by narrowing the range of the construction.
Conclusion
Authors: Allen Cynthia L.
Published: November 2019

This chapter summarizes the findings of the investigation and points to some avenues of future research. The dative external possessor was always a marked construction in English, used especially with actions involving a negative effect on the possessor, with the internal possessor being the default construction early in the Old English period, even with highly affected possessors. While much has been made of the oddness of English in not having the construction any more, scant attention has been given to the fact that variation between internal and dative external possessors was a feature of all early Germanic languages, and the distinction between the two types of possessors has sharpened on the continent, where language contact may have strengthened the position of the dative construction. More research is needed in the development of dative external possessors in other Germanic languages.
Almost Heirs
Authors: Seal Samantha Katz
Published: November 2019

Chapter 5 approaches the obstacle that daughters posed to male reproductive authority. Daughters, in their limited resemblance to their fathers, became an embodiment of “unlikeness,” terrifying doubles of men who could neither disown them, marry them, nor accept them fully as their heirs. Analyzing the Man of Law’s Tale, this chapter argues that Chaucer’s heroine, Custance, moves through the consequences of her own unlikeness, as the men and women around her are challenged to improve their capacity for perception. It is only when Custance has a son of her own that she can finally be recognized by father and husband alike, and therefore reintegrated into her own lineage. Analogy thus becomes the dominant intellectual desire within this story, replacing the longing for certainty that was tied to men’s production of sons. The chapter concludes by noting that the Man of Law himself claims that while he cannot serve as Chaucer’s heir, perhaps he could serve as an analogous reminder of his poetic talent.
Beneath Every History, Another History
Authors: O'Driscoll Cian
Published: November 2019

Raising the issue of victory among contemporary just war scholars provokes consternation. The first reason for this is the belief that victory has never been a part of our brief. Even those scholars who have advocated for the extension of the just war framework to incorporate discrete jus post bellum and jus ex bello domains have assumed as their premise the claim that just war theorists have historically discounted victory as a primary object of analysis. This chapter contests this claim. Courtesy of a detailed engagement with the writings of Saint Augustine, it will reveal that, far from being neglected, victory was a central concern in the formative texts of the just war tradition. Indeed, it will show how victory featured in Augustine’s writings as the foil that brought the tragic dimensions of his vision of just war to light.
The Disease of Victory
Authors: O'Driscoll Cian
Published: November 2019

The final problem just war theorists perceive with victory reflects the belief that to speak about war in terms of victory is to court an escalatory logic that undercuts the spirit of moderation that the just war tradition champions. The pursuit of victory inclines armies to set the rules aside and fight in an unrestrained manner. Turning this concern on its head, this chapter contends that while it is true that the idiom of victory tempts an escalatory logic, so too does the idea of just war. This is demonstrated by the writings of two leading contemporary just war theorists: Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan. The conclusion arising from this is not necessarily that we should back away from speaking about either victory or just war. It is, however, a reminder of both what is staked when we do engage them, and why they must always be approached with circumspection.
An Invitation to Computational Homotopy
Authors: Ellis Graham
Published: November 2019

This book is an introduction to elementary algebraic topology for students with an interest in computers and computer programming. Its aim is to illustrate how the basics of the subject can be implemented on a computer. The transition from basic theory to practical computation raises a range of non-trivial algorithmic issues and it is hoped that the treatment of these will also appeal to readers already familiar with basic theory who are interested in developing computational aspects. The book covers a subset of standard introductory material on fundamental groups, covering spaces, homology, cohomology and classifying spaces as well as some less standard material on crossed modules, homotopy 2- types and explicit resolutions for an eclectic selection of discrete groups. It attempts to cover these topics in a way that hints at potential applications of topology in areas of computer science and engineering outside the usual territory of pure mathematics, and also in a way that demonstrates how computers can be used to perform explicit calculations within the domain of pure algebraic topology itself. The initial chapters include examples from data mining, biology and digital image analysis, while the later chapters cover a range of computational examples on the cohomology of classifying spaces that are likely beyond the reach of a purely paper-and-pen approach to the subject. The applied examples in the initial chapters use only low-dimensional and mainly abelian topological tools. Our applications of higher dimensional and less abelian computational methods are currently confined to pure mathematical calculations. The approach taken to computational homotopy is very much based on J.H.C. Whitehead’s theory of combinatorial homotopy in which he introduced the fundamental notions of CW-space, simple homotopy equivalence and crossed module. The book should serve as a self-contained informal introduction to these topics and their computer implementation. It is written in a style that tries to lead as quickly as possible to a range of potentially useful machine computations.
Cohomological Group Theory
Authors: Ellis Graham
Published: November 2019

This chapter introduces some of the basic ingredients of cohomological group theory and describes datatypes and algorithms for implementing them on a computer. These are illustrated using computer examples involving: explicit cocycles, classification of abelian and nonabelian group extensions, crossed modules, crossed extensions, five-term exact sequences, Hopf’s formula, Bogomolov multipliers, relative central extensions, nonabelian tensor products of groups, and cocyclic Hadamard matrices.
Introduction
Authors: Machado Carlos
Published: November 2019

Scholars have traditionally approached the history of Rome in late antiquity as a metaphor for the fate of the empire and the ancient world, focusing on the distancing of the imperial court or on the growing importance of the Christian church. However, as this introduction argues, it is by focusing on the Roman aristocracy and its relationship with the city and its spaces that we can form a comprehensive understanding of the physical and historical developments that redefined Rome during this period. After providing a brief overview of the developments that shaped the city and its elite, between the end of the third and the beginning of the sixth century, the introduction discusses the nature of the evidence available, as well as the approach adopted in the book.
Aristocrats, Imperial Institutions, and the Topography of Power
Authors: Machado Carlos
Published: November 2019

This chapter analyses the ways in which the series of administrative reforms aimed at increasing imperial control over Rome between the late third and early fourth centuries led to an unprecedented involvement of members of the senatorial aristocracy in the life of the city and its inhabitants. By focusing on two main issues, the creation of the new urban prefecture as main administrative and judicial department in the city and the reorganization of the annona, the imperial service of food distributions, the chapter examines the reconfiguration of the political and administrative map of the city, and how this process consolidated the hold of the local elite over its fellow citizens.
The Redefinition of Religious Life
Authors: Machado Carlos
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines how the religious transformation that redefined Rome’s identify and social life were incorporated into the socio-political and cultural strategies of the Roman aristocracy. It analyses the involvement of members of the city elite in religious life and institutions, as pagan priests, imperial officials, and private patrons. As the chapter shows, during this period male and female aristocrats played an assertive role in religious life, sponsoring cults, buildings, supporting Christian factions, and promoting their own beliefs and values. Rather than looking at the traditional divide between pagans and Christians, the chapter considers different religious traditions together, analysing them as a crucial element in the relationship between powerful Romans, their city, and their fellow citizens.
Senatorial Houses as Centres of Power
Authors: Machado Carlos
Published: November 2019

Aristocratic houses played an important part in Roman society. They were symbols of aristocratic power, mobilizing architecture and decoration to express social standing and family history. At the same time, domestic spaces were the arena where aristocrats built their power bases, greeting friends and clients on a daily basis. This chapter analyses the importance of houses in aristocratic strategies and political life, consider how these spaces contributed to define aristocratic standing and clout in late antique Rome. By examining domestic rituals such as the morning salutatio and invitations for dinners and other social gatherings, it will show how these spaces could perform a crucial function in late antique city life.
Aristocratic Power and Politics in the Domestic Sphere
Authors: Machado Carlos
Published: November 2019

This chapter analyses the impact of aristocratic houses in the definition of late antique Rome’s political topography. Focusing on concrete examples, it examines the physical impact of houses on their surrounding environment, as well as how elite dwellings cannibalized resources of the city like water and building materials, representing a new urbanistic order. It analyses the political activities that took place in domestic spaces, including meetings and decisions, and how emperors and authorities tried to assert their control over other elements within Roman society. As the chapter argues, houses were a symbol and a crucial tool in aristocratic ambitions as well as in their relationship with other groups in Roman society.
Conclusion
Authors: Machado Carlos
Published: November 2019

This chapter brings together the different strands that make up the argument of the book. As emperors distanced themselves from the city, reorganizing the administration and the services that regulated life in late antique Rome, Roman aristocrats began to play a growing role in the life of the city, redefining its spaces and institutions. The city became a central element in the social and political strategies of the Roman elite: its spaces and the buildings that gave shape to it, the festivals and ceremonies that animated it, and the hierarchies and instruments of control that defined it were progressively appropriated. These developments took place at a time of dramatic changes in the empire, and late antique Rome was as a result a more provincial and smaller city than in previous centuries. Aristocratic dominance did not prevent the rise of new elements in Roman society, bringing with it the elements that would contribute to the development of a new, Christian Rome, under the leadership of the Church and its bishop.
Trade as One Ground of Justice
Authors: Risse Mathias , Wollner Gabriel
Published: November 2019

This chapter explores more systematically the image of trade that we propose in this book, which we call Trade-as-one-Ground. It does so by way of introducing the grounds-of-justice approach from Risse’s On Global Justice. That approach makes good on the claim that trade is one in several grounds, and indeed is one such ground. Technically the ground is not trade as such but subjection to the global trading system. The chapter explains this notion and explores why one should indeed regard it as one ground of justice. It also investigates differences between inquiries into fairness in trade and trade justice.
Campus Novels, Camaraderie, and White Nationalist Merriment
Authors: Foster Travis M.
Published: November 2019

Chapter 1 highlights the significance of everyday social practices for white sectional reunion after the Civil War, reassessing the form assumed by reconciliation as it transitioned from an object of political contestation to common sense reality. Specifically, it recovers the campus novel, a popular though largely unstudied genre that, despite its sophomoric content, acquired historical weight by turning the practice of campus affections into a metonym for national belonging tacitly predicated on racial exclusion. Focusing on the ability for merriment to overcome and, above all, trivialize intra-white difference, novels like Hammersmith: His Harvard Days (1879) and For the Blue and Gold (1901) enacted a civic pedagogy, becoming handbooks for a sociality that turned political disagreement into jocular affinity, dispute into banter, and racial exclusion into an implicit element of white fellow feeling.
American Visions and Émigré Realities
Authors: Tromly Benjamin
Published: November 2019

Chapter 4 addresses the origins of the CIA project to create a Russian political center abroad. The chapter argues that transnational flows of ideas and historical memories were important for a major CIA psychological warfare project. George F. Kennan and other policymakers involved in the project were driven by a romantic attachment to Russian history and the conviction that exiles were potent weapons for psychological warfare against the USSR. Accordingly, plans for the political center—its political complexion and structure—emerged from the interactions of influential Americans and Russian émigrés. The dependence of US psychological-warfare projects on exile politics would prove dysfunctional, as the OPC planners read the state of Russian opinion in the USSR through the distorting lens of exile anti-communism.
From Revolution to Provocation
Authors: Tromly Benjamin
Published: November 2019

Chapter 7 examines the CIA espionage and psychological-warfare operations against the USSR that involved the most important and most controversial Russian exile organization, the People’s Labor Alliance. Operations to infiltrate agents directly into the USSR by plane ended in fiasco due to Soviet counterintelligence, which thwarted the NTS operations and pursued measures to penetrate and subvert the émigré organization from within. In response, the CIA turned to a strategy of utilizing the NTS as an instrument of psychological warfare, spreading disinformation about the exiles in order to incite the Soviet state into costly countermeasures. Such an effort to manipulate the fiction of émigré political influence demonstrated the increasingly complex and marginal-gains nature of Cold War competition between intelligence agencies.
The Future of Europe
Authors: Mainwaring Ċetta
Published: November 2019

The concluding chapter returns to the main themes explored and arguments made in the book, examining the contestation over borders, migration controls, and mobility at the edge of Europe. It looks especially at the continued intertwining of humanitarian and enforcement logics in the Mediterranean and how migrants are reduced to symbols at sea, their lives shipwrecked, and thus easily transformed into a threat. In particular, the chapter explores the contested role of non-governmental organizations that took to the sea after 2014 to carry out search and rescue operations and highlight EU inaction. The chapter considers the future of Europe and the European Union, its border controls in the Mediterranean, resistance to them, and practical alternative policy choices. While state policies erode spaces of asylum, undermining refugee protection and access to global mobility, inequality is on the rise and migrants and refugees continue to cross borders, often at great risk.
Growing Up in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Authors: Hatfield Mary
Published: November 2019

At the beginning of the nineteenth century childhood was a fluid concept with a variety of meanings and responsibilities dependent on class, gender, and religious identity. By 1860 the idea of what childhood was supposed to be had been consolidated to a large degree by the middle classes, who rejected the lavish opulence of the aristocracy and the economic dependency of the working classes to create their own brand of child-rearing. The book explores ways in which adults dealt with children, particularly within the family and in educational institutions across the island of Ireland. This book takes a holistic approach towards the middle-class child’s social world utilizing medical and educational literature, religious tracts, personal correspondence, school archives, and material culture sources. It facilitates an understanding of gender roles, children’s participation in middle-class domesticity, and the use of education by middle-class families to shape a cultural narrative of childhood. The chapters address child-advice literature, differences in Catholic and Protestant childhoods, children’s fashions, and Irish boarding schools.
Religion, Sectarianism, and the Wild Irish Child
Authors: Hatfield Mary
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines representations of the Irish Catholic family in print, focusing on cheaply produced religious pamphlets and advice literature. Predictably, this kind of didactic material is strongly sectarian in nature and illustrates how childcare served as a barometer of civilized behaviour. Children in these narratives are objects in need of reform, serving as exemplars of all that was right and wrong with Irish character. The confessional divide in Irish society was wide and contributed to the unique quality of Irish childhood. However, it was not as simple as the mere dichotomy of Protestant and Catholic might suggest. While denominational loyalties were fundamental, there was another process of social differentiation happening alongside sectarian conflict and this chapter highlights the shifting narratives of class and childhood across the first four decades of the nineteenth century.
Whose Dream Is It Anyway?
Authors: Davies Jason P.
Published: November 2019

Dreams were a deeply paradoxical method of divination in the ancient world; sometimes dismissed or treated with the greatest of suspicion, they might also be treated as a routine and reliable way of obtaining insight into divine will—occasionally by the very same person. This chapter argues that dreams had a distinctive role within the many options of ancient divination, and that they were compelling in specific sets of circumstances. The more divination was routinized, the more likely there was to be an occasion when a dream was the best way of legitimately circumventing divinatory habits. Equally critical are those factors affecting the reception of a dreamer’s claims; social standing, political circumstances, and personal idiosyncrasies all played a part in ‘managing the significance of signs’. Accounting for dreams was a critical test of any system of thought (including medicine). Despite the contradictory variety of general statements about the reliability of dreams, there is an underlying but accessible logic to whether it was right to take them as divine instructions, or a meaningless act of the imagination.
Making Sense of Chaos
Authors: Stiles Andrew
Published: November 2019

Periods of civil war were greatly disruptive to Roman society, and the populace evidently sought to make sense of these upheavals in different ways, including through narratives involving various types of divination, which were employed to predict and explain the rise and fall of individual leaders and dynasties. This chapter analyses a group of such stories which concern trees acting in peculiar ways, such as dying and miraculously recovering, or springing up in portentous locations. Arboreal portents apparently foretold the victory of Octavian in the wars of the Triumviral period, and later, Vespasian in the conflicts of 68–9 ce, as well as predicting the particular Julio-Claudian and Flavian successors who would follow them. Rather than seeing such tales as simply the product of ‘top-down’ Augustan or Flavian propaganda, it is suggested that they were the product of a wider divinatory worldview, which was built upon a tradition stretching back into the Republic, and was fundamental to the way in which many Romans sought to comprehend social and political change. Such stories could be generated for a range of reasons, and by a range of authors. They often took on a life of their own, and were altered or updated over time. Adopting such a perspective when approaching Roman divination modifies our understanding of the relationship between ‘politics’ and ‘religion’ during the late Republic, Triumviral period, and early Principate.
Unsuccessful Sacrifice in Roman State Divination
Authors: Driediger-Murphy Lindsay G.
Published: November 2019

This chapter explores what Romans thought they were doing through sacrifice, and what this can tell us about Roman conceptions of the relationship between gods and human beings. The chapter focuses on those animal sacrifices that Romans believed had been unsuccessful in that they had failed to please the gods. The chapter queries the current consensus that Roman divinatory sacrifices generally proceeded until a favourable sign was obtained (usque ad litationem). It is argued that Roman magistrates took signs from failed sacrifices more seriously than we have often thought, and that this behaviour can be read as evidence that they were anxious about their relationship with their gods.
Being Inclined
Authors: Sinclair Mark
Published: November 2019

This is the first book-length study in English of the work of Félix Ravaisson, France’s most influential philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book shows how in his 1838 Of Habit, Ravaisson understands habit as tendency and inclination in a way that provides the basis for a philosophy of nature and a general metaphysics. In examining Ravaisson’s ideas against the background of the history of philosophy, and in the light of later developments in French thought, the book shows how Ravaisson accounts for the nature of habit as inclination in an original manner, and within a metaphysical framework quite different from those of his predecessors in the philosophical tradition. The book sheds new light on the history of modern French philosophy, and argues for the importance of the neglected nineteenth-century French spiritualist tradition. It also shows that Ravaisson’s philosophy of inclination, of being inclined, is of great import for contemporary philosophy, and particularly for the contemporary metaphysics of powers, given that ideas about tendency have recently come to prominence in discussions concerning dispositions, laws, and the nature of causation. The book offers a detailed and faithful contextualist study of Ravaisson’s short masterpiece, but it does so in demonstrating its importance for contemporary thought.
Lagrangian Mechanics
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: November 2019

Dynamical systems follow trajectories for which the mechanical action integrated along the trajectory is an extremum. The action is defined as the time average of the difference between kinetic and potential energies, which is also the time average of the Lagrangian. Once a Lagrangian has been defined for a system, the Euler equations of variational calculus lead to the Euler–Lagrange equations of dynamics. This chapter explores applications of Lagrangians and the use of Lagrange’s undetermined multipliers. Conservation laws, central forces, and the virial theorem are developed and explained.
Evolutionary Dynamics
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: November 2019

Evolutionary dynamics treats the growth and decay of populations under conditions that influence reproduction, competition, predation and selection. The Lotka–Volterra equations are population equations that describe population cycles between predators and prey. Symbiotic dynamics can lead to stable ecosystems among a wide variety of species. Natural selection operates through the principle of relative fitness among species. A simple frequency-dependent fitness model is the replicator equation, which follows a zero-sum game among multiple species whose total populations reside within a simplex. Many closely related species, connected by mutation, are called quasispecies. The quasispecies equation includes mutation among quasispecies through a mutation matrix that drives diffusion in a multidimensional fitness landscape. Adding frequency-dependent fitness to the quasispecies equation converts it to the replicator–mutator equation, which captures collective group dynamics. Game theory provides a different perspective on the adoption of strategies for species evolving on a fitness landscape.
Economic Dynamics
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: November 2019

In microeconomics, forces of supply and demand lead to stable competition as well as business cycles. Continuous systems with price and quantity adjustments and a cost of labor exhibit Hopf bifurcation and a bifurcation cascade to chaos. Discrete cobweb models capture delayed adjustments that also can exhibit bifurcation cascades. In macroeconomics, investment-savings and liquidity-money capture dynamics in real income related to interest rates. Inflation and unemployment are also coupled through the Phillips curve with adaptive expectations. The stochastic dynamics of the stock market is introduced through stochastic variables that can be added to continuous-time price models. An important example of a stochastic dynamics in econophysics is the Black–Scholes equation for options pricing.
Introduction
Authors: Bedford Kate
Published: November 2019

This Introduction identifies why bingo—a self-effacing game that is rarely taken seriously by academics—provides a vital new lens on debates about political economy and regulation. Within gambling studies, bingo practices can be used to further our understanding of mutual aid, of gambling law and policy, and of gendered gambling cultures. More broadly, bingo offers a lens through which we can see political economy and regulation differently. The Introduction summarizes this argument and provides an account of the three academic literatures—on diverse economies, regulation, and gender—to which the book seeks to contribute. It closes with a chapter-by-chapter overview. Finally, using two bingo prizes that reside in a domestic kitchen (a knife set, and a pair of mugs featuring Carry On characters that speak smutty catch phrases when lifted off a surface), the author also explains her personal investments in having the game—in all its ordinariness—taken more seriously in debates about the political economy of gambling regulation.
Eyes Down
Authors: Bedford Kate
Published: November 2019

Using legislation, case law, and official records (including Hansard), Chapter 2 outlines the early history of state intervention into bingo in England and Wales. The chapter traces the gradual liberalization of restrictions on small-scale gambling, and the subsequent backlash against bingo in the 1960s. It also tells a new story about gambling regulation and political economy. In particular, it excavates the key role of mutual aid to elite debates about the proper place of gambling in national life. Although many authors have argued that disavowal of gambling helped legitimize the forms of collective insurance developed by early friendly societies and similar associations, the chapter shows that gambling played a key role—as entertainment and mutual aid—within working men’s clubs, and that it was promoted by the state. This mutual aid dimension of gambling was heavily conflicted in gendered terms. Lawmakers were lobbied by bingo-organizing men, with women’s interests at least one step removed from Hansard. Unequal gender roles were hereby woven into dominant understandings of small-scale gambling.
Social Responsibility, New Technologies, and Problem Gambling in Bingo
Authors: Bedford Kate
Published: November 2019

Chapter 9 traces the impact, on bingo, of recent laws, policies, and procedures related to problematic gambling, by exploring the risks associated with the game and the perceived vulnerability of its distinctive players. By linking problem gambling studies to critical regulation scholarship, it seeks a deeper understanding of the limits, and risks, of algorithmic approaches to consumer protection. The chapter outlines a novel analytic approach to responsible gambling debates, one that pays attention to workers as well as players, and that centres the nexus between profit-making and risk-monitoring. The chapter then charts the emergence of social responsibility as a regulatory priority within UK gambling in general, and bingo in particular. Companies now use a standardized responsible gambling approach, involving increasingly formalized interactions between staff and players. This standardized approach has intensified reliance on technologies borrowed from electronic gambling machines and online gambling formats to identify, and manage, risky play. These technologies are, in turn, reliant on moving customers to cashless play in order that they can be tracked. The chapter focuses on two key consequences of these changes: their impact on workers, and their impact on cash players. Specifically, it shows that standardized responsible gambling measures have resulted in the responsibilization of staff, and have reshaped the relationship between workers and players. Because cash use helps players to limit spending, account-based play is likely to be of dubious effectiveness as a harm reduction measure, and may even be counterproductive.
(En)joining Others
Authors: Wiland Eric
Published: November 2019

This paper argues that under some conditions, when one person acts on the direction of another person, the two of them thereby act together, and that this explains why both the director and the directee can be responsible for what is done. In other words, a director and a directee can be a joint agent, one whose members are responsible for what they together do. This is most clearly so when the directive is a command. But it is also sometimes so when the directive is a bit of advice.
The Minimal Approval Account of Attributability
Authors: Gorman August
Published: November 2019

This paper advances a new agentially undemanding account of the conditions of attributability, the Minimal Approval account, and argues that it has a number of advantages over traditional Deep Self theories, including the way in which it handles agents with conditions like addiction, Tourette syndrome, and misophonia. It is argued that in order for an agent to be attributionally responsible, the mental process that leads to her action must dispose her to be such that she would, upon reflection, approve to some minimal degree of being moved to action by the motive on which she in fact acts.
Between Strict Liability and Blameworthy Quality of Will
Authors: Mason Elinor
Published: November 2019

This chapter discusses blameworthiness for problematic acts that an agent does inadvertently. Blameworthiness, as opposed to liability, is difficult to make sense of in this sort of case, as there is usually thought to be a tight connection between blameworthiness and something in the agent’s quality of will. This chapter argues that in personal relationships we should sometimes take responsibility for inadvertent actions. Taking on responsibility when we inadvertently fail in our duties to our loved ones assures them that we respect them, take them seriously, and want to be respected and taken seriously in turn. The chapter ends with a defence of the claim that this is a genuine sort of blameworthiness.
Being Born
Authors: Stone Alison
Published: November 2019

This book gives the first systematic philosophical account of how being born shapes our condition as human beings. Drawing on both feminist philosophy and the existentialist project of inquiring into the structure of meaningful human existence, the book explores how human existence is natal, that is, is shaped by the way that we are born. Taking natality into account transforms our view of human existence and illuminates how many of its aspects hang together and are connected with our birth. These aspects include dependency; the relationality of the self; vulnerability; reception and inheritance; embeddedness in social power; situatedness; and radical contingency. Considering natality also sheds new light on anxiety, mortality, and the temporality of human life. This book offers an original perspective on human existence which bears on many debates in feminist and continental philosophy and around death and the meaning of life.
Dependency, Relationality, Power, and Situatedness
Authors: Stone Alison
Published: November 2019

This chapter looks at four features of human existence—dependency, the relationality of the self, embeddedness in social power, and situatedness—and shows how they are connected with birth. We are dependent both as infants and children—natal dependency—and also to varying degrees throughout life. Because we begin life dependent on adult care, we attach to our care-givers very intensely; these attachments shape our selves and personality structures, partly through processes of identification as they are theorized in psychoanalysis. This makes us highly receptive in early life to social power relations, which even shape our possibilities for criticizing social power in later life. Finally, at birth we begin life situated within the world with respect to many variables, including culture; gender, race, class, and other social divisions; geography; history; body; and placement in a specific set of personal and wider relationships such as kin networks and generations.
The Radical Contingency of Being Born
Authors: Stone Alison
Published: November 2019

In this chapter I argue that there is a radical contingency to one’s being born into one’s particular life as it unfolds from one’s birth onwards. For each of us, it is an ultimate fact that admits of no further explanation that I am born the particular individual I am and no one else. Using Sartre’s work, the chapter examines this radical contingency along with the connected phenomena of facticity and groundlessness. However, the chapter criticizes Sartre’s conception of radical freedom and puts forward in its place an idea of sedimented sense-making. On this basis, situatedness is re-interpreted to say that we are situated in that we continually make sense of our circumstances in sedimented ways. Autonomous choice and reflection are just one subset of ways in which we can make sense of the succession of circumstances that come down to us from birth.
Temporality, the Gift, and Being Born
Authors: Stone Alison
Published: November 2019

This chapter explores how birth bears on the temporality of human life. Temporally, lived human existence is future-oriented towards death and past-oriented towards birth. When we take our natal orientation towards the past into account, we see that when we project forward and create meaning we are always extending inherited horizons that we have received in and from the past. The chapter also considers whether birth can rightly be said to be a gift given to us by our mothers. Although that view has problems, thinking of birth as a gift illuminates some connections between our natality and the relational setting of our ethical lives and obligations. Finally, the chapter sums up the book’s main theses about how human existence is shaped by the fact that we are born.
Introduction
Authors: Stone Alison
Published: November 2019

The introduction sets out the project of this book, which is to explore how our existence is shaped by our being born. This is an exploration of how human existence is natal, that is, is the way it is because we are born. Taking birth and natality into account transforms our view of human existence. It sheds new light on our mortality, foregrounds the extent and depth of our dependency on one another, and brings additional phenomena—such as the relationality of the self and the temporality of human life—together in a new way. The introduction sketches these topics and explains how this inquiry is located within and draws on existentialism, psychoanalysis, and feminist philosophy.
History is a Map 1
Authors: Nelson Claudia , Morey Anne
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet (1906), C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair (1953), Roger Lancelyn Green’s Mystery at Mycenae (1957), Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries series (2001–9), K. M. Peyton’s Roman Pony trilogy (2007–9), Katherine Marsh’s The Night Tourist (2007) and The Twilight Prisoner (2009), and Tony Abbott’s Underworlds series (2011–12). All these texts involve journeys that can be plotted upon maps geographical and/or chronological, with the consequence that the major cognitive metaphor is HISTORY IS A MAP. Here family is not the site of trauma but rather a zone for the exercise of agency on the part of the young protagonist who must effectively visit an underworld to retrieve or make a family relationship and to come to terms with death. These books suggest that while the past is associated with death, it is also a haven from death.
Introduction
Authors: Krafft Caroline , Assaad Ragui
Published: November 2019

After a period of fairly rapid growth for most of the 2000s, Jordan’s economy was exposed to a series of external shocks, starting with the global financial crisis in 2008. This crisis was followed by regional instability brought about by the Arab Spring and civil conflicts in neighboring countries, including Iraq and Syria. These shocks resulted in a dramatic slowdown of economic growth, which dropped to an average of 2.5 percent per annum after 2010, as compared to 6.5 percent per annum from 2000 to 2009 (...
Well-Being, the Self, and Radical Change
Authors: Hawkins Jennifer
Published: November 2019

Chapter 12 explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR.
Prosaic Suffering
Authors: Hernandez Alex Eric
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines the uses and meanings of prose in tragedy during the eighteenth century. It offers a close, comparative reading of Aaron Hill’s The Fatal Extravagance (1721) and Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753), and places the developing conventions of bourgeois tragedy in conversation with the insights of Samuel Richardson, Denis Diderot, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and the actors called upon to embody its emotion. In doing so, this chapter argues that prosaic suffering performed its grief under an illusion of immediacy, in ways that were absorptive rather than theatrical, and provocatively disenchanted in their implications. Hence, bourgeois drama’s “natural picture” adapted the novel’s “writing to the moment” and embodied emotional practices characterized by quotidian concerns and an ambivalence about middle-rank life.
An Introduction to Bourgeois Tragedy
Authors: Hernandez Alex Eric
Published: November 2019

This Introduction situates bourgeois tragedy in relation to the period’s literature, social history, and critical theories of tragedy. Against claims of tragedy’s demise in the period, it argues that depictions of middle-rank misfortune formed a vital body of text and performance in the eighteenth century, encompassing not only the drama but also early novels and other cognate forms concerned with the serious representation of what it defines as “ordinary suffering.” Briefly tracing the genre’s history, and reflecting upon the conditions of its emergence in early modernity, the Introduction recuperates these texts as part of a more capacious canon of tragedy that predated and therefore complicates post-Kantian philosophies of the tragic. In doing so, it reads the enactment, depiction, and discourse of everyday affliction enabled by this genre in light of contemporary work on affect theory and the history of emotion. It concludes with an outline of the chapters to follow.
The Aristocrazia Consolare
Authors: Coss Peter
Published: November 2019

Chapter 4 turns to the urban aristocracy, the aristocrazia consolare, with an in-depth study of the aristocracy of Pisa, a city chosen for the richness of its sources and the power of its historiography. It begins with the growth and topography of the medieval city and moves on to discuss the establishing of the commune and the context in which this took place. The characteristics of the aristocrazia consolare are discussed in detail, including the range of their material interests. Some attention is given to the aristocracy and the sea. Their individual domination of various areas of the city is examined in detail together with their habitations (torri) and the contribution they made to the growth of the city. City politics are examined and particular attention is given to interpreting the judgement or lodo of Archbishop Daiberto. Cooperation and competition within aristocratic life in the city are given equal attention.
Reflections
Authors: Coss Peter
Published: November 2019

The book closes by reflecting on a number of features of aristocratic society, beginning with lordship and clientage. The chapter then turns to the issue of space and to ‘landscapes of lordship’. Then there are the issues of centre and locality and public versus private. The chapter then turns to the communal dimension to aristocratic life. Collective action, however, was by no means antithetical to vertical ties; in fact they flourished together. Finally, we need to address the question of what prompted, or indeed governed, change within aristocratic society. There are three approaches here, looking to: changes that were intrinsic to the aristocratic world itself; developments within the societies which the aristocracy strove to dominate; and to exogenous factors. The separation of approaches is, however, an illusion. The reality was more complex, and few developments, if any, were totally monocausal. The attitudes and behavioural traits which have been emphasized in this book underpinned and conditioned how the aristocracies responded to the multiple stimuli.
Lutheran and Reformed Debates in the Early 1560s
Authors: Cross Richard
Published: November 2019

This chapter describes the changes Brenz made to his Christology in 1562 and 1564 in response to Peter Martyr Vermigli’s defence of the supposital union. It shows how Jakob Andreae, Brenz’s follower, further adapted Brenz’s views and attempted to defend them against a variety of Reformed responses, found in Theodore Beza and Heinrich Bullinger, and in the discussions at the Colloquy of Maulbronn (1564). In distinction from Brenz, Andreae reduces the human nature’s possession of divine powers merely to the activity of the relevant powers in the human nature, construed as an instrument of the divine person.
The Genus Maiestaticum in Non-Brenzian Christologies
Authors: Cross Richard
Published: November 2019

This chapter describes the views of three Lutheran theologians, writing in the late 1560s, who accept the genus maiestaticum without any of Brenz’s distinctive Christological metaphysics: namely, Jacob Schegk, Joachim Wigand, and Martin Chemnitz in the first edition of his De duabus naturis in Christo. The difference between these thinkers is described, as is the complex influence of Melanchthon, Brenz, and Andreae on their various Christological positions. The chapter shows how the theologians reacted to the divergence between Brenz and Andreae on the character of the human nature’s possession of divine attributes