bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Excavating Tragical Perspectives in Early Christianity
Authors: Blowers Paul M.
Published: July 2020

This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the monograph by establishing the paucity of actual works of early Christian tragedy, but also the growing Christian recognition of the power of tragedy to convey the vulnerability of the human condition and the subjection of all creation to what the Apostle Paul himself called an existential “vanity” or “futility” (Romans 8:19–23). The Christian reception and reworking of tragedy, however, stood at the end of a long evolution of tragedy and of its role in Greco-Roman civilization, which included strong philosophical criticism of the genre (Plato) and vigorous defense of its cultural utility (Aristotle). Christian polemicists against pagan theatrical art seized on the antecedent philosophical criticism but also developed their own, and included tragedy in their condemnation of the immorality, seductiveness, and irreligion of all pagan entertainment and “spectacle.” Yet Christian thinkers began their own rehabilitation of salvageable elements of tragedy as a literary, rhetorical, and dramatic artform. Some found noble and even theologically enriching passages in the ancient tragedians. Others looked, however, to free the genre to Christian appropriation, and to develop uniquely Christian forms of “tragical mimesis” for the edification of their audiences.
Tragical Mimesis and Biblical Interpretation I
Authors: Blowers Paul M.
Published: July 2020

This chapter moves straightaway into the first, and foundational, form of early Christian tragical mimesis, the interpretation of tragic (and tragic-comic) biblical narratives. “Dramatic” interpretation was not a method all its own but drew upon both literal and figural reading of the scriptural texts, and focused on mimetic re-presentation of the narratives in ways that highlighted and amplified their tragic elements. It served a primarily “contemplative” mode, or theôria, of reading tragic narratives, conducive to a tragical vision of sacred history. The chapter turns to some case studies of tragical or dramatic interpretation of the primitive tragedies in Genesis: the precipitous fall of Adam and Eve and their recognition thereof; and the tragic sibling rivalries of Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau. Attention is given to the specific Aristotelian elements of tragedy (plausible or realistic plots; characters’ fateful miscalculation, or hamartia; reversal of fortune, or peripeteia; discovery, or anagnorisis; pathos, et al.) which patristic exegetes discerned in these stories. Mimetic or dramatic interpretation enhanced these elements all the more as means to draw audiences into the cosmic significance of the narratives related to moral evil, the legacies of sin and death, the fear of determinism, and the justice and providence of God.
Epilogue
Authors: Blowers Paul M.
Published: July 2020

The Epilogue picks up on a problem running throughout the earlier chapters, that of the fundamental compatibility of Christianity and tragedy, and the claims of some critics (especially George Steiner) that they are utterly incompatible because of the Christian gospel’s ebullient hope of transcending tragic suffering. Various early Christian theologians, however, being fully aware of pagan philosophy’s largely negative assessment of the moral utility of hope, touted hope as an altogether virtuous emotion if refined by sobriety and realism about the compromised state of human existence. Hope thus qualified not only as a “theological virtue” alongside faith and love but as a tragical emotion in its own right, serving to guard against spiritual or eschatological triumphalism on the one hand, and deep despair over existential tragedy on the other.
Introduction
Authors: Dowdall Alex
Published: July 2020

The introduction sets out the main lines of argument of the book, and introduces the four case studies—Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais. It provides relevant historical context and situates the work within the existing historiography. It pays particular attention to the new cultural history of the First World War, and the literature surrounding the relationships between local communities and nation states in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. It introduces the main civilian experiences of war discussed in the book—artillery bombardment, military occupation, and forced displacement. It concludes by outlining the main aims of the book, which are to explore how, on the one hand, war placed these civilian populations at the forefront of a broad process of militarization and how, on the other, it shaped their attitudes towards their bombarded home towns and the wider national community.
Occupation Regimes and Civil–Military Encounters at the Western Front
Authors: Dowdall Alex
Published: July 2020

Chapter 3 uncovers the dynamics of the military occupation regimes put in place on both sides of the lines during the First World War, and demonstrates how they impacted civilian life in the front-line towns. It provides the first comparative analysis of military occupation on both sides of the Western Front, and argues that although some of the methods employed differed from one side of the lines to the other, the main objectives were fundamentally the same. In all cases civilian freedoms were curtailed on the basis of military necessity. It describes the German and Allied occupation regimes side by side, before moving on to a discussion of the face-to-face encounters and relationships that developed between individual civilians and soldiers. It demonstrates that three types of encounter between civilians and soldiers had particularly strong impacts on the social dynamics of urban communities on both sides of the Western Front. They arose from military indiscipline, platonic relationships, and sexual encounters. The chapter argues that although the German occupation regime was notably harsher than that on the Allied side, and forced civilians to navigate complex issues of resistance and collaboration, in both cases urban life near the front was profoundly shaped by the military presence.
The Social Impacts of Militarization
Authors: Dowdall Alex
Published: July 2020

Chapter 4 explores the continuation, disruption, and transformation of economic activity at the front, as well as the consequences and meanings of this economic activity for the communities under fire. It charts the chequered economic activity that characterized the Allied side, where the local economies of some towns, including Reims and Arras, suffered considerably. In other cases, notably the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais, production continued even under the shells. The chapter demonstrates how economic activity under fire was shaped by broader national patterns of industrial mobilization, state intervention in the economy, labour relations, and social welfare provision. The chapter also demonstrates how, in wartime, work and the economy gained added layers of meaning, with the context of bombardment charging debates around work and welfare. Civilians living at the front made demands in respect of wages and welfare payments on the basis of the sacrifices they made for the nation by remaining under fire. This further solidified the distinction between the front-line communities and the rest of the nation. The situation under German occupation was quite different. Here, the German army employed forced labour on a wide scale, and so work was a necessity. Yet resistance to work that might harm the French war effort was also a moral imperative. There were few ready solutions to this problem, and many occupied civilians attempted to navigate a difficult path between acceptance and resistance.
Communities in Exile
Authors: Dowdall Alex
Published: July 2020

Chapter 6 discusses the relationships of refugees from the front-line towns to the bombarded communities they left behind. It outlines the size of the refugee populations from the front-line towns, and maps their destinations within the French interior. It demonstrates that most refugees from the front-line towns experienced forced displacement alongside others from their home communities, and that this geography of displacement allowed refugees to remain socially, emotionally, and imaginatively involved in their bombarded home communities. In this way, refugees remained members of the front-line communities, even while displaced. To date, the refugee history of the First World War has focused on the attitudes of the state and host communities in the interior towards refugees. This chapter, in contrast, makes a significant contribution to the historiography by focusing on the attitudes and actions of refugees themselves. Using refugee newspapers, diaries, and a previously unknown collection of letters, it argues that refugees from the front-line towns were not merely the passive recipients of state and charitable aid, but could actively shape the conditions of their exile by remaining invested in their abandoned home towns and making appeals based on their French citizenship.
Epilogue: Towards Reconstruction, 1914–1920
Authors: Dowdall Alex
Published: July 2020

The epilogue sketches an approach to the subject of reconstruction, by demonstrating how contemporaries prepared for, imagined, and began the rebuilding of the front-line towns. It demonstrates that the issue of reconstruction arose early in the war itself, and pitted the proponents of modernization against those who advocated traditionalism and a return to pre-war normality, and professional architects and urban planners against local communities. It outlines the wide-ranging debates over the nature reconstruction should take, and describes the practical challenges facing civilians as they returned to their destroyed home towns after November 1918. It also discusses commemoration and the construction of public memory around the front-line towns in the years after 1918. It demonstrates that these issues were contested between front-line civilians and a variety of other actors who claimed ownership over the wartime legacies of these towns, from architects, to planners, reconstruction workers, veterans, and the families of those soldiers who died near them. It argues that although civilians from the front-line towns may have experienced the war as members of distinct ‘communities under fire’, this is not necessarily how they experienced the peace. The processes of cultural demobilization were slow, but as the years progressed civilians’ wartime identities eroded and fragmented. As the urban battlefields of the Western Front slowly transformed back into towns, the experiences of front-line civilians were pushed to the margins of collective memories of the conflict.
Long-term Supply-side Macro Models of Potential Growth
Authors: Cornia Giovanni Andrea
Published: July 2020

This chapter presents empirical data on long-term trends in growth and income inequalitybefore discussing the nature, main features, and immediate and underlying determinants of long-term growth. It reviews the origins of income differences among world citizens by making reference to colonial history, pre-existing feudal institutions in low-income countries, and differences in growth rates between developed and developing countries. It subsequently presents the long-term growth models developed for the industrialized countries, including the Harrod–Domar model, the neoclassical exogenous growth models of Solow and Mankiw–Romer–Weil, the endogenous growth models of Romer and Aghion–Howitt, and the Unified Growth Theory. It provides also a brief comparison of the main features and dynamic properties of each model.
Balance of Payments-constrained Growth
Authors: Cornia Giovanni Andrea
Published: July 2020

This chapter illustrates the features of the external sector of commodities-exporting and investments-importing developing countries. It discusses in particular the value of the price and income elasticities of commodity exports and compares them with those of capital goods and intermediate inputs imported from the industrialized countries. It then illustrates the Thirlwall model that shows that unfavourable values of such import and export elasticities may reduce the rate of growth of GDP compatible with balance of payments equilibrium. Such a conclusion tends to suggest a need for a structural diversification of the economy of developing countries out of the resource sector.
Macroeconomic Stabilization in Developing Countries
Authors: Cornia Giovanni Andrea
Published: July 2020

In developing countries, the issue of macroeconomic stabilization has generated a considerable theoretical and political controversy. The chapter presents the theory behind the standard monetary models of stabilization in a closed and open economy that inspires adjustment programmes supported by the IMF, the concrete measures adopted as part of this stabilization approach, and their pitfalls. Mention is also made of the criticism attracted by the approach. The final section analyses the relation between orthodox stabilization and poverty incidence and the trade-off between rapid, front-loaded stabilization, and poverty incidence, as well as a series of measures to reduce the impact of orthodox stabilization on the poor.
Internal and External Liberalization, Inequality, Growth, and Poverty
Authors: Cornia Giovanni Andrea
Published: July 2020

This chapter presents a general framework to analyse the impact on inequality, growth, and poverty of the internal and external structural adjustment reforms introduced in a large number of the developing, transitional, and developed countries over the last three decades. It then discusses the main theories of the relation between inequality and growth and shows that the achievement of given poverty targets is influenced favourably by a decline of income inequality. This debate has acquired considerable relevance with the adoption in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly of the Sustainable Development Goals strategy that focuses—inter alia—on eradicating poverty by 2030 and reducing income inequality to tolerable levels.
Macroeconomic Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction
Authors: Cornia Giovanni Andrea
Published: July 2020

This chapter reviews alternative sets of macroeconomic policies to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 10 to the year 2030. The first goal of this strategy is the complete eradication of poverty by 2030, following its successful halving between 2000 and 2015. While poverty can also be reduced by means of social policies, the accent of this chapter is on a macroeconomic policy consistent with the SDG goals. An appropriate policy approach includes preventative macroeconomic measures to be introduced before crises break out, and policy approaches to be adopted once unavoidable shocks hit a country. Indeed, fiscal, monetary, exchange rate, capital account, and debt management policies are shown to have an important impact on poverty eradication and income inequality.
The Talmud's Red Fence
Authors: Secunda Shai
Published: July 2020

Rituals governing menstruation were an important aspect of Babylonian Jewish life, and they took shape within the context of Sasanian Mesopotamia, where neighboring religious communities were similarly animated by menstruation and its assumed impurity. The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and its Sasanian Context examines how the Talmudic rules of menstruation functioned within the dynamic space of Sasanian Mesopotamia. It argues that difference and differentiation between pure and impure, women and men, gentile and Jew, and the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds drove the development and observance of the Talmudic discourse of menstrual impurity, which influences Jewish life to this day. The Talmud’s Red Fence exemplifies Irano-Talmudic research—the effort to understand the Babylonian Talmud within its Sasanian Iranian context. To this end, it reads the Talmud alongside relevant Zoroastrian, Mandaic, and Syriac Christian texts to shed light on this previously overlooked aspect of late antique religious life. The book shows how the Talmudic menstrual rituals developed in conversation with other Sasanian religious communities, especially with Zoroastrians, who had a developed a similarly legalistic discourse of menstrual purity. And it considers the challenges of using an androcentric text to reconstruct a feature of late antique Jewish life that is intimately connected to the female experience.
Impure Gates
Authors: Secunda Shai
Published: July 2020

This chapter shows how menstrual rituals were a meaningful component of religious identity formation in the Sasanian Empire. Attitudes towards menstruation were used to categorize and differentiate religious communities, while changing attitudes towards menstrual impurity signaled changing religious affiliations. Three main Sasanian non-Jewish attitudes towards menstrual impurity are described: The Zoroastrian, which is shown to be formulistic, Syriac Christian, which intentionally violates widespread menstrual taboos, and Mandaean, which placed ritual washing at the center of religious life.
Inside-out and Outside-in
Authors: Secunda Shai
Published: July 2020

This chapter focuses on the development of Jewish practices aimed at preventing couples from being intimate with one another during the menstrual period. It demonstrates how these observances developed specifically within the confines of the Babylonian Talmud, and argues that the nature and strains of this Talmudic discourse reflect some flirtation with Zoroastrian and Mandaean norms, where women were expected to leave the home during the menstrual period. Apparently, the Talmud first considered and assimilated some of these non-rabbinic Sasanian religious views, yet once they came to be seen as heterodox, the Talmud was forced to completely reject menstrual banishments.
Conclusion
Authors: Secunda Shai
Published: July 2020

This concluding chapter reprises the chief findings of this book, namely, that a key aspect of the Talmudic discourse of menstrual impurity is multidimensional differentiation: between the pure and the impure, women and men, rabbinic and heterodox, gentile and Jew, and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. I suggest that not only is difference important for understanding menstrual impurity in ancient and late ancient Judaism, it is also foundational in modern and contemporary Judaism as well, for example in the way observant Jews self-identify as Orthodox, and in controversies surrounding the rise of female halakhic advisors (yo‘atzot) regarding menstrual impurity.
Handling
Authors: Sawyer Daniel
Published: July 2020

This chapter asks how readers in this period physically handled books containing verse. Handling is explored through three qualities which significantly affect it: size, shape, and weight. The chapter explores some epistemological problems with the concept of size in the study of medieval manuscripts, and then offers the largest quantitative survey yet published of size and shape in manuscripts containing Middle English verse. Size evidence provides a broad overview of the ways in which particular texts might have been read. The shapes of books, meanwhile, appear to have been affected by literary form. The chapter then turns to weight, with the first ever survey of the weight of manuscripts from this period which retain period bindings. This survey reveals that the portability of poetry cannot be inferred simply from size or binding type, but must instead be worked out by considering size, shape, materials, and binding together. The chapter’s conclusions indicate how deeply embedded thought about form and the anticipation of future reading were in the production of manuscripts containing Middle English verse.
Interwar Democracies and Dictatorships
Authors: Cornell Agnes , Møller Jørgen , Skaaning Svend-Erik
Published: July 2020

A number of democracy measures cover the interwar period. However, these datasets differ remarkably with respect to which countries were democratic and when democracy broke down. These disagreements are particularly pronounced when it comes to Latin America and southern and eastern Europe. Against this backdrop, we use country-specific works of historians to identify all democratic spells between 1919 and 1939. This recoding is based on a minimalist ‘Schumpeterian’ definition of democracy. The resulting overview shows that there are two categories of interwar democracies: those where democracy survived and those where it broke down. Moreover, our coding identifies a large number of short democratic spells—discontinued by, or interspersed with, undemocratic spells—that have been ignored by most extant datasets. Finally, there are some noteworthy cross-temporal trends in the data, including a spike of democratic breakdowns in the early 1930s.
Democratic Legacies, the Associational Landscape, and Democratic Survival
Authors: Cornell Agnes , Møller Jørgen , Skaaning Svend-Erik
Published: July 2020

A simple cross-tabulation of experience with minimalist democracy before 1918 and interwar democratic breakdown reveals a manifest empirical pattern: All the old democracies of north-western Europe and the former British settler colonies survived the interwar crises. Moreover, in Latin America the countries with democratic legacies experienced longer spells of interwar democracy. A subsequent statistical analysis demonstrates that the strength of the associational landscape is robustly associated with interwar patterns of democratic breakdown even when we control for a number of structural and institutional factors. Finally, both democratic legacies and the vibrancy of associational landscapes were strongly associated with deeper background conditions. These findings indicate that deeper structures shaped the baseline risk of interwar democratic breakdown, but also that it was the more proximate factors of democratic experience and vibrant associational landscapes, which translated structural conditions into either democratic resilience or fragility.
Denmark and the United Kingdom
Authors: Cornell Agnes , Møller Jørgen , Skaaning Svend-Erik
Published: July 2020

Denmark and the United Kingdom are analyzed in-depth as examples of clear positive cases, i.e. surviving democracies with substantial democratic legacies and vibrant associational landscapes. The two case studies show how Denmark and the UK had developed consolidated democracies on the eve of the interwar era. These democracies were bolstered by broad acceptance of democratic procedures among elites and masses as well as strong parties interlaced with lively civil societies. The result of this combination was political regimes, which were immune to the political radicalization of the day. Antidemocratic movements and parties found preciously little support, the established parties remained loyal to democracy, and they came together to strike political agreements in order to counter economic crisis and anti-democratic mobilization in the 1930s. The evidence offered by these case studies thus provide additional support for our theoretical mechanisms.
Paramilitarism in the Balkans
Authors: Tasić Dmitar
Published: July 2020

This book is analysing the origins and manifestations of paramilitary violence in three neighbouring Balkan countries—Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania after the First World War. It shows the role of paramilitarism in internal as well as in external policies in all three above-mentioned states, and it focuses on the main actors and perpetrators of paramilitary violence, their social backgrounds, motivations and future career trajectories. It also places the region into the broader European context of booming paramilitarism that came as the result of first global conflict, dissolution of old empires, creation of nation-states and simultaneous revolutions. While paramilitarism in most of post-Great War European states was the product of violence of the First World War and brutalization which societies of both victorious and defeated countries went through, paramilitarism in the Balkans was closely connected with the already existing traditions originating from the period of armed struggle against the Ottoman rule, and state and nation building projects of the late 19th and early 20th century. Paramilitary traditions here were so strong that in all subsequent crises and military conflicts in the Balkans, i.e. the Second World War and Wars of Yugoslav Succession during the 1990’s, the legacy of paramilitarism remained alive and present. Among several features of paramilitarism in the Balkans 1917 - 1924 this book analyse strong inclination towards guerrilla warfare as the integral part of the warfare culture of the Balkans paramilitaries.
Balkan Borderlands
Authors: Tasić Dmitar
Published: July 2020

Chapter III is introduction to geographical and demographic context of the study. It uses the concept of borderlands, more precisely imperial borderlands that is territories which are considered as spaces-in-between with malleable identities which are often disputed and in general difficult to control. It analyses situation in all three countries such as: first usages of paramilitaries in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and controversies that occurred; how IMRO adjusted to new circumstances and continued with its operation; how new agrarian regime in Bulgaria, overwhelmed with challenges and dysfunctional state and its institutions was forced to create its own paramilitary formation—Orange Guard and which in practical terms represented discontinuity with Balkan paramilitary traditions; and what was the role of the Albanian irregulars during the turbulent post-war quest for stability in that country taking in mind specific features Albanian society. It also questions if Albanian irregulars as such can be determined as paramilitaries as their contemporary counterparts. Finally it presents what was the role and place of Serbian chetniks in their post-Black Hand years, that is, in period when, after the annihilation of the secret organization Unification or Death aka the Black Hand, the organization that had strong influence on their organization and usage, they became one of many veterans’ associations. It also analyses the place of the Toplica Uprising in 1917 as one of the most important determinants of chetniks identity and ethos.
New Context + Traditional Methods = Unexpected Outcomes
Authors: Tasić Dmitar
Published: July 2020

Chapter IV is dedicated to the situation in all three countries after the Great War, that is, among theirs paramilitaries, and how they have adjusted to new realities. One big change was the fact that Ottoman Empire vanished from the Balkans, however its legacy and traditions were very alive and present. However, some of the former komitajis faced with existential difficulties begin with criminal activities such as pillaging, extortion, kidnapping and smuggling. It also shows how Yugoslav army and Gendarmerie slowly but surely started to coordinate their activities with civil authorities in order to prevent incursions of IMRO komitajis and Albanian kachak’s. Chapter analyses to what extent extraordinary measures that were introduced helped in suppression of two different security challenges as well as what were the answers of individuals and organizations. Most notable were office of the Commissar for Southern Regions and Organization against the Bulgarian Bandits. For the short time of its work office of the Commissar was given extraordinary authorisation and mechanisms for coordination between different agencies which proved efficient in fight against IMRO komitajis and kachaks. Organization against Bulgarian Bandits was completely new paramilitary formation. Created on existing principles it in a way represented step back in efforts to modernize Yugoslav southern regions.
After Alfred
Authors: Stafford Pauline
Published: July 2020

This book traces the development of a group of anonymous, vernacular, annalistic chronicles—‘the Anglo-Saxon chronicles’—from their genesis at the court of King Alfred to their end at the Fenland monastery of Peterborough. It reconsiders them in the light of wider European scholarship on the politics of history-writing. It covers all surviving manuscript chronicles, with detailed attention being paid to palaeography, layout, and content, and identifies key lost texts. It is concerned with production, scribe-authors, patrons, and audiences. The centuries these chronicles cover were critical to the making of England and saw its conquest by Scandinavians and Normans. They have long been part of the English national story. The book considers the impact of this on their study and editing. It stresses their multiplicity, whilst identifying a tradition of writing vernacular history. It sees that tradition as an expression of the ideology of a southern elite engaged in the conquest and assimilation of old kingdoms north of the Thames, Trent, and Humber. The book connects many chronicles to bishops and especially to archbishops of York and Canterbury. Vernacular chronicling is seen, not as propaganda, but as engaged history-writing closely connected to the court, whose networks and personnel were central to the production of chronicles and their continuation. The disappearance of the English-speaking elite after the Norman Conquest had profound impacts on them, repositioning their authors in relation to the court and royal power, and ultimately resulting in the end of the tradition of vernacular chronicling.
Order and Theology
Authors: Bain William
Published: July 2020

This chapter introduces political theology as an approach to interpreting and analysing the idea of order. The central claim is that widely held conceptions of international order, for example, a multitude of states organized in terms of a spontaneous balance of power or relationships self-consciously constructed through will and consent, reflect intellectual commitments that originate in medieval theology. Specifically, the chapter argues that modern thinking about international order is mediated by rival theories of order that arise out of medieval dispute about the nature of God and the extent of his power. Two overriding objectives guide this investigation. The first is to provide a better intellectual history of late medieval and early modern traditions of thought and to illuminate how they shape contemporary thinking about international order. The second is to conduct a theoretical investigation of international order in terms of its presuppositions. This involves interrogating the conditions and assumptions that render the idea of international order intelligible as what it is. Uncovering this theological inheritance repositions widely shared beliefs about the place of theology in modern international thought, the debates that define the theoretical cartography of the field, and the kind of knowledge that explains the idea of international order.
Rival Conceptions of Order
Authors: Bain William
Published: July 2020

This chapter lays out rival conceptions of order. The theory of immanent order is predicated on a doctrine of internal relations such that mutually related things jointly compose an interconnected whole. This whole imparts a necessary and rationally intelligible pattern of place and purpose, knowledge of which is acquired by investigating both efficient and final causes. The theory of imposed order is predicated on a doctrine of external relations. Singular things, having no intrinsic connections, enter into relations that are imposed from without, either by legislation or the force exerted by an impersonal mechanism. The result is a contingent pattern of order that is explained with reference to empirical observation and investigating efficient causes. Each of these theories of order presupposes a particular conception of God and a particular interpretation of the creation story in Genesis. These theories provide the ground of the argument that is developed throughout this book, namely that modern theories of international order are deeply indebted to ideas traceable to the biblical conception of God and the emphasis it places on will, power, and might. The implications here are twofold. First, modern international thought did not emerge de novo with the collapse of medieval Christendom. Second, particular conceptions of God give rise to analogies and metaphors that are used to comment on questions of politics and law. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the character of modern theories of international order is negotiated by the distinctive commitments of these rival theories.
Thomas Hobbes and the Divine Politics of Anarchy
Authors: Bain William
Published: July 2020

This chapter presents Thomas Hobbes as a theorist of imposed order. The central claim is that Hobbes’s conception of political order, an artificial arrangement arising from will and consent, reflects the intellectual commitments of nominalist theology. Uncovering the theological presuppositions of his thought opens space for an understanding of international order that is quite different from what the ‘Hobbesian’ tradition portrays as a domain of endemic violence. Hobbes is correctly imagined as a theorist of interstate society. The chapter examines the unity of philosophy and theology in Hobbes’s thought, focusing on a recurring analogy between divine action and human action. Human beings make and unmake their world, including the commonwealth, as God created the universe. Modern theorists reproduce these theological ideas when they invoke Hobbes to illustrate the character and consequences of anarchy. Hobbes, conceived as a theorist of imposed order, exemplifies what has become the dominant discourse of international order. The implication is that modern theories of international order might not be as uniquely modern or purely secular as contemporary theorists typically assume.
Political Theology II
Authors: Bain William
Published: July 2020

This chapter argues that the idea of a society of states (or international society) reflects the theory of imposed order. The central claim is that the constitutional character of international society is intelligible in terms of postulates that can be traced to nominalist theology. The society of states is an association composed of singular existents, with each being free in respect of all the others, which are related in a system of external relations—rules of law—that are legitimized by consent. The discussion explores the nominalist character of this way thinking in the context of medieval debates about the nature and government of the Church, which developed into a general theory of constitutional government. In this sense, a society of states, like a system of states, is a worldly application of nominalist theology. Differences between ideas of system and society are intelligible only from a position within a nominalist framework of thinking and knowing. The chapter concludes by discussing the indeterminacy of the theory of imposed order in a world that affords no recourse to God when trying to reconcile the demands of freedom and the requirements of order.
Severus of Antioch
Authors: Zachhuber Johannes
Published: July 2020

This chapter addresses the transformations of the Cappadocian philosophy introduced by the miaphysite opponents of the Council of Chalcedon. It begins with a critical assessment of a scholarly tradition that saw miaphysite thought as opposed to Cappadocian principles. In reality, all major representatives of this tradition drew on Cappadocian insights although their reception was partial. Central to the chapter is an analysis of Severus of Antioch’s use of Cappadocian philosophy in his controversy with John the Grammarian. It is shown that Severus throughout exploited the concrete dimension of the Cappadocian theory but left the abstract dimension to one side. To explain the ontological continuity between universal natures and their individual manifestations, he came close to introducing particular natures. Ultimately, he recognized the need to adapt the Cappadocian theory in light of the Christological debate but was reluctant to move beyond the terms and concepts he found in the fathers.
Conclusion
Authors: Zachhuber Johannes
Published: July 2020

The final chapter begins by summarizing the argument of previous parts of the book. It reiterates how the conceptual demands of Christology were in tension with the tenets of Cappadocian philosophy. Yet as the latter had firmly become part of the intellectual tradition among the later Fathers, this tension was not resolved by abandoning the terms and concepts of the Cappadocian theory. Instead, individual authors sought to rework it in order to make it conducive to the specific challenges of the Christological controversy. A second part of the chapter moves from the technicalities of the Patristic debates to the larger philosophical issues hidden in them. Especially, the problem of historical individuality is identified as gaining increasing centrality. A third and final part sketches some trajectories on which Patristic philosophy was passed on to posterity in Byzantium, in Islamic thought, in the Western Middle Ages, and in early modern religious thought.
Law for Computer Scientists and Other Folk
Authors: Hildebrandt Mireille
Published: July 2020

This book introduces law to computer scientists. Computer scientists develop, protect, and maintain computing systems in the broad sense of that term, whether hardware, software, or data. They may be focused on e.g. digital security, or on embedded systems, or on software science. The aim of this book is to convey the internal logic of legal practice, firmly grounded in legal theory. It attempts to bridge the gap between two scientific practices, and probe the middle ground to present a reasonably coherent picture of the grammar and vocabulary of law and the rule of law. This attempt is geared toward those with no wish to become lawyers but who are nevertheless forced to consider the salience of legal rights and obligations. Simultaneously, this book aims to help lawyers to review their own trade. It is a volume on law in an onlife world, presenting a coherent picture of how modern law operates, how it emerged in the context of printed text, and how it confronts its new, data-driven environment.
Law, Democracy, and the Rule of Law
Authors: Hildebrandt Mireille
Published: July 2020

This chapter faces the question of law's ‘mode of existence’, by asking what law does—and how. To accomplish this, the chapter explains the concept of the ‘sources of law’ and the nature of legal reasoning, notably the attribution of legal effect when specified legal conditions apply. The crucial distinction between primary (regulative) and secondary (constitutive) rules is discussed, thus demonstrating that law is not a ‘bag of rules’ but a dynamic architecture of legal norms (rules and principles). Finally, we address the question of the relationship between law, democracy, and the rule of law. To qualify as law, a normative framework must aim to sustain, develop, and balance certain values—even though they may be incompatible in concrete cases. These constitutive values are defined as legal certainty, justice, and instrumentality.
Private Law Liability for Faulty ICT
Authors: Hildebrandt Mireille
Published: July 2020

This chapter considers instances where ICT applications cause physical, material, economic, or emotional harm, with a focus on third party liability or tort law. The chapter should be read as an important example of how private law liability may step in to deter the development, sale, or usage of faulty ICT. It discusses the relevant legal conditions of damage, causation, fault liability, and strict liability, ending with questions around compensation and deterrence as the overarching goals of tort law.
Legal Personhood for AI?
Authors: Hildebrandt Mireille
Published: July 2020

This chapter considers legal personhood for artificial agents. It engages with the legal issues of autonomous systems, asking the question whether (and if so, under what conditions) such systems should be given the status of a legal subject, capable of acting in law and/or being held liable in law. The main reason for considering this option is the rise of semi-autonomous systems that display unpredictable behaviour, causing harm not foreseeable by those who developed, sold, or deployed them. Under current law it might be difficult to establish liability for such harm. To investigate these issues, the chapter explains the concepts of legal subjectivity and legal agency, before inquiring into the nature of artificial agency. Finally, the chapter assesses whether attributing legal personhood to artificial agents would solve the problem of private law liability for harm caused by semi-autonomous systems.
Closure: On Ethics, Code, and Law
Authors: Hildebrandt Mireille
Published: July 2020

This concluding chapter investigates the distinction between law, code, and ethics, as well as their interrelationship and their interaction. It is intended for those interested in the nexus of law and ethics, in the light of code- and data-driven information and communication infrastructures (ICIs). One of the main differences between law and ethics is that law provides closure whereas ethics remains in the realm of reflection as it lacks the force of law. However, a second difference turns the previous statement inside out: whereas law and the rule of law introduce checks and balances and demand democratic participation (at least in constitutional democracies), ethics may be decided by tech developers or behind the closed doors of the board room of corporate business enterprise. It can thus obtain the force of technology. Paradoxically, once ethics gains the force of technology, the space for the practice of ethics is reduced.
The Construction of Humanism
Authors: Verhaart Floris
Published: July 2020

This chapter starts with a very concise discussion of how the different approaches to classical literature debated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be traced back to the ancient world and the Middle Ages. The rest of the chapter demonstrates how scholars in the early eighteenth century reflected on the work of their predecessors from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries based on their own scholarly concerns. The first example is Pieter Burman (1668–1741) and his Sylloge epistolarum (1724–7), the edition of unpublished writings by the French critic Henri Valois (1603–76; edition published in 1740), and the edition of George Buchanan (1506–82), published in 1725. In the Sylloge, for example, Burman focuses on letters that show how eminent scholars thought about the correct reading of classical texts, while a ‘popularizer’ like Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) is criticized. Valois’s work was used as a starting point to reflect on what Burman and his nephew Pieter Burman the Younger (1713–78) saw as the downfall of French textual criticism. Finally, Burman’s own interest in the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of texts also allowed him to avoid involvement in politically sensitive matters, as was the case for Buchanan’s views in contemporary Scotland. The final example discussed in this chapter is the prefatory material written by Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) for the edition of Erasmus’ Opera omnia (1703–6), in which Le Clerc dwells on the relationship between the study of ancient literature and other academic disciplines such as philosophy and theology.
Rewriting the Text of the Soul
Authors: Chinca Mark
Published: July 2020

The chapter is about the radically text-centered form of meditation that emerged in and around the Devotio Moderna movement toward the end of the fourteenth century. In working with written text, adherents of the movement believed they were simultaneously working on their souls, especially because these too were believed to resemble a text, susceptible of being rewritten in a new and better order. Schemes for meditation by Florens Radewijns and Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, two leading exponents of the Devotio Moderna, require their readers to implement them by reproducing in the virtuality of thought one or other of the compositional principles by which the schemes were constituted as texts in the first place. With the Cordiale, seu quatuor novissima, a devotional tract on eschatology written around the same time as the exercises of Radewijns and Zerbolt, readers are similarly exhorted to meditate by transferring the “process” of the text—its unfolding as a rhetorically composed argument—to the process of their reflections on death and the afterlife.
Handle with Care
Authors: Aydın-Aitchison Andy
Published: July 2020

The chapter starts with claims made for the potential historical value of a set of juridical by-products: the evidence gathered, presented, and scrutinized in international criminal courts. Recently, criminologists and others have started to make use of resources generated or collected by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to describe and analyse international crimes. This chapter argues that while evidence and transcripts from international criminal courts have great potential as a source of data for analyses in criminology, and by extension other social sciences and historical research, they need to be handled with care. The chapter compares judicial and scholarly approaches, examines access and transparency issues around the construction of a body of evidence in the trial process and matters relating to witnesses. They make a strong case for using the ICTY as part of scholarly efforts to make sense of the violent disintegration of State and society in Yugoslavia.
The Peace versus Justice Debate Revisited
Authors: McAllister Jacqueline R.
Published: July 2020

Critics of international criminal tribunals (ICTs) charge that they undermine peace processes. Advocates of ICTs maintain that there can be no peace without justice. There is still much to learn about wartime ICTs’ impact on peace processes. This chapter addresses how the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) affected efforts to end the Bosnian War. Drawing on over 100 interviews with key stakeholders from the Bosnian peace process, and declassified data from the Clinton administration, the chapter finds that ICTY played a key role in facilitating peace efforts. Among other things, the ICTY’s indictments strengthened mediators’ hand in implementing crucial participation decisions. The ICTY also helped parties to overcome commitment problems. The analysis suggests that the ICTY’s cautious approach to indicting top leaders, coupled with the fact that mediators exercised discretion over the arrest and transfer of suspects, both capture why the ICTY facilitated, versus undermined peace efforts.
Justice as Message
Authors: Stahn Carsten
Published: July 2020

International criminal justice is a form of social performance. It relies on messages, speech acts, and performatives practices in order to convey social meaning. Major criminal proceedings, such as Nuremberg or Tokyo and other post-Second World War trials have been branded as ‘spectacles of didactic legality’. However, the expressive and the communicative functions of law have been sidelined in institutional discourse and legal practice. The concept of expressivism is referred to in justifications of punishment or sentencing rationales. It appears as reference in scholarly treatises, but it has remained crucially underdeveloped. This book is an attempt to remedy this gap. It shows that expression and communication are not only an inherent part of the punitive functions of international criminal justice but represented in a whole spectrum of practices: norm expression and diffusion, institutional actions, performative aspects of criminal procedures, and repair of harm. It argues that expressivism is not a classical justification of justice or punishment on its own but rather a means to understand its aspirations and limitations, to explain how justice is produced, and to ground punishment rationales.