bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Perturbation, Behavioural Feedbacks, and Population Dynamics in Social Animals
Authors: Oro Daniel
Published: May 2020

In social animals, perturbations may trigger specific behavioural responses with consequences for dispersal and complex population dynamics. Perturbations raise the need for information gathering in order to reduce uncertainty and increase resilience. Updated information is then shared within the group and social behaviours emerge as a self-organized process. This social information factoralizes with the size of the group, and it is finally used for making crucial decisions about, for instance, when to leave the patch and where to go. Indeed, evolution has favoured philopatry over dispersal, and this trade-off is challenged by perturbations. When perturbations accumulate over time, they may decrease the suitability of the patch and erode the philopatric state until crossing a tipping point, beyond which most individuals decide to disperse to better areas. Initially, the decision to disperse is led by a few individuals, and this decision is copied by the rest of the group in an autocatalytic way. This feedback process of social copying is termed runaway dispersal. Furthermore, social copying enhances the evolution of cultural and technological innovation, which may cause additional nonlinearities for population dynamics. Social information gathering and social copying have also occurred in human evolution, especially after perturbations such as climate extremes and warfare. In summary, social feedback processes cause nonlinear population dynamics including hysteresis and critical transitions (from philopatry to patch collapses and invasions), which emerge from the collective behaviour of large ensembles of individuals.
Population Dynamics of Social Species under Perturbations
Authors: Oro Daniel
Published: May 2020

The detection of abrupt changes in natural populations of social and nonsocial animals as a result of perturbations is challenging. This chapter highlights some empirical examples from the literature and the author’s own studies, and the responses of populations of species with different degree of sociality are compared. To overcome the difficulties of obtaining field population data, theoretical approaches can be very useful for simulating these responses from social feedbacks. These models show the influence of social information and social copying to generate nonlinear population dynamics, such as bifurcations and cascades. The chapter’s final section explores the stability properties of populations subjected to perturbations and the role of social feedbacks for resilience. These properties depend on the time of occupation of the patch, its suitability compared to other patches, and the type of perturbation (e.g. pulsed, in regime, or in combination). This section ends by exploring how social copying influences collective cultural innovations of social populations under perturbations. For instance, the American Pueblo tribe colonized riverine habitats and changed their way of living following the collapse of their original habitat due to droughts and tribal fights.
Conclusions and Prospects
Authors: Oro Daniel
Published: May 2020

Throughout the book, I have been searching for empirical examples and theories dealing with how perturbations trigger behavioural feedback responses in social animals, how these responses affect the decision to disperse between patches, and the consequences of dispersal for complex, nonlinear population dynamics. What seems quite clear is that social feedbacks—and especially runaway dispersal by copying—do play an important role in those responses, compared to solitary species. Although philopatry to the patch has many benefits, perturbations may decrease the suitability of this patch. When a patch is perturbed, do social species show different responses than solitary species? Since evolution has selected for maximizing fitness prospects, individuals living either in groups or in solitary will try to avoid the detrimental effects of the perturbation, for instance by leaving the patch. The behavioural mechanisms triggered by perturbations are similar for both social and solitary species: increase of information gathering to reduce uncertainty and the use of this updated information to make optimal decisions about either staying or leaving. Thus, the answer is that solitary and social species show similar responses to perturbations. Nevertheless, the way those behavioural mechanisms operate is rather different between social and solitary species: in the former, information is shared among individuals, and decisions about when to leave the patch and where to go are made not only using private or personal information, but mostly using social information. Last but not least, there is social copying, a trend to copy in a nonrational way what others have decided before. This social copying, also called conformity, may trigger what I termed runaway dispersal: perturbations may accumulate over time, decreasing resilience of the social group until attaining a tipping point. Once this threshold is surpassed, the decision to disperse is led by a few individuals, and this decision is copied by the rest of the group in an autocatalytic way....
Introduction
Authors: Michalopoulos Constantine
Published: May 2020

The first part of the Introduction summarizes the main development challenges facing the global community in the 1990s and the key policy and programme changes that became the focus of the collaboration among the four women Ministers for International Development: Eveline Herfkens of the Netherlands, Hilde F. Johnson of Norway, Clare Short of the United Kingdom, and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul of Germany, the so-called Utstein Four. The second part describes briefly the content of each of the chapters of the volume.
The Legacy in Troubled Times
Authors: Michalopoulos Constantine
Published: May 2020

The deep crisis which afflicted the developed countries in 2008 ushered in a new era with complex impacts on development cooperation. In 2015 the UN was able to celebrate the achievement of substantial progress in meeting the MDGs and to set up a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be achieved by 2030. But the crisis resulted in tight budgets in several European countries and led to reductions in their aid flows as well as changing attitudes towards economic assistance. Developing country needs also changed with emerging powers needing less aid and fragile states receiving greater international attention. The combination led to a variety of new aid practices and forms of collaboration which affected aid effectiveness, some adversely. This chapter reviews international cooperation for development as well as the U4 aid programmes during the past decade in order to gauge the relevance of the U4 legacy to the continuing challenges of eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development.
Squaring Pragmatism with Linguistic Meaning
Authors: Collins John
Published: May 2020

This chapter has three major tasks. Firstly, I show how the conception of linguistic pragmatism on offer squares with certain features of standard truth-conditional approaches to meaning, especially as regards compositionality. Secondly, pace some recent semantic proposals, I argue that the properties of the Saxon genitive (e.g., Sally’s car) and adnominal adjectival attributions (e.g., red pen) are referentially open in the way I argued in the previous chapter. The third task involves sketching the kind of role I take syntax to play in fixing linguistic meaning and how the argument-adjunct distinction operates in regards to my core claims.
Concluding Remarks
Authors: Collins John
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses the programmatic nature of linguistic pragmatism with reference to three questions. Firstly, I address in historical terms the nature of linguistic variables by considering some remarks from Chomsky. Secondly, I address the apparent ontological commitment of semantics. Thirdly, I offer a final plea for placing semantics, as usually conceived, outside of language proper.
Speaking (of) Faces
Authors: Harvey Elizabeth D.
Published: May 2020

Measure for Measure is a play that reveals how bodily and affective language is entangled with anatomical understandings of muscles, gesture, and early modern psychology. The face was the primary map for the passions and the mobility of shifting affects, as well as the body’s primary social façade; its complex ability to register or to contain emotion is embedded in the languages of intersubjective interaction, a social geography of communication. This chapter explores how passionate expression is registered as somatic speech acts through readings of facial expression and in moments of disguise (veiling, muffling, substitution). The play stages how human desire flows between and among people, how it solicits and resists legal and political regulation, and how it operates invisibly both as a felt force for the individual subject and as an uncontainable force moving between human subjects.
How Dead Languages Work
Authors: George Coulter H.
Published: May 2020

What could a Greek poet or Roman historian say in their language that’s lost in translation? After all, different languages have different personalities, and this is especially clear with languages of the ancient and medieval world. This book celebrates six such languages—Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Old Irish, and Biblical Hebrew—by first introducing readers to their most distinctive features, then showing how these linguistic traits play out in short excerpts from actual ancient texts. It explores, for instance, how Homer’s Greek shows signs of oral composition, how Horace can achieve striking poetic effects through interlaced word order in his Latin, and how the poet of Beowulf achieves a remarkable intensity of expression through the resources of Old English. But these are languages that have shared connections as well. Readers will see how the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda uses words that come from roots found also in English, how turns of phrase characteristic of the Hebrew Bible found their way into English, and that even as unusual a language as Old Irish still builds on common Indo-European linguistic patterns. Since most people don’t have the opportunity to learn these languages, the book throughout aims to give such readers an aesthetic appreciation of just how rich and varied they are.
Old English and the Germanic languages
Authors: George Coulter H.
Published: May 2020

First, an account of two main features that set all the Germanic languages off against the rest of the Indo-European family (Grimm’s Law, and the creation of a system of strong and weak verbs) gives readers a chance to see how linguists group languages together on the basis of shared innovations. The chapter then turns to Old English in particular, discussing first how Old English, with its greater number of grammatical endings, is still a bit more like its sister languages Greek and Latin than is its modern descendant, before considering the individual words of a verse of the Old English Bible to see in detail what causes it to look so different to the contemporary anglophone. Finally, it works through six lines of Beowulf, not only as a continued illustration of what makes Old English different but also to show how it exploits features like compound nouns and alliterative verse for poetic effect.
Old Irish and the Celtic languages
Authors: George Coulter H.
Published: May 2020

Old Irish is a notoriously difficult language, and the chapter begins with an account of why this is so, exploring the features such as consonant mutations, palatalization, the absolute and conjunct inflections of verbs, conjugated prepositions, verb-initial sentences, and infixed pronouns that make it so distinct from the other languages considered so far. But even so, it is still of Indo-European stock, and a couple of selections from the Táin Bó Cuailnge reveal some of this shared ancestry. The chapter also offers an extended comparison with Welsh, another important member of the Celtic branch, highlighting, with an excerpt from the Mabinogion, the Celtic features common to it and Irish, as well as the points of difference between the two.
Epilogue and further reading
Authors: George Coulter H.
Published: May 2020

The epilogue recaps the discussion of the preceding chapters, reflecting on the languages highlighted in each, their distinctive personalities, and their relations to each other and their modern successors. It also offers suggestions for further reading and resources to enable interested readers to deepen their explorations into these and other ancient and medieval languages.
Contemplating Creation
Authors: Insole Christopher J.
Published: May 2020

The chapter shows that our highest good, in Kant’s pre-critical philosophy, involves the contemplation of the perfection of the universe. This perfection is understood, theologically, as a manifestation, and a mediated contemplation of, the harmonious plenitude that characterizes God. Kant draws upon a theologically informed Platonism. The chapter reflects on a striking feature of Kant’s early philosophy, which is that no place is given to the figure of Christ, or to Christological concerns. This relates in a surprising way to the type of humility and gratitude that Kant calls us to. It also helps to underscore the point that although Kant subscribes to a rich philosophical religiosity, he is only with difficulty considered a Christian. This is true even for the early Kant. Nonetheless, the early Kant is still capable of being read, by a Christian theologian who is determined to do so, in a more Trinitarian and Christological way than is possible with the later Kant. Such a reading is presented, although its limitations are acknowledged.
From Freedom to Freedom
Authors: Insole Christopher J.
Published: May 2020

This chapter studies the significant shift, in the 1760s and 1770s, in Kant’s conception of what human freedom must consist in: from compatibilism to transcendental freedom. We find that in his early thought, a deterministic conception of freedom is not merely presented as compatible, in some sense, with a notion of freedom. Although committed to a ‘Newtonian’ account of the behaviour of the physical universe, the success of such accounts, for the pre-critical Kant, is grounded upon a Platonic conception of fundamental reality, which makes recourse to the notion of an intrinsic teleology within all created beings. For this reason, determinism is celebrated as a manifestation and emanation of the order, harmony, and divinity that characterize the being of God. The chapter shows how this changes in the 1760s and 1770s, as Kant pivots into his radically different critical conception of freedom, and of our highest created good. By the 1780s Kant is convinced that we are only free, if we are, in some fundamental sense, the first cause of our actions, without any exterior or prior causal forces acting upon us. Everything Kant says about happiness and the highest good that comes after this shift will look quite different, although, the chapter suggests, there are some subterranean continuities between his pre-critical and critical thought.
Searching for the Unconditioned
Authors: Insole Christopher J.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the extent to which Kant’s critical moral philosophy has some traditional theological features. First of all, it is argued that Kant continues to believe in God. Secondly, Kant engages, in the Groundwork, with the search for the ‘unconditioned’, which, in traditional terms, involves searching that which is all-sufficient, stable, true everywhere, freedom-preserving, and harmonious. In line with the traditional search for the highest good (the Summum Bonum), represented in this discussion by Aquinas, Kant does not find this resting place in a range of created and good-to-a-degree realities, such as passions, sensuous inclinations, gifts, and virtues. Allen Wood’s suggestions about the possibility of ‘innocent practical goodness’ are considered and refuted.
The Proper Self
Authors: Insole Christopher J.
Published: May 2020

The chapter explores the way in which transcendental idealism provides Kant with an ethically significant conception of transcendence. Kant’s conception of transcendence is distinct from that found in Christian theology, but is nonetheless capable of bringing a degree of spiritual, religious, and moral consolation, insofar as the way things fundamentally are (we can believe), may be quite different from how they appear. This is particularly relevant when we think about freedom and autonomy, and Kant’s notion of the ‘proper self’. The proper self is the noumenal and intelligible subject, and it is this subject who is capable of autonomy. At the heart of autonomy is our setting of ends, which involves our being free and purposive. The value of such end-setting is the ‘inner value’ of the world. End- setting is valuable, and is so absolutely and intrinsically, in that the value is not itself bestowed by an act of end-setting. That it is our nature to be purposive is, importantly, distinct from the more traditional assertion that there is a purpose which is our nature.
Does Kant Need Grace?
Authors: Insole Christopher J.
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the claim made by John Hare, amongst others, that Kant requires God to act in order to achieve our salvation/transformation to virtue, but that, for various Kantian reasons, God is unable to act. At the heart of this interpretation is a sense that Kant has a notion of original sin, or natural depravity, such that his system requires grace, in a doctrinally narrow and significant sense, but that, at the same time, Kant is unable to make use of this concept. So, the claim is that Kant is committed to, or requires, aspects of Christianity, but that tensions arise in his philosophy, owing to his account of freedom, in relation to morality and the highest good. Kant’s account of human freedom is such that he cannot make the use that he needs to of Christian theology. It is argued in this chapter that this is a mistaken interpretation, and that Kant has no need for a concept of ‘grace’, in the narrower doctrinal sense of that concept, where grace is required to restore us from original sin, and to bring us to the love and knowledge of God in the beatific vision.
The Glorious Community
Authors: Insole Christopher J.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the extent to which Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, the ideal moral world, itself has some divine properties, in a sense that is documentable and precise, placing Kant in a rich Platonic tradition of philosophical reflection upon the divine. It is shown that the Kingdom of Ends is a state of plenitude, harmony, and happiness, which itself imitates and replicates defining characteristics of the being God, as understood by Kant. The suggestion is made that the concept of ‘God’ or ‘divinity’ is identical with, and stands for, the realm of freedom and reason, with the possibility of harmony. It is suggested that what makes possible a hope in the highest good is the order, plenitude, and harmony found in the Kingdom of Ends, which features are themselves characteristics of the divine being.
The Beauty of Jesus Christ
Authors: O'Collins, S.J. Gerald
Published: May 2020

Commenting on a royal wedding song in his Expositions of the Psalms, St Augustine of Hippo recognized beauty at every stage in the story of Jesus Christ—from his pre-existence ‘in heaven’, through the incarnation, childhood, public ministry of preaching the kingdom and working miracles, passion, crucifixion, entombment, resurrection, ascension, and glorious life ‘in heaven’. By dwelling on the passion, Augustine showed that he knew the difficulty involved in acknowledging that Jesus was beautiful ‘under the scourges’ and beautiful ‘on the cross’. Augustine never filled out his laconic summary. This book breaks new ground by using Augustine’s summary and illustrating the beauty of Christ in every ‘mystery’ of his story. It adds to Augustine’s list by exploring the beauty of Christ revealed in his so-called ‘hidden life’, the transfiguration, and post-resurrection sending of the Holy Spirit.
‘Beautiful on Earth’
Authors: O’Collins, S.J. Gerald
Published: May 2020

The prologue of John’s Gospel presents the glory of Jesus, something closely associated with his beauty, as being already being there from the very beginning of his historical existence and not postponed to his risen state. Jesus is also the Light of the world, which led to the creedal confession of his being Light from Light—or, as we might say, Beauty from Beauty. The beauty of light is the most perfect manifestation of the divine reality. The language of Christ as Light from Light entered Christian theology and liturgy. Glory and beauty attached to the images of the coming Messiah and Son of Man and, even more, to the image of Christ as divine Bridegroom. Augustine rightly acclaimed the beauty of the incarnation.
‘Beautiful in His Miracles, Beautiful in Calling to Life’
Authors: O’Collins, S.J. Gerald
Published: May 2020

The beauty that Augustine found in the miracles of Christ is exemplified in the healing of a leper, the feeding of the five thousand, and the raising of the dead son of a widow in Nain. The same manifestation of beauty occurs in other miracles, like two healings of disabled persons that took place in a synagogue on a Sabbath day. Such parables as those of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son show Jesus to be beautiful in his preaching. Beauty also comes through the beatitudes which, according to Matthew and Luke, characterized and summarized the teaching of Jesus. All four Gospels witness to the impact that the beauty of Jesus enjoyed on his audiences, and not least on children who were drawn to him.
‘Beautiful under the Scourges, Beautiful on the Cross’
Authors: O’Collins, S.J. Gerald
Published: May 2020

The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, celebrated in the face of imminent death, showed the beauty of Christ in a tragic situation. About to be betrayed by Judas and denied by Peter, Christ established a lasting covenant with his followers and looked forward to the joy of the coming kingdom. A beautiful theme of healing, forgiveness, and salvation runs through Luke’s passion story—right from the arrest of Jesus when he greets Judas by name and heals the man who has lost his right ear when Peter lashes out with a sword. The ‘divine composure’ of Jesus at his arrest characterizes the start of John’s passion story. It ends with the piercing of Christ’s side, symbolizing the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.
Where Does the Problem Come from?
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

This chapter outlines the history of the problem of reconciling, or of failing to reconcile, two conflicting intuitions, first an appreciation of the commonalities in the cognitive capacities that all humans share, and second, a recognition of the huge diversity in how they have been used including in the construction of contrasting belief systems and the adoption of divergent values. It criticizes various attempts to drive a wedge between different human populations and cultures with regard to their cognitive abilities. It evaluates so-called ‘fast and frugal’ reasoning and argues that the main effect of the development of formal logic was not so much to improve reasoning as to make available certain explicit distinctions that could be invoked in debate.
Modes of Discourse and the Pragmatics of Communication
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

This chapter investigates what an analysis of different modes of discourse and the pragmatics of communication can contribute to a resolution of the problems of mutual intelligibility across languages and cultures. Drawing on the work of J.L. Austin, Grice, Tambiah, and Hugh-Jones, and using examples from ancient history (Greece, China, and India) and anthropology (Barasana), it emphasizes the need to take into account the pragmatics of communicative exchanges, their social contexts, the roles of audiences and the availability of indigenous categories of discourse. It points especially to the dangers of the uncritical use of common Western distinctions, such as that between ‘rational account’ (logos) and ‘myth’.
The Argument from Sociability
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

Humans are all social animals, yet we live in societies of strikingly different kinds. This chapter examines what the development of human reasoning in all its diversity owes to our sociability. Taking examples from ethnography and more particularly from ancient Greece and China, it investigates critically the ways in which different social and political arrangements may foster or impede different modes of communicative exchanges. It considers how such arrangements may favour different core values and understandings of what it is to be human, including in particular the tension between more inclusive and more restricted views on that question. Recognizing that mutual misunderstandings may and do continue, it reflects on how and within what limits they may nevertheless be overcome.
The Evolutionary Issues
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

What conclusions should be drawn about human intelligence from the study of biological and cultural evolution? This chapter examines critically theories of some historical Great Divide among human populations, for instance Damasio’s Grand Synoptic Theory focussing on homeostasis or self-regulation, or Axial Age hypotheses stemming from Jaspers, that conjecture a radical break-through in the development of reflexive thought across Eurasia. Attempts to draw a line between more advanced societies and others considered primitive tend to oversimplify by underestimating our and their common cognitive capacities. The case of differences in spatial cognition is used to show how different cognitive capacities are in play but to argue for mutual intelligibility even across divergent paradigms.
Test Case 1
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

Do all humans engaged in ‘mathematics’? That is, can mathematics be considered a viable category of intelligent activity that can be applied cross-culturally? That question must be raised because of the evident diversity in the practices and ideas that have some claim to be thought of as relating to that category. This chapter considers the evidence from modern indigenous societies, such as the Wari’, and from ancient ones such as the Greeks and Chinese, to investigate the different notions that have been entertained (sometimes even with a single ‘culture’) and the various practices that have been cultivated and often highly prized, in relation to the key notions of quantity, number, shapes, and forms. It concludes that it is possible, within limits, to compare and contrast such ideas and activities.
Test Case 4: Aesthetics
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

Our notions of ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’ have undergone several transformations in recent years. When we apply such ideas to the products of indigenous craftsmen (e.g. those studied by Gell or Scoditti on the island of Kitawa) we are liable to misrepresent their original aims and criteria which may relate to ‘efficacy’ rather than (just) to ‘beauty’ or ‘felicity’. The divergences in musical appreciation across the world tell a similar story where links to notions of morality are common. The ambitious correlation of artistic objects with underlying ontologies proposed by Descola underlines the difficulty of cross-cultural generalizations in this domain, though that is not to claim that we are quite at a loss to arrive at any understanding of others’ experience.
Conclusion
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: May 2020

The final chapter takes stock of the limited conclusions of this study of the varieties of intelligence and the possibilities for mutual intelligibility. We can, it is argued, appreciate some cross-cultural human universals (language and sociability), yet we must be continually alert to the diversity of human experience and the dangers of imposing Western categories. But the chief lesson to be learned is that when we encounter beliefs and practices that diverge sharply from what we are used to, we should see this as an opportunity, rather than as a threat. The lack of common ground should not be treated as tantamount to denying the possibility of any understanding whatsoever, though such understanding as we can reach will often involve the revision of our own initial assumptions and categories.
Entailments of change in the roots of change-of-state verbs
Authors: Beavers John , Koontz-Garboden Andrew
Published: May 2020

Chapter 2 examines the semantic and morphological predictions of Bifurcation, focusing on the roots of change-of-state verbs and their stative correlates. Using evidence from entailment, morphology, and sublexical modification it shows that English verbal roots fall into two classes. The flat class describe simple states, while the crack class describe states but also entail that the state came about from change, a templatic notion. A formal analysis of the semantic and morphological properties of the two classes is proposed, albeit one that rejects Bifurcation. It then considers a variety of alternative analyses that preserve Bifurcation, which all come at some theoretical and empirical cost.
Introduction
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

The Ethical Demand begins by considering Jesus’s proclamation to love one’s neighbour as oneself. It is argued that unless we can make sense of this proclamation, it would be a merely coercive commandment, which we would follow without any understanding. In fact, however, it is claimed that the proclamation can be made sense of in purely human terms, as a demand that arises out of our mutual dependence and vulnerability. This demand is said to be silent, radical, one-sided, and unfulfillable, in a way that is explored in what follows. The Introduction concludes with some methodological remarks, in which it is argued that the best approach involves paying careful attention to key conceptual distinctions, rather than adopting an overly systematic methodology.
The Fact from Which the Silent Demand Arises
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter begins by focusing on trust, which is a key example of our dependence on other people, and is integral to human life. In trusting another person, we deliver ourselves up to them by making ourselves vulnerable, which is why we react strongly when this trust is abused, and our vulnerability is thereby ignored. Given the risks involved in this vulnerability, conventional forms and practices are brought in to regulate our interactions. In response to this dependence, and the way in which their life is in our hands, we are required to do what is best for the other person—which may not be what they want us to do, so the demand is ‘silent’ in this respect, as it is not articulated through what they ask of us. However, this does not mean we can encroach on their individuality, or impose our ideas on them as an ideology.
Mediation
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter develops the issue concerning encroachment and considers a possible response to it, which is ultimately rejected. The response starts with the thought that the problem arises because we each have a conception or understanding of life by which our relations to one another are mediated—where the obvious solution may then seem to be to relate to each other in a direct or unmediated way, without bringing any conception of life to bear on our relations to one another. Having a medium between people may lead to encroachment, nonetheless the lack of a medium can do the same. This argument is illustrated by reference to the literary work of D. H. Lawrence, showing how characters such as Will Brangwen and Anna Lensky in Women in Love hope to find a kind of unmediated relationship, but in a way that leads to a breakdown of the love between them.
Antagonism towards the One-Sided Demand
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on another key feature of the ethical demand, namely that it is non-reciprocal or one-sided, in the sense that a person cannot make a counterdemand for coming to help another person. It is argued that this feature of the demand makes sense if a person thinks that life has been given to them, and so cannot demand something back. However, it is suggested that this outlook is compatible with thinking that there is no God as a gift giver, so that the Christian perspective is not essential to make sense of this view. Another challenge to this conception might be that life is not a gift, but a curse, if one’s life is left empty by the death of a loved one, or tormented by illness; this challenge is considered in the last section of this chapter.
Science and Ethics
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the relationship between ethics and our modern scientific world picture, both as regards metaphysics and as regards scientific determinism. The first issue arises because the ethical demand seems to involve a judging authority who holds us responsible for failing to meet it, where it is not clear that this authority can simply come from other people, as they are as flawed as us. But then it may appear that ethics is committed to a position which is metaphysically suspect, in introducing this authority into the picture. The second issue arises because determinism may seem to deprive us of any moral responsibility, insofar as our actions are determined. This chapter argues that responses to both these challenges can be met.
The Unfulfillability of the Demand and the Proclamation of Jesus
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter returns to an issue raised in the Introduction: how are we to see Jesus’s authority in relation to the requirement to love the neighbour? It is argued that while the requirement itself arises simply from our mutual vulnerability, and so does not rest on Jesus’s authority as a commander, he nonetheless does demonstrate a special authority in his capacity to proclaim his forgiveness of our failure to act as we should, as such forgiveness cannot come from a fellow human being, who is as prone to failure as we are. While the ethical demand itself thus makes sense in purely human terms, this still leaves room for the theological claim that Jesus has a special authority—not as the author of the ethical demand, but as the only being (alongside God) who is capable of forgiving us for coming under it at all, through our failure to love.
Polemical Epilogue
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter offers a critique of Søren Kierkegaard, as well as contemporary Kierkegaardians such as K. Olesen Larsen. It challenges Kierkegaard’s own account of the love commandment offered in the latter’s Works of Love. It is argued that Kierkegaard denudes our existence as living creatures of real value, and so makes our relation to God paramount. The command to love the neighbour therefore no longer becomes a command to care for the other person in their human needs, but instead to put them into the right relation to God. It is argued that this is a fundamental distortion of Jesus’s intention as illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan: here, it is earthly concern that is on display, and thus a valorization of all our human vulnerability on which the proper understanding of Jesus’s proclamation must rely.
Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's Analysis of Existence and its Relation to Proclamation
Authors: Løgstrup K. E. , Stern Robert
Published: May 2020

In its first five chapters, this book offers a comparative assessment of Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, drawing out both similarities and differences. In the remaining three chapters, their views are subject to critique. The interpretation focuses on certain key ideas that are central to both thinkers, such as ‘life in the crowd’ or ‘das Man’; how this uniformity can be avoided; and what an authentic life requires instead. The critique argues that Kierkegaard holds that the only way to escape life in the crowd is through a relation to an infinite demand which is left empty, and Heidegger avoids offering any kind of ethics. In contrast to both, it is argued that it is instead possible to have an ethic which is not just a set of social rules on the one hand, but is more contentful than Kierkegaard’s infinite demand on the other: namely, the requirement or ethical demand to take on responsibility for the other person whose life is placed in your hands. This responsibility for the other, which sets the responsible individual apart, frees them from the crowd and thus offers an ethical route to an authentic existence, which both Kierkegaard and Heidegger overlook.
On Kierkegaard’s Account of the Problem of Taking over Concrete Existence
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the question of how the desire to be an authentic individual can be realized in concrete existence. It is argued that Heidegger does not really deal with this issue, but that it is central to Kierkegaard. For Kierkegaard, to achieve this the individual must decide to act not in the light of the finite and temporal, but of the infinite and eternal which is the ground of their existence, which is thus to act in the light of an infinite demand which comes from God, and to realize that before God the individual is nothing. It is argued, however, that this leaves the individual with insufficient grounds for action in the finite world, as illustrated in Kierkegaard’s treatment of the ‘edifying diversion’ of a trip to the Deer Park which is discussed in Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Kierkegaard and Heidegger on the Concept of Guilt
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the role of guilt in the thought of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Kierkegaard contrasts the quantitative and external guilt which belongs to life in the crowd with the guilt that attaches to the infinite demand, which is qualitative and internal, and thus falls under the category of ‘totality’. This means, however, that guilt feeds of itself, as one comes to feel guilty for feeling guilty. Like Kierkegaard, Heidegger does not just consider guilt in relation to ordinary ethical and judicial norms, but also in relation to one’s existence, but this means that for Heidegger it becomes ontological, as we feel guilty even for existing. Thus, both Kierkegaard and Heidegger draw similar distinctions between forms of guilt, and make guilt in its fundamental form inescapable, but while Heidegger gives this a purely ontological basis, for Kierkegaard it takes an ethical form in relation to an infinite demand.
The Absolute Demand of Concrete Existence
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter critiques Kierkegaard’s conception of the infinite demand. Kierkegaard’s demand remains abstract because he tries to derive content from form: namely, to derive its content from the fact that it is infinite, where this means that its aim is for the finite individual to know that they are nothing before God. But it is then impossible to treat this infinite demand as connecting to our relation with other people, and each involves radically different conceptions of guilt and responsibility. To avoid this problem, it is argued that we should think in terms of an ethical demand which remains between individuals, but which is also distinct from the social norms, as the person on whom the demand falls is ‘isolated’ and so must take individual responsibility for their response to the other, rather than merely following social norms and thereby being confined to life in the crowd.
Philosophy and Proclamation
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the issue of religious proclamation. It is claimed that we must be able to understand any such proclamation through relating it to our experience of our own lives, otherwise it would be an obscure superstition. It is argued that Kierkegaard and Heidegger sought for this understanding in relation to existence, and offered four tests for a proclamation: does it leave the individual at the mercy of the crowd or not? Does it enable them to remain true to their existence as becoming and possibility or not? Does it offer an absolute certainty or instead leave room for the individual to assume their own responsibility? And does it subordinate existence to thought? It is argued on this basis that a proclamation cannot become identified with a social ideology, so that it is a mistake to use the Christian proclamation as the basis for a political and ethical position.
Resisting Openness
Authors: Freudlsperger Christian
Published: May 2020

The third chapter of Trade Policy in Multilevel Government introduces the field of procurement as a hard case of trade liberalization. Contracting in line with the principle of ‘best value for money’ curtails public actors’ ability to rely on procurement as a directed means of redistribution. Nevertheless, this principle has served as the rallying cry of an international regime of procurement liberalization that has gradually evolved since the 1970s and whose historical development is described here. In a second step, the chapter elaborates on the patterns of openness and resistance to procurement liberalization among the three multilevel polities chosen for analysis. Over the entire period of observation, the US states’ openness has been comparatively low. Intermittently, their resistance had decreased in the run-up to the 1994 GPA. In recent years, however, the number of states willing to be bound by international procurement disciplines plummeted to virtually zero. As for the Canadian provinces and territories, the picture shifted in recent years. Especially in the negotiations on CETA, they permitted the EU wholesale access to their procurement markets. Within a short period, the Canadian provinces’ position on international procurement liberalization thus witnessed a veritable sea change. Finally, in the EU case, openness on part of member state governments has consistently proved highest among the three cases. Already within the scope of the 1979 GATT Code, all EC members’ central procurement was covered, albeit modestly. In the 1994 GPA and its 2012 revision, the EU covered its procurement on the national, regional, and municipal level.
United States
Authors: Freudlsperger Christian
Published: May 2020

The first of the three case studies looks at the United States. It finds that while the states’ opportunities for individual exit have remained unconstrained in the non-coercive field of procurement in which federal pre-emption is not an option, no serious attempts have been made to systematically increase their voice. This is due, firstly, to the mechanics of the US senate-type system of multilevel representation and, secondly, to the lack of an institutionalized procedure of vertical collaboration in a policy environment characterized by ‘coercive federalism’. Persisting barriers in the internal market and a widespread politicization of international procurement liberalization as a threat to state sovereignty have further contributed to constituent units’ high propensity to seek exit from international constraints. Ultimately, the US case highlights the limits of self-rule systems in organizing trade openness across multiple levels of government. Endowing the states with little voice in polity-wide policy-making, the US model shows a marked tendency to breed resistance to internationally driven adaptational pressures among constituent units. As self-rule systems are built on a delineation of central and subcentral spheres of competence, they generally tend to lack the institutional means and ideational underpinnings to effectively organize collaborative power-sharing by establishing patterns of shared rule.
Conclusion
Authors: Freudlsperger Christian
Published: May 2020

The concluding chapter of Trade Policy in Multilevel Government not only elaborates on the theoretical model’s explanatory power and its limits in the light of the three analysed polities, but also turns to raising questions as to the democratic legitimacy of the multilevel pattern of trade policy described in the book. Questions of democratic legitimacy in multilevel systems are complicated by the fact that a popular and a territorial logic of representation coexist and, at times, compete. Both citizens and constituent units are entitled to input into the system. The ensuing tension between popular and territorial logics of representation also permeates multilevel trade governance. In the EU and the Canadian cases, territorial legitimacy clearly takes precedence over popular representation. Seen from this perspective, the US case appears in a somewhat different light. In the face of adaptational pressures arising from economic and political globalization, popular representation could also be regarded as an additional layer of autonomy in self-rule systems of multilevel government.
Modern Villagers
Authors: Thomas Marcel
Published: May 2020

The first chapter provides an introduction to the postwar remodelling of Neukirch and Ebersbach and examines how this process was informed by shifting notions of what it meant to be rural in postwar society. Rather than understanding ‘rurality’ as an inherent characteristic of localities at the periphery of society, the chapter shows that the remaking of the village in East and West was shaped by a similar chronology of a departure from, and subsequent return to, the rural. In the first two decades after the war, the state as well as local residents in both Germanies primarily envisioned the rural as backwards and in need of modernization. The modernization attempts of planning elites and the belief of villagers in a modern future culminated in the ‘planning euphoria’ of the 1970s. From the end of the decade onwards, however, experiences of crisis and a fading belief in progress led to a rediscovery of the rural in which traditional characteristics of rurality became reconciled with modernity. The chapter thus demonstrates that what it meant to be ‘rural’ became a key question in debates over the direction and outcomes of social and political renewal in both German states. It adds to our understanding of how the establishment of two very different societies in the divided Germany was debated and contested through peculiarly local meanings.
(Un)Making Community
Authors: Thomas Marcel
Published: May 2020

Chapter two challenges the traditional narrative that the close-knit rural ‘community’ was swept away by inevitable modernization processes in postwar society. Instead, it demonstrates that the villagers had a much more ambivalent stance towards ‘community’ than often assumed. Analysing the interviewees’ multilayered narratives of the disappearance of the village community, the chapter shows that local residents in both villages increasingly abandoned traditional social networks but instantly lamented their demise when they disappeared from their lives. In the booming and affluent Ebersbach, locals gradually retreated into privacy and withdrew from traditional social spaces in the village, but at the same time began to mourn their loss. In the East, villagers shared this desire for privacy, but the numerous problems of life in a shortage economy made it necessary for them to maintain a range of support networks. Once this pragmatic community unravelled after reunification, the Neukirchers too began to long for the village community of the past which they had just left behind. The chapter thus shows that despite very different circumstances on both sides of the Wall, Germans in East and West shared an ambivalent attitude towards community and redefined communal relationships in the village in similar ways.