bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
To Die For
Authors: Shepkaru Shmuel
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the development of early Jewish martyrdom from the Bible to late antiquity. The chapter argues that martyrdom does not exist in the Hebrew Bible and that the stories of Eleazar and the mother with her seven sons from 2 Maccabees are not indicative of an existing Hellenistic tradition of martyrdom. The Jewish concept of martyrdom started to develop in Roman times, due to the influence of the popular Roman idea of noble death. The Jewish acceptance of the Roman idea created also moral and theological dilemmas. The idea of noble death needed to be reconciled with a Jewish tradition that emphasized the holiness of life. These martyrological premises and predicaments continued to be developed in rabbinic literature. The end result was the presentation of a rabbinic martyrological genre that set the Jewish lore and law of kiddush ha-Shem.
The Tropics of Heroic Death
Authors: Fenech Louis E.
Published: May 2018

Having originated at that intriguing frontier where Islamicate and Indic civilizations first mingled, the Sikh religious tradition today has perhaps the most elaborate martyrology of any religion. Underscored within every possible medium and emphasized within even the most intimate of Sikh prayers, martyrdom has been understood to be an integral element of Sikhism since the tradition’s inception in the person of the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak (1469–1539). Sikhs claim to follow the words and spirit of the Sikh Gurus, and in their personal lives manifest martyrdom’s strong hold on the Sikh imaginary. An examination of historical sources, however, reveals an intricate evolution and reification of martyrdom that situates martyrdom’s contemporary appeal in early twentieth-century political upheavals in northwestern India and eastern Pakistan.
Relinquishing the Body to Reach the Pure Land
Authors: Stone Jacqueline I.
Published: May 2018

Premodern Japanese historical and literary sources relate examples of devotees who burned or drowned themselves with the aim of achieving birth after death in a buddha’s pure land. Originally confined to ascetic practitioners, suicide to reach a pure land (J. jigai ōjō) eventually intersected with traditions of warrior suicide to accompany one’s lord in death, or to avoid surrendering to the enemy. In literature, ōjō-suicide assumes a gendered dimension, as we see in accounts of women’s self-destruction following the loss of husbands or children, thereby recasting, in a salvific light, suicides that would otherwise have been seen as sinful or unbearably tragic.
Introduction
Authors: Tzohar Roy
Published: May 2018

The introduction for this book presents the main topics that will be discussed, stressing the Buddhist ambivalence toward language and the way in which it is addressed by the Yogācāra view that all language is metaphorical. The text also provides a survey of scholarship available on Buddhist understandings of metaphor and delineates the original contribution of this study, as well as introducing a theoretical framework for engaging in an intertextual conceptual history in the realm of classical Sanskrit texts. In addition, it situates the discussion vis-à-vis contemporary disputes about the Yogācāra’s alleged idealism and argues for a more contextually sensitive and text-specific approach to this issue.
Conclusion
Authors: Tzohar Roy
Published: May 2018

This, the conclusion of this book, draws out those features and themes that are common to the various accounts of metaphor presented in the preceding chapters and examines their possible applications. The text also briefly examines further ways in which these features may be applied to deepen and enrich our understanding of the Buddhist and more generally Indian philosophical engagement with figurative language. As a quick case study, the final part of the discussion explores how the Yogācāra theory of meaning sheds light on the concrete use of distinct figures, focusing on a list of similes prevalent in the school’s literature.
Political Participation
Authors: Kim Sungmoon
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides a philosophical justification for the right to political participation in Confucian democracy by critically examining the philosophical conundrum surrounding it in Confucian democratic theory from the perspective of democracy’s second-order value and with special attention to the circumstances of modern politics. It argues that the theoretical framework furnished by pragmatic Confucian democracy can show one a way to look at the conundrum from a different angle and to potentially resolve it without forfeiting his/her perfectionist commitment to Confucian values. It concludes by stressing that the conundrum regarding political participation in the modern Confucian constitutional polity, be it fully or only partially democratic, was caused by a combination of the strong influence of traditional Confucian ethical perfectionism on contemporary Confucian political theorists and their incomplete understanding of democracy either as a political institution (or simply election) or as a communitarian way of life.
Procedure and Substance
Authors: Kim Sungmoon
Published: May 2018

The pragmatic understanding of Confucian democracy not only establishes the inextricable intertwinement between democracy’s institutional-instrumental and moral-intrinsic values but further creates an equally intimate connection between Confucian substance and democratic procedure in a Confucian democracy. This chapter argues that in Confucian pragmatic democracy, democratic procedures exist not so much as formal institutional mechanisms that are neutral to or independent of Confucian values but as the value-laden conduit through which Confucian democratic substances are produced in the forms of Confucian democratic rights, Confucian justice, and Confucian democratic citizenship, thereby reinforcing a congruence between Confucian democracy’s instrumental and intrinsic values. It explains this double congruence that pragmatic Confucian democracy enables between substance and procedure and between intrinsic and instrumental values in terms of Confucian democratic perfectionism.
State Coercion and Criminal Punishment
Authors: Kim Sungmoon
Published: May 2018

This chapter proposes a novel normative framework for criminal punishment, called the value theory of criminal punishment, as an alternative to desert-based retributivism. Contrary to retributivists who see criminal desert as pre-social and purely individualistic, the value theory understands it as embedded in communal values and social norms, and thus sees crime not in virtue of its pre-socially evaluated wrongness but in terms of a “normative blow” to the political community undergirded by such values and norms. In the Confucian society in particular, a normative blow to the community complexly implicates both the wrongdoer and the victim, as they are thought to exist not as independent rights-bearing individuals but as quasi-family members of the community. The chapter then singles out family crimes as the gravest moral violation in a Confucian society and justifies enhanced punishment for them from the perspective of the Confucian value theory.
Renegotiating French Identity
Authors: Fulcher Jane F.
Published: May 2018

In light of the recent historiography of Vichy, which stresses its initial political concession, competing factions, and then escalating collaboration with the occupant, this book proposes new questions concerning the shifting nature of French cultural as well as political identity. As the occupation advanced, how did those responsible for cultural policies attempt to adapt their conceptions of French values to accord with the agenda of collaboration in all professional fields? How was French cultural identity and its relation to German culture gradually reconceived by both the occupant and by Vichy as the former played an increasingly interventionist role in music, a symbolic stake in the national self-image of both regimes? Employing the theoretical insights of Gramsci and Bourdieu into hegemony and how it is achieved and combated, this book examines the ways in which musical works were fostered or appropriated and transmitted—physically inscribed, framed, and presented during different phases of the regime as specific groups assumed power. As this study concomitantly demonstrates, we find not only accommodation but also resistance among those artists involved with Vichy’s institutions, and especially in music, where new cultural practices, strategies, and modes of communication emerged as musicians confronted the increasing loss of autonomy in their field. They were forced to assume a position along the spectrum from compliance to resistance on the basis of their perceptions, experience, and subjectivity. Some sought to maintain integrity and avoid appropriation while remaining visible, continuing subtly to innovate and incorporate alternative cultural representations proposed by the Resistance.
Poulenc’s Metamorphosis: His journey toward Resistance and a stylistic counterdiscourse
Authors: Fulcher Jane F.
Published: May 2018

Francis Poulenc, like Honegger, worked principally in the occupied zone throughout the war, but he presents a revealing contrast with the former, for his path led away from accommodation with Vichy. As he became aware of its increasing collaboration with the Germans he gradually distanced himself from the regime, joined the Resistance, and sought hermeneutically, or through style, to express his new position. While initially placing himself advantageously within the shifting French musical field, he ultimately decided rather to seek approval from the musicians and friends he admired who were in the Resistance. Like Schaeffer, his evolution away from the regime, with which at first he shared certain values, was incremental, if occurring earlier for reasons that this chapter examines.
Messiaen in a Catholic Church divided: Spiritual authority, subjective agency, and artistic breakthrough
Authors: Fulcher Jane F.
Published: May 2018

As opposed to Schaeffer and Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen had no need slowly to distance himself from Vichy, having rejected the regime from the beginning. Like many of his fellows in a German prisoner-of-war camp, he rather chose to support another devout Catholic and patriot, Charles de Gaulle. As did other Catholic nonconformists, he grasped the implications of their dictum of subjective spiritual agency, or truth that is obtained not through obeisance to church doctrine but through the soul’s immediate contact with scripture. Messiaen expressed this through several of his wartime compositions, and although he, like Sartre (who similarly espoused subjective authenticity), was never formally a member of the Resistance, its intellectual groupings perceived his implicit opposition to compromise and lauded his works.
Introduction
Authors: Mitchell Sommers Susan
Published: May 2018

The introduction focuses on Ebenezer Sibly’s premature death in 1799, and the proving of his will. Sibly’s will is a fascinating document that he hoped would bring order to his family and finances after his death. It did the opposite, instead alienating his brother and executor Manoah and setting the stage for sprawling lawsuits between his daughter Urania, and last business partner, Charles Wilson Saffell, over control of Sibly’s estate, and especially his patent medicine business. The introduction also briefly presents the Siblys as an ambitious family who sought more than their humble origins as shoemakers would destine them for. The rise of the Siblys is set against their religious backgrounds and the print culture of late eighteenth-century London.
A Bristol Bookseller
Authors: Mitchell Sommers Susan
Published: May 2018

Ebenezer Sibly’s friendship with Quaker physician John Till Adams and his brother, William, seems to have been one of Ebenezer’s primary motivations for moving to Bristol in 1783 or 1784. Sibly left Bristol unexpectedly in 1787, after selling forged lottery tickets. He left with a third wife, the second apparently having died. William Till Adams introduced Sibly to masonic lodges in Bristol. Sibly entered high-degree freemasonry in Bristol and began his to collect masonic degrees and orders, forming a vital connection for many of his later partnerships and projects. Through John Till Adams, Sibly became acquainted with occult, spiritual, and medical experimentation. Sibly sold books and became involved in astrological medicine. He picked up many of the enthusiasms that informed his later career here: resuscitation of drowning victims, electrical medicine, Mesmerism, herbal and astrological medicine, and alchemy.
Dr Sibly’s Reanimating Solar Tincture
Authors: Mitchell Sommers Susan
Published: May 2018

Using the money from Ipswich, Sibly set himself up in London for a career in quack medicine. With letters of support from brother freemasons, Sibly purchased a medical degree from King’s College in Aberdeen and began producing Dr Sibly’s Reanimating Solar Tincture and its companion medicine for women, the Lunar Tincture. How did one purchase a medical degree? And what did that imply about one’s legitimacy as a medical practitioner? Despite many assertions in the literature that this was a routine and acceptable route to credentials in a time of great change in the profession, Sibly’s contemporaries had other things to say about the process.
Manoah’s Songs of Innocence
Authors: Mitchell Sommers Susan
Published: May 2018

Recent investigations of Swedenborgians in London place them at the center of intricate and sometimes convoluted connections that tie Swedenborgians to what Al Gabay calls the “covert” Enlightenment—a complicated network of people of various walks of life who were also Swedenborgians, mesmerists, high-order illuminist freemasons, dabblers in alchemy, and spiritualists. With Manoah as an early New Church minister and active astrologer, and his brother Ebenezer an astrologer, alchemist, and freemason, they would seem to be a nexus for these related networks. Upon closer examination, this is unlikely for a variety of reasons. This chapter offers a revisionist look at Manoah’s centrality to the leadership and development of the New Church through its first fifty years, as well as suggesting that Manoah was largely responsible for New Church developments that famously alienated William Blake.
The Doctor’s Daughter
Authors: Mitchell Sommers Susan
Published: May 2018

A great deal can be learned about the patent medicine business from the lengths to which people went to secure possession of a share of the market. Several key official documents allow us to examine in some detail the public squabble between his daughter Urania Sibly and his partner Charles Wilson Saffell. Urania Sibly’s central role in the Solar Tincture business is additionally interesting because the literature of early modern medicine in Britain so seldom discusses women’s activities either as medical practitioners or independent purveyors of proprietary nostrums. Urania, however, emerges as an active and unique agent—suing for money left her in her father’s will, and when she did not get it, going into the Solar Tincture business herself. She manufactured it from 1803 until shortly before her death in 1878, at age ninety-six.
Kantian Self-Deception
Authors: Papish Laura
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores what exactly self-deception is from a Kantian point of view. It is shown that though Kant initially seems to explain self-deception by drawing on the concept of an internal or inner lie, this does not provide a fruitful path forward. However, with the aid of certain source materials—in particular, Kant’s lectures on logic—a much more promising account of self-deception can be developed. On this account, self-deception is a rationally sophisticated and rationally minded form of irrationality, one that involves a process Kant refers to as rationalization (Vernünfteln). This chapter both explores rationalization and offers several illustrations of its use. The chapter also demonstrates that since the boundary between impermissible self-deceit and justified doxastic voluntarism depends on the laudability of motives and goals, self-deceptive rationalization must ultimately be understood more as a normative concept than a descriptive one.
Political Theory and the Politics of Injustice
Authors: Goodhart Michael
Published: May 2018

This chapter tries to show what practical difference it makes if one adopts the approach developed in the foregoing chapters. It focuses on the work that political theory and political theorists might do in support of an effective real-world response to injustice. Much of the conflict around injustice is ideological—it arises from conflicting values, ideas, and interpretations. When an ideology becomes dominant or hegemonic, its key concepts become decontested, making injustice seem natural or normal. To contest this requires a form of counterhegemonic politics, politics designed to challenge the prevailing ideological views and proposing alternative viewpoints. Its success depends on building countervailing power through discursive political engagement, efforts enabled by the work of articulation and translation. The ultimate aim of transformative democratic politics is to establish a reflexive, open-ended, and continual process of repair, renewal, and (re)generation.
Protest State
Authors: Moseley Mason W.
Published: May 2018

In the midst of an unprecedented era of democratic governments and economic prosperity, why are a record number of Latin American citizens choosing to participate in protests? This book argues that increasingly engaged citizenries, forged by economic progress and technological advances throughout the region, combined with dysfunctional political institutions have fueled more contentious modes of participation in Latin America, as citizens’ demands for government responsiveness have overwhelmed many regimes’ institutional capacity to provide it. Where weak institutions and active citizenries collide, countries can morph into “protest states,” where contentious participation becomes so common as to render it a conventional characteristic of everyday political life. Drawing on cross-national surveys from Latin America and a case study of Argentina, which includes a rich dataset of protest events and dozens of interviews with political elites and citizen activists, Moseley tests this explanation against other leading theories in the contentious politics literature. Rather than emphasizing how worsening economic conditions and mounting grievances fuel protest, this book builds the case that it is actually the improvement of economic conditions amid low-quality political institutions that lies at the root of surging contention in the region. In presenting and systematically defending this novel approach, Protest State offers a comprehensive multilevel, mixed-methods study of one of the most intriguing puzzles in Latin American politics today.
The Rise of the Protest State
Authors: Moseley Mason W.
Published: May 2018

This chapter reviews extant work from the contentious politics literature, relating it to the current state of affairs in Latin American democracies. It then proposes an original explanation of widespread contention in Latin American democracies. Protest states—or regimes high in citizen engagement, but low in terms of institutional quality—are unique in the degree to which contentious politics has normalized. Whereas protests occur on occasion in virtually any country where public opposition to the government is tolerated, in protest states they spring up daily. In such contexts, where institutions remain weak and ineffective, protest becomes the default option for a wide cross-section of society, encompassing citizens who are actively engaged in their communities. Moreover, political organizations and even elites will utilize protest for their own ends in protest states—i.e., politicians will marshal public support for their policy agenda by recruiting followers to participate in street-based activities.
American Exceptionalism Revisited
Authors: McCabe Joshua T.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 1 challenges the conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism in regard to tax and social policy. After setting up the puzzle and outlining why previous theories cannot explain them, it lays out the book’s main arguments in detail. First, it outlines the book’s theory of fiscalization as an obfuscation strategy. Second, it outlines a new theory of the cultural legacies of public policies. It is not, as most scholars argue, the legacy of the Poor Law that explains America’s exceptional tax credits but rather the absence of a legacy of family allowances. It argues that “logics of appropriateness,” institutionalized in policy legacies, can limit the ability of future policymakers to extend benefits to seemingly deserving target populations. The legitimacy of a policy depends not only on who is receiving it and whether it is effective but also on how they are receiving it.
From the Era of Easy Finance to Permanent Austerity
Authors: McCabe Joshua T.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 3 covers the transition from the “era of easy finance” to the “era of permanent austerity,” when macroeconomic changes reinforced logics. The onset of stagflation across the developed world led to new and intense economic pressures on families. Most scholars of this period focus on the confusion policymakers faced as the Keynesian consensus broke down and they were forced to recalibrate monetary and fiscal policy. Policymakers also faced uncertainty in how to deal with inflation-induced erosion of tax and social benefits for families. In countries with family allowances, like Canada and the UK, policymakers and the public traced these pressures to the erosion of family allowances. Because the US had no family allowance, policymakers and the public instead traced these pressures to the erosion of dependent exemptions in the tax system. In doing so, they reinforced the dominant logic of appropriateness that lay behind policy responses to the problem of inflation in each country.
Summary of Part IA Brief History of Death in Judah during the Iron Age
Authors: Suriano Matthew
Published: May 2018

The remains of Judahite mortuary practices provide invaluable insight into the historical role of the dead in the culture of the biblical writers. The events of the eighth and seventh centuries proved formative for the kingdom of Judah, and the development of the state during this period became intricately tied to mortuary practices. Burying the dead in a particular way became part of being Judahite. Collective interments served to identify ancestors and connect living communities to the surrounding landscape. These actions involved distinct notions of family and religion, and the use of mortuary culture to express these ideas impacted the area long after the Southern Kingdom was destroyed. I offer the following history based on the inscriptions and material culture that have been collected and reviewed up to this point....
Depth Perception
Authors: Whitehead Laurence
Published: May 2018

Universalism in the study of world politics, while influential, offers a “flat” view of political reality. Studies of single countries and areas provide an “in-depth” corrective, but by definition this will be partial, even parochial. Well-designed comparisons can combine overall balance, integration, depth of vision, and wider panoramic focus. But it is no soft option. This chapter reviews examples that illustrate this methodological standpoint and offers ten protocols that can improve the quality of such work. It suggests that relevant explanatory features should be “configurative” rather than overly reductionist. This requires a multidisciplinary approach, specialized training, and the application of judgment and expertise. But this needs to complement efforts to develop and test some portable findings. The pursuit of causal explanation must be balanced against an understanding of the resulting resemblances and contrasts. The validity of the findings will depend, in part, on the balanced quality of the comparative work.
Comparing Separatism across Regions
Authors: Smith Benjamin
Published: May 2018

This chapter outlines the rationales for studying separatist conflicts across multiple regions through comparative area studies (CAS). It examines why some ethnic minorities are able to sustain broad challenges to their governments while others fail. Post-imperial ethnic region partitions, while relatively uncommon, are central to this question and demand an inquiry of cross-regional scope. Beginning with the division of interwar Kurdistan into parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, the author extends the theoretical framework to similar border creations in Balochistan (Southwest Asia) and the Tuareg region (North Africa). The comparisons of four Kurdish minorities, of the Kurdish groups to three groups in Balochistan and five Tuareg regions, and of Kurdish nationalism with that of Aceh, speak to the methodological benefits of CAS. The historical depth and spatial breadth of CAS allows for simultaneous context-sensitive comparisons of groups and regions, while generating fresh insights into variations in the level of separatist mobilization.
Triangulating Area Studies, Not Just Methods
Authors: Sil Rudra
Published: May 2018

This chapter revisits trade-offs that qualitative researchers face when balancing the different expectations of area studies and disciplinary audiences. One putative solution to such trade-offs, mixed-method research, emphasizes the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods. CAS, as defined above, essentially encourages a different form of triangulation—the pooling of observations and interpretations across a wider array of cases spanning multiple areas. This kind of triangulation can be facilitated by cross-regional contextualized comparison, a middle-range approach that stands between area-bound qualitative research and (Millean) macro-comparative analysis that brackets out context in search of causal laws. Importantly, this approach relies upon an area specialist’s sensibilities and experience to generate awareness of local complexities and context conditions for less familiar cases. The examples of cross-regional contextualized comparison considered in this chapter collectively demonstrate that engagement with area studies scholarship and the pursuit of disciplinary knowledge can be a positive-sum game.
The Common Law in Colonial America
Authors: Nelson William E.
Published: May 2018

This volume begins where volumes 2 and 3 ended. The main theme of the four-volume project is that the law of America’s thirteen colonies differed profoundly when they first were founded, but had developed into a common American law by the time of the Revolution. This fourth volume focuses on what was common to the law of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, although it also takes important differences into account. The first five chapters examine procedural and substantive law in colonies and conclude that, except in North Carolina and northern New York, the legal system functioned effectively in the interests both of Great Britain and of colonial localities. The next three chapters examine changes in law and the constitution beginning with the Zenger case in 1735—changes that ultimately culminated in independence. These chapters show how lawyers became leading figures in what gradually became a revolutionary movement. It also shows how lawyers used legal and constitutional ideology in the interests, sometimes of an economic character, of their clients. The book thereby engages prior scholarship, especially that of Bernard Bailyn and John Phillip Reid, to show how ideas and constitutional values possessed independent causal significance in leading up to the Revolution but also served to protect institutional structures and socioeconomic interests that likewise possessed causal significance.
Introduction
Authors: Nelson William E.
Published: May 2018

The subject of this volume is law and the constitution of power in Great Britain’s thirteen continental North American colonies during the last three to four decades of their allegiance to the empire. The core claim of the volume is that, however different the legal systems of the thirteen colonies may have been at their founding, people recognizably American had begun by the mid-eighteenth century to share a common legal heritage, as well as a common political and cultural one. The shared heritage enabled the people to join together, declare their independence, and launch a new American nation....
Movers and Shakers?
Authors: O'Hara Alexander
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers Columbanus’s cultural background and how this influenced his dealings with women, both in early medieval Ireland and on the Continent. In particular, women as inspiration, patrons, and antagonists are portrayed as having had a formative influence on Columbanus, primarily in the Vita Columbani, written by Jonas of Bobbio. To what extent are these relationships true of Columbanus’s own experience? In order to tease this out more fully special attention will be given to women such as Columbanus’s unnamed mother as well as to the powerful queens, Brunhild and Theodelinda.
Columbanus and the Mission to the Bavarians and the Slavs in the Seventh Century
Authors: O'Hara Alexander
Published: May 2018

In the Vita Columbani Jonas of Bobbio convinced his audience that Columbanus was the spiritus rector of the mission to the Bavarians and Slavs in the seventh century. But Columbanus twice turned down missionary activities he had originally or allegedly pursued. When he and his followers reached Bregenz he became involved almost against his will in converting Alemanns. In a vision he gladly accepted angelic advice to leave the Slavic world alone. Nevertheless, Columbanus’s disciple Eustasius of Luxeuil launched a very successful mission to Bavaria and probably founded the oldest Bavarian monastery on Herrenchiemsee. The Slavs still did not know what to do with Western missionaries, deeply frustrating Saint Amandus,whom they did not even care to kill. It took another Irishman, Virgil of Salzburg, to organize the mission to the Carantanians, who became the first Christianized Slavonic people.
Quicumque sunt rebelles, foras exeant!
Authors: O'Hara Alexander
Published: May 2018

Columbanus is one of the most important figures in Christianization on the Continent in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. His foundations have been well studied, but one of his disciples, Gallus, is rarely discussed in this context. Though well known as the founder of the hermitage at the Steinach, Gallus is never considered an important part of the Columbanian monasteries. This chapter focuses on Gallus’s role in Columbanian monasticism and investigates the relationship between him and the Columbanian community. Why did the the Vita Vetustissima link Gallus with Columbanus? How did Gallus manage to settle in the Lake Constance region and to found a long-lasting community at the river Steinach? What role did Gallus’s foundation and its cooperation with the policymakers play in the implementation of Frankish or Alemannic power and influence in the Lake Constance region?
The Notebooks
Authors: Nicholls Simon , Pushkin Michael , Ashkenazy Vladimir
Published: May 2018

[120]

A single sheet, written at the age of about sixteen. Was in the ‘grandmother’s’ copy of the Gospels.

God in the general meaning of this word is the cause of the totality of phenomena.

Jesus Christ speaks of God in a particular meaning of this word, of God as the inexplicable cause which has given rise to the doctrine of morality. Since the concept of morality is ...
Thought in words, music, colour
Authors: Nicholls Simon , Pushkin Michael , Ashkenazy Vladimir
Published: May 2018

The content and style of Skryabin’s verse and influences upon it are examined and its relation to its music discussed. Two major works are examined: The Poem of Ecstasy, which was conceived simultaneously in words and in music, is analysed according to an interpretation by Boris de Schloezer, Skryabin’s close associate. Schloezer proposes a Lisztian/Wagnerian system of leading motives as the link between poetry and music. Prometheus, which combines music, colour, and one hidden ‘mystic word’, is examined and the relation of its structure and tonality to colour and to philosophy analysed. The recently deciphered significance of the ‘mystic word’ and its use is recounted. (103)
The Preliminary Action
Authors: Nicholls Simon , Pushkin Michael , Ashkenazy Vladimir
Published: May 2018

Skryabin’s uncompleted final work is examined in its relation to his planned life’s work, the Mystery, according to an account by the composer’s close friend Leonid Sabaneyev. Writing towards the end of Skryabin’s life and just after his death, Sabaneyev dramatizes the scenario involved in Skryabin’s apocalyptic world view. Critical comments from a contemporary on Sabaneyev’s account are included. The concept of a sacred performance, then current, is examined, as well as its influence on Skryabin’s ideas for the performance of the Preliminary Action. A description from Sabaneyev of Skryabin’s playing of some of the music for the Action, which exists now only as fragmentary sketches, concludes the chapter. (107)
Incremental Polarization
Authors: Buchler Justin
Published: May 2018

This book provides a unified spatial model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting to address three primary questions: why do legislators adopt extreme positions, how do they win given their extremism, and what role do parties play in promoting polarization? The book links spatial models of elections to spatial models of roll call voting in the legislature, and suggests that the key to understanding polarization is to reverse the order of conventional models and place the legislative session before the election because legislators adopt positions in the policy space, extreme or otherwise, through the incremental process of casting roll call votes. Linking a spatial model of an election to a model of roll call voting, the book derives the following. When a legislative caucus is ideologically homogeneous, electorally diverse, and policy motivated, it will empower party leaders to solve the collective action problem of sincere voting by counterbalancing members’ electoral pressure to vote as centrists. The result is that the caucus achieves policy goals at the cost of some electoral security, but agenda paradoxes minimize the electoral damage done, so most incumbents win re-election anyway at only slightly diminished margins. This model explains the development of polarization in the House of Representatives throughout the post–World War II period, and key votes on legislation such as the Affordable Care Act. Moreover, even the unusual politics within the Republican Party during the divided government period from 2011 through 2016 follow naturally from extensions of the model.
The Theory
Authors: Rosenblatt Fernando
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines in detail the theoretical factors that explain party vibrancy: Purpose, Trauma, Channels of Ambition, and moderate Exit Barriers. Purpose fosters prospective loyalty. A party exhibits Purpose when it intensely defends a more or less coherent set of ideas, ideology, or a general project. Trauma forges retrospective loyalty among party members. It refers to shared emotions derived from the shared suffering of harsh experiences. Channels of Ambition captures the idea of parties as organizations comprising office seekers. More specifically, it builds on Aldrich’s (1995) claim that parties solve collective action problems for ambitious politicians. Finally, it discusses the theoretical effects of Exit Barriers. This factor fosters partisan organization when politicians from a political party perceive moderately high costs of leaving their organization to join a different party or of pursuing a career as an independent. Finally, the chapter also discusses the interaction among these factors.
Uruguay
Authors: Rosenblatt Fernando
Published: May 2018

This chapter, focusing on Uruguay, reviews the trajectory of the oldest parties in the study, PC and PN. This analysis presents the clearest example of the theorized evolution of the causal factors: the waning effect of Trauma, the difficulty of sustaining Purpose, the importance of formal and informal Channels of Ambition, and the consolidation of moderate Exit Barriers as a combination of institutional and organizational formal and informal rules. The chapter also discusses the case of the FA, a vibrant party that faces the challenge of consolidating Channels of Ambition. Finally, the Uruguayan case illustrates the trade-off between Trauma and Channels of Ambition and is the only one of the three countries in this study where all the major parties, at the time of fieldwork, could be considered vibrant.
Race and Ethnicity
Authors: Campbell John L.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 4 explains how America’s economic decline took on racial tones. For years minorities had been blamed for higher taxes, job loss, and depressed wages, as well as crime, terrorism, and a general assault on traditional American values. However, the facts were at odds with these perceptions. But that didn’t matter to Trump, who disregarded the facts and capitalized on the public’s misunderstandings. Racial scapegoating was not new to the United States. However, it took a more explicit tone in the Trump campaign emphasizing recent immigration patterns—an influx of Hispanics from Mexico and Muslims from the Middle East who Trump said he would stop from entering the country by building a wall along the southern border, rounding up undocumented immigrants, deporting them, and tightening up the immigration system overall. His supporters loved him for it.
Speech, Intersubjectivity, and Social Acts
Authors: Moran Richard
Published: May 2018

This chapter uses a discussion of Thomas Reid’s characterization of “social acts of mind” to introduce the main themes of the book. Two ways of considering ordinary speech are contrasted: one, speech as a behavioral sign, indicating the states and attitudes of the speaker, and two, speech as a social act that people perform together. The political aspect of being recognized as a speaking subject is discussed in connection with Hobbes and others. This is contrasted with an understanding of testimony that sees it as not essentially different from perception-based knowledge (Quine, Millikan). The question is introduced: how can it matter to the epistemic status of a phenomenon (someone’s utterance) that it is essentially self-conscious, that the speaker herself understands it in a particular way and produces it with a particular communicative intention?
The Meaning of Sincerity and Self-Expression
Authors: Moran Richard
Published: May 2018

Taking off from the discussion of sincerity in Bernard Williams’s Truth and Truthfulness, this chapter explores a “telepathic ideal” of communication between people. On this picture, the meaning and value of sincerity in speech would be that, insofar as a speaker is sincere, we are given a guarantee that what is expressed overtly corresponds to the attitudes that the speaker holds privately. On this view, our interest in the speech of others is ultimately in learning what their internal mental states are, and hence, if we were able (telepathically or otherwise) to learn this without the mediation of communicative speech, that would be so much the better. A distinction between two senses of “expression” is introduced: expression as indication (whether conscious or not) and expression to someone.
Looking for Empirical Evidence
Authors: Lafollette Hugh
Published: May 2018

It is tempting to think that it would be easy to find reliable empirical evidence of the benefits and costs of private gun ownership. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult, especially for issues like this one where it is difficult to discern precisely what causes what. I explain why obtaining empirical evidence on this topic is so difficult. Then I discuss the three common methodologies that researchers might use to find reliable evidence. I identify their relative strengths and weaknesses and explain how each might be used to find evidence of the benefits and costs of private gun ownership.
Why We Need Gun Control
Authors: Lafollette Hugh
Published: May 2018

Are there compelling reasons why we should not have serious gun control at least in the United States? Would any attempt at control fail in the way that Prohibition failed? I explain why the comparison with Prohibition is illicit. I propose how we should proceed incrementally given the absence of wholly convincing rights-based or empirical arguments. We can implement a series of small forms of control: universal registration, an assault weapons ban, retaining gun-free zones, among others. I then explore indirect methods of achieving some aims of control without employing explicit coercion. In particular, I argue that gun owners should be required to carry liability insurance to guarantee that those harmed by guns are appropriately and adequately compensated. This could be augmented by a policy of strict liability.
Emperors and Usurpers
Authors: Scott Andrew G.
Published: May 2018

This historical commentary examines books 79(78)–80(80) of Cassius Dio’s Roman History, which cover the period from the death of Caracalla in 217 B.C. to the reign of Severus Alexander and Cassius Dio’s retirement from political life in A.D. 229 Cassius Dio, a Roman senator, provides a valuable eyewitness account of this turbulent period, which was marked by the assassination of Caracalla; the rise of Macrinus, Rome’s first equestrian emperor, and his subsequent overthrow; the tempestuous, and by all accounts peculiar, reign of Elagabalus; and the continuation of the Severan dynasty under the young Severus Alexander. In addition to elucidating important passages from these books, this study assesses Cassius Dio’s political life and its relationship to his literary career; his call to history and time of composition; his historical method; and his attitude toward and subsequent presentation of the later Severan dynasty. In its investigation of books 79(78)–80(79), the work assesses an important stretch of Dio’s actual text, which for other parts has been preserved largely in epitome and excerpts. Finally, the work aims to fill a gap in scholarship, as no commentary on these books of Cassius Dio’s history has been produced since the nineteenth century, and its publication coincides with a renewed interest in the history and historiography of the Severan period.
Introduction
Authors: Phillips J. R. S.
Published: May 2018

MOST previous research on the reign of Edward II has tended to concentrate attention upon opposition to the monarchy during the periods of major political crisis, one result of this being the relative neglect of the remaining quieter portions of the reign which harboured the seeds of these troubles. This approach has also meant that there has been insufficient study of the individual role of any of the leading political figures. Consequently any attempt to trace the career of one of the important magnates might not only be expected to throw fresh light upon his own activities but also to help fill many of the gaps in our knowledge of the reign of Edward II....
The Formation of a Career, 1296 to June 1312
Authors: Phillips J. R. S.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines Aymer de Valence's career between 1296 and June 1312. Aymer's career began after his father died in June 1296, although it was only after his mother's death in 1307 that he took over the palatine lands and earned the title of Earl of Pembroke. As lord of Montignac he started to carve a name for himself in Edward I's wars and in the royal diplomacy for which his connections to France made him especially suited. The chapter traces Aymer's career from his participation in Edward I's Flanders campaign in 1297 to his role as envoy to France and his involvement in the Scottish wars over the next ten years. In particular, it considers Aymer's services to the monarchy after Prince Edward's accession on 8 July 1307. It also discusses Aymer's role in the surrender of Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, and his attitude toward the Ordainers.
The Approach to Civil War April 1316 to November 1317
Authors: Phillips J. R. S.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines Aymer de Valence's role in averting what could have been a civil war in the summer of 1317 caused by the deteriorating relations between Edward II and Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. It considers the three themes of growing political crisis, Aymer's return to the forefront of English politics, and the rise of the favourites during the period when the Earl of Pembroke is widely believed to have begun to build a political following dubbed ‘middle party’. In particular, it discusses the impact of Lancaster's retirement to his estates on the royal government and how Pembroke recovered his influence after Lancaster left the royal Council. It also analyses Pembroke's activities in the political arena during the period, including his role in the settlement of the Bristol dispute, his participation in making royal policy, and his diplomatic mission to Avignon. Finally, it looks at Pembroke's capture by Jean de Lamouilly and his influence on royal attempts to negotiate with Lancaster.
The imprint of GWs on the CMB
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: May 2018

CMB multipoles. Photon geodesics in perturbed FRW. Temperature anisotropies. Sachs-Wolfe, ISW and Doppler contributions. Boltzmann equation. CMB polarization. E and B modes
Stochastic backgrounds and pulsar timing arrays
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: May 2018

Response of an Earth-pulsar system to a passing GW. Pulsar timing arrays. Response to continuous signals and to stochastic backgrounds. Limits from PTA
Common: The Development of Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century England
Authors: Rhodes Neil
Published: May 2018

This book attempts to see the development of literary culture in sixteenth-century England as a whole and to explain the relationship between the Reformation and the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan period. Its central theme is ‘the common’ in its double sense of something shared and something base, and it argues that making common the work of God is at the heart of the English Reformation, just as making common the literature of antiquity and of early modern Europe is at the heart of the English Renaissance. The book addresses the central question of why the Renaissance in England arrived so late in terms of the relationship between humanism and Protestantism and the tensions between democracy and the imagination which persist throughout the century. The first part of the book establishes a social dimension for literary culture in the period by exploring the associations of ‘commonwealth’ and related terms. It then addresses the role of Greek in the period before and during the Reformation in disturbing the old binary of elite Latin and common English. It argues that the Reformation principle of making common is coupled with a hostility towards fiction, which has the effect of closing down the humanist renaissance of the earlier decades. The final part of the book discusses the Elizabethan literary renaissance and deals in turn with poetry, short prose fiction, and the drama written for the common stage. In between, the middle part of the book presents translation as the link between Reformation and Renaissance.