Sole Bearer Research Articles

The Privilege of Territory: Christian Wolff at the Origins of Statist International Thought

The modern state is often taken as the only legitimate claimant to the division of the globe. Political theorists offer many theories of territorial rights but tend to agree that the state remains the proper institutional bearer of such rights. This article examines how states became the exclusive bearers of territorial rights by returning to the international theory of the eighteenth-century Prussian jurist Christian Wolff (1679–1754), who wrote in a moment when sovereign states were not the heirs apparent to the globe but competed with other claimants to territorial rights. Despite proposing a radically pluralistic and anti-imperial account of land ownership, Wolff nonetheless paved the way for the state to become the sole bearer of territorial rights. Wolff’s international thought is an illustration of how building a state-centric international order was a double-edged sword: it criticized imperial overreach while also closing the international arena to nonstate forms of collective life. In this process, he offered two distinct ideas of political space: the territorial space of states, and the land ownership tracts of nonstate peoples, including pastoralists and nomads. To Wolff, only states were entitled to full and permanent territorial rights, while nonstate peoples were shut out of the international system, made both de facto and de jure stateless.

The Views of Representatives of the Party and Political Activists of the Kursk Province on the Change in the Social Structure of the Urban Population (1918–1921)

Relevance. At the present stage of development of the Russian Federation, the preservation of historical truth is one of the main directions of state policy. Statements about the need to return the state ideology allow us to judge the relevance of referring to the experience of the early Soviet period, when communist doctrine became the basis for the formation of a new model of the state, which subsequently achieved considerable success on the world stage in various fields. The urban population has become a pillar for revolutionary transformations, which arouses interest in studying the views of representatives of regional authorities on the problems of the development of the social structure of society.The purpose – to reveal the specifics of the evolution of the public views of the party and political activists of the region on the social composition of the urban population of the Kursk province from 1918 to 1921.Objectives: based on the analysis of archival documents, to identify general trends in the formation of the social structure of the urban population of the Kursk province.Methodology. In the process of working on the research, the basic principles of historical science were used: historicism, objectivity and consistency. General scientific methods were also applied (analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction, analytical method), special historical methods: historical-genetic, comparative-historical.Results. Based on the analysis of archival documents, the peculiarities of the formation of views on the image of the social composition of the Kursk province in the views of the Kursk communists of the first years of Soviet power are revealed.Conclusion. The political basis of the social structure of the urban population of the region was recognized by the proletarians, who were the mainstay in the revolutionary transformations of all spheres of public life. The party activists of the Kursk province perceived the provisions of the communist teachings as a key model for the formation of an urban community. The semi-proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, in the opinion of party leaders, should become part of the working people as the sole bearer of power. For the first time, women were considered as an equal part of the urban community in the field of state building.

ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ КРЕАТИВНОГО МЫШЛЕНИЯ НА УРОКАХ МУЗЫКИ

At present, when teaching at various educational levels, a lot of attention is paid to the need for the formation of creative thinking in teaching. Creative thinking is necessary for a modern person in order to be successful in professional activities, especially for those professions that are associated with creativity. Over the past 25 years, music educators have witnessed an increased focus on student-centered approaches to teaching and learning, in which musical growth occurs through creative experiences. Our profession as music educators' interest in constructivist ideas about how learning happens is displacing the teacher as the sole bearer of official knowledge and increasing student control over musical decision making in the classroom. In connection with the foregoing, the author of this article made an attempt to scientific analysis and critical understanding of the problem of the formation of creative thinking in music lessons in a modern school.

Challenges of CSR in Sub-Saharan Africa: clarifying the gaps between the regulations and human rights issues

This paper discusses the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. The main purpose is to highlight and clarify the gaps between CSR regulations and human rights abuses caused by business organizations.From a historical perspective, natural resources have been recognized as a common reason for pushing the CSR agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially with the presence of big businesses in the outcome of globalization. However, despite a development-oriented CSR agenda and therefore on African local needs such as hospitals, housing, and roads, big businesses that have embarked on CSR activities are often involved in human rights violations. This is despite the insertion of human rights in some African state regulations, the UN Global Compact, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in which those businesses are signatories. This is the case in Gabon, Nigeria, and South Africa whose regulations were established by the respective states indicate business’ broader societal priorities directed towards stakeholders (local communities in particular) but in terms of corporate obligations, ‘Human Rights appear to be a blind spot in CSR’.The reasons for that are indicated in the findings of this qualitative inquiry, which reveals deep problems of corporate governance and little understanding of corporate human rights in domestic legislation. According to international law, human rights fulfillment focuses on nation-states as sole bearers. This means other non-state actors have indirect human rights responsibilities. Therefore, the challenge remains to extend and interpret existing domestic and international frameworks to include CSR alongside traditional state obligations. This could make corporate human rights more ‘applicable’ to businesses.Previous research by Visser and Amodu has focused on proposing models to respond to the challenges of CSR in Africa. This paper clarifies the challenges of CSR with human rights issues and suggests an extension of the current legislative framework covering CSR. The article is qualitative and has used a Desk Research study approach that includes published academic papers, government documents some secondary data such as case studies, interviews, and discussions.

The Role of the Court in Balancing Private and Public Interests in Criminal Proceedings

Introduction. The transformation of the state policy in the sphere of public and private law, expressed in the priority protection of the rights and legitimate interests of the individual in any sphere of public life, which influenced the rethinking of the true purpose of the court in society – the administration of justice as the main function of the judiciary, led to the deprivation of the judicial activity of a repressive orientation and led to the reform of the judicial system and judicial proceedings, including criminal proceedings. But a number of problems remained unresolved. Among such problems, the problem of strengthening the judicial power and its implementation in the course of criminal proceedings remains important. The institute of judicial power is the subject of scientific interest of many scientists, their systematic theoretical and applied research, the results of which will make it possible to develop an optimal model of legal regulation of the court’s activities for the implementation of judicial power in criminal proceedings. Theoretical Basis. Methods. The theoretical basis of the research is scientific works in the field of philosophy of law, theory of law, constitutional and criminal procedure law, devoted to such a legal phenomenon as the judiciary, from the position of not only determining its essence and formation, but mainly as a tool for resolving the eternal conflict between the state and the individual in all areas of legal regulation of public relations, including the criminal process. The use of the universal dialectical method of cognition made it possible to study such a legal phenomenon as the judiciary in the development, interdependence and interrelation with such categories as “justice” and “judicial proceedings”. Results. The article reveals promising directions for expanding the dispositive, private principles in such a public sphere as the investigation, consideration and resolution of a criminal case, which can give the court’s activities in the field of criminal justice a truly human rights-based and dispositive character. Discussion and Conclusion. The twenty-year experience of law enforcement practice in the context of the democratization of the Russian state testifies to the constant reform of the judicial system and judicial proceedings in order to strengthen the legal status not only of the court as the sole bearer of judicial power, but also the procedural status of participants in any legal dispute or conflict by giving them greater rights and opportunities to defend their legitimate interests. However, further scientific research of the issues under consideration and the preparation of conceptual proposals to the legislator aimed at changing the norms of the current criminal procedure law are necessary.

К вопросу укрепления правового статуса суда в первой судебной стадии уголовного процесса

The article analyzes the issues related to the powers of the court at the stage of appointment and preparation of the court session, ensuring the implementation of the judiciary at the present stage of the criminal process, including the following issues: features of the control, verification, organizational, and administrative activities of the court as a form of exercising the judicial power; a differentiated approach to modern legal regulation of judicial activity in the studied stage of the process of administering justice; the need to improve the legal status of a judge as the sole bearer of judiciary by expanding the scope of their powers when deciding on a criminal case submitted to the court.

ФОРМИ ТЕРИТОРІАЛЬНОЇ ОРГАНІЗАЦІЇ ПУБЛІЧНОЇ ВЛАДИ ЧАСІВ КОЗАЦЬКОЇ ДЕРЖАВИ

The article is devoted to the consideration of the forms of territorial organization of public authorities in the Ukrainian territories at the time of the birth, emergence and decline of the state formation of the Zaporizhzhya Army - the glorious stage of our history, which laid the two hundred-year-old competitions of the Ukrainian people for the creation of their own independent state. It is substantiated that the development of the idea of the Ukrainian state-making of the Cossack times took place over one hundred years in three stages: 1) an equal federal principality within the Commonwealth; 2) an independent monarchical state; 3) the parliamentary-hetman republic. The first stage was dominated by the idea of a separate entity within the Commonwealth of the Commonwealth - the Russian / Ukrainian state, which would appear in the territories of the Bratslav, Volyn, Kyiv, Podil, and Chernihiv provinces with the status of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish state. The second stage comes from the unfolding of the national liberation war of the Ukrainian people under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, when, in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the international world recognized only monarchs as the sole bearer of state sovereignty. Therefore, in order to be recognized and consolidated in the world, the newly created Ukrainian state had to be a monarchy. The third stage is due to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, the emergence of the social class of the bourgeoisie and the rapid spread of ideas of parliamentarism, one of the first to understand Philip Orlyk, who in 1710 issued a constitutional act Covenants and Constitutions of Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army, in which Parliament -Hetman republic. Two models of territorial organization of power of the Cossack times are characterized: at the stage of formation of Zaporizhzhya Sich and at the stage of victorious national liberation war of 1648-1659 gg. terms over 130 years. However, such a model as a prototype of the parliamentary-presidential republic has far outstripped its historical time.

Collective rights and democratic states: a new framework for addressing global socio-economic inequality

This article will present the argument for treating democratic states as moral and not only legal collective entities; that is, it will apply the theory of collective rights of cultural groups in a (closed) domestic political setting to democratic states in international relations. Numerous experiences by self-identifying cultural groups bear witness to the fact that morally important objectives are not always reached by merely treating individuals as the sole bearers of moral status. In order to prevent latent cultural imperialism, many countries around the world have adopted various models of collective rights protection and policies of preferential treatment for these groups. This article will examine whether it is possible to make a parallel between cultural groups and democratic states; in particular, whether it is feasible to think of democratic states as moral entities and what the normative implications of such a view for contemporary international relations and trade would be.

In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller

Reviewed by: In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller Rachel Wheeler (bio) In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity. By Patricia Cox Miller. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 271 pp. $79.95 Patricia Cox Miller's newest book takes issue with Lynn White's contention that Christianity, as the most anthropocentric of all spiritual traditions, is thus most responsible for ecological crisis ("The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," 1967). In Miller's view, early Christian writers expressed equivocation regarding anthropocentrism in ways that anticipate contemporary sensibilities. Even in patristic texts that seemingly promote human exceptionalism there remains an uneasiness around this self-identification. In the texts interpreted by Miller, a continuity between animal and human identity problematizes dogmatic assertions that theorize humanity's identity as the sole bearer of the imago Dei. Animals thus often appear as exemplars for humans, enacting virtues that school Christian readers in their own spiritual formation. And yet, animals are not seen as simply instrumental to human perfection; instead, a poignant cross-species intimacy appears in these ancient Christian texts as animals and humans share life together. The Introduction succinctly announces Miller's intention: "to be attentive precisely to what the animals are saying and doing, so as to engage ancient Christianity's kinships with them that have often gone unnoticed" (3). Miller believes that a "zoological imagination" emerged in early Christian texts that resists the "rhetoric of domination" justified by certain readings of Genesis. Chapter One, "Animals and Figuration," examines the case of birds, a natural place to start as birds capable of flight imaged the human soul for many ancient writers. Peacocks, doves, and pelicans also enable Miller to quickly establish her point: the "simultaneous embrace and distancing of animals in terms of their continuity, even their shared moral being (even their superiority) with humans is part of the paradox that lies at the center of this book" (29). Chapters Two and Three, "The Pensivity of Animals, I & II," allows Miller to explore animals in early Christian texts from two angles: zoomorphism and anthropomorphism. The first angle ("zoomorphism") explores animal form as a way of speaking of the human. Here, her argument draws strength from Augustine's sermons, in which he addresses his congregation as "asses" to underscore their difference from and similarities to such creatures, all for the purpose of spiritual transformation. Miller concludes that "Zoomorphic interpretations such as this one depend on a willingness to become entangled with an animal, and to explore the possibilities of meaning that such a venture opens up" (55). Augustine's writings express both a discontent with anthropocentrism and a subtle undermining of it, while "nudging human consciousness toward a new awareness of itself" (77). Miller's second angle ("anthropomorphism") helpfully contrasts anthropocentrism [End Page 365] with anthropomorphism, the former emphasizing separation and the latter emphasizing connection between humans and animals. How are humans and animals connected? Numerous stories demonstrate animals' possession and use of rational thought by speech and gesture, a striking contrast to the prevailing assumption of human exceptionalism (anthropocentrism) in much of Christianity. However, Miller draws on Merleau-Ponty's notion of "strange kinship" to explain human-animal continuity as a function of shared embodiment rather than shared rationality (however identified by such writers). Appropriately, these two chapters end with a reflection on the centaur in Jerome's Life of Paul to demonstrate the hybridity of "strange kinship" drawing the human and animal into intimate proximity in a singular embodiment; the image of the centaur functions to both highlight nostalgia for the pre-cultural condition of animals and underscore the inner and essential animality of human life. Chapter Four, "Wild Animals," looks specifically at ascetics who chose to live in desert environments, invading animals' natural habitats and learning to live peaceably with such wild animals as lions and wolves. Here, Miller uses affect theory to explore how intimacy, touch, and emotions are part and parcel of human-animal relations. Her observation is that, in many of these stories of desert ascetics, human holiness is envisaged as the ability to have friendly encounters with animals (126): to care for them...

Legal Regulation of Taxation in The Swiss Confederation

The article considers the Swiss model of fiscal municipalization from the ideological and methodological positions of the anthroposociocultural approach. Such components of this approach as historical and genetic methods together with the method of system-structural analysis were applied especially thoroughly and consistently. By means of them it was found that the Swiss model of fiscal decentralization is an attributive part of the construction of public power in Switzerland – municipalization from bottom to top. Special attention is drawn to defining the basic legal features of the Swiss model of fiscal municipalization. It is argued that subsidiarity does not paradigmatically coincide with decentralization: the principle of subsidiarity postulates the sovereignty of the basic territorial collectives and considers the possible conditions for its limitation for general social needs and values. On the contrary, the principle of decentralization has the national level of governance as the starting point and considers the conditions of delegation of certain tasks and competences by the state to the lower levels of public power hierarchy in the principal frames of state sovereignty. Specificity of the principle of subsidiarity in Switzerland is that cantons play dual role from the standpoint of administrative federalism. On the one hand, they are the bearers of sovereignty of public power, including taxation. On the other hand, they are the sole bearers of administrative authority and are obliged to serve national interests, that is, the needs of the entire Swiss Confederation. Paradox is that this service function of the cantons gives them considerable benefits in the inevitable opposition to the Union state, when it comes to provision of services of the entire fiscal system and the entire system of public finance.

Islam, Democracy, and Cosmopolitanism: At Home and in the World

Islam, Democracy, and Cosmopolitanism: At Home and in the World

Sovereignty as Trusteeship and Indigenous Peoples

AbstractWe explore two special challenges indigenous peoples pose to the idea of sovereigns as trustees for humanity. The first challenge is rooted in a colonial history during which a trusteeship model of sovereignty served as an enabler of paternalistic colonial policies. The challenge is to show that the trusteeship model is not irreparably colonial in nature. The second challenge, which emerges from the first, is to specify the scope and nature of indigenous peoples’ sovereignty within the trusteeship model. Whereas the interaction between states and foreign nationals is the locus of cosmopolitan law, the relationship between states and indigenous peoples is distinctive. In the ordinary cosmopolitan case, foreign nationals do not purport to possess legal authority. Indigenous peoples often do make such a claim, pitting their claim to authority against the state’s. We discuss how international law has attempted to come to grips with indigenous sovereignty by requiring states to include indigenous peoples in decision-making processes that affect their historical lands and rights. A crucial fault line in the jurisprudence, however, separates a duty to consult indigenous peoples from a duty to acquire their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). The latter but not the former recognizes that indigenous peoples possess a veto over state projects on their lands, in effect recognizing in them a limited co-legislative power. We focus on recent jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and consider whether either the duty to consult or FPIC are enough to dispel the shadow of the trusteeship model’s colonial past. We suggest that they are a move in the right direction, and that implicitly they represent international law’s recognition that states are no longer the sole bearers of sovereignty at international law. In limited circumstances, international law recognizes indigenous peoples as sovereign actors.

Le Langage de l'implicite dans l'œuvre de Crébillon fils (review)

Reviewed by: Le Langage de l'implicite dans l'œuvre de Crébillon fils Olivier Delers (bio) Émeline Mossé . Le Langage de l'implicite dans l'œuvre de Crébillon fils. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009. 475pp. €88. ISBN 978-2-7453-1867-1. In her book, Émeline Mossé argues that the figure of the implicit can help us delineate a unified "système crébillonien" and thus reconciles two antithetical aspects of Crébillon fils's work: the propensity of his characters to engage in libertine behaviour and the underlying moral tonality of his novels. In Mossé's study, the implicit is a versatile and ever-evolving notion that accounts for a wide range of textual phenomena: silences, detours, ellipses, vague and ethereal characterization, or the narrator's willingness to let the readers fill the margins of the text with their own thoughts and interpretations. The loose conceptualization of the book's major theme is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, it allows Mossé to insist on the rich juxtaposition of social, stylistic, and generic questions in Crébillon fils's novels. She shows, for instance, that the necessity for noble characters to conceal the true nature of their feelings turns language into a "magical art" (161) that only some can decipher and explains the parodic nature of novels like Le Sopha or Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit. On the other hand, the implicit remains under-theorized throughout, in spite of references to Bernadette Fort's Le Langage de l'ambiguité dans l'oeuvre de Crébillon fils (1978) and a reliance on L'Implicite by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1986) to provide a theoretical framework. With each new chapter, the implicit gains new meanings and variations as it is used to explain different [End Page 148] characteristics of Crébillon fils's novels. In the end, it becomes equated with the practice of literary interpretation itself, revealing the internal coherence behind Crébillon fils's body of work and thus defining an elusive "poétique crébillonienne." This is perhaps most visible when Mossé links the implicit to what she calls Crébillon fils's "laboratory of generic research" (169). The implicit is both a way of analyzing the different novelistic forms employed by the author but also a specific mode—parody—meant to diffuse possible criticism of his generic experimentations. Still, Mossé manages to claim for the oft-forgotten Crébillon fils a central and unique place in the development of eighteenth-century French fiction: the length of his career (from Le Sylphe in 1730 to Lettres Athéniennes in 1771) and the variety of novels he published show the extent to which he tried to tame a still anarchical genre and to propose a comprehensive theory of the novel. Mossé convincingly argues that metatextuality lies at the heart of Crébillon fils's prose fiction by showing how theoretical reflections parallel the main narrative lines and create a dialogue with the text as it unfolds. The Crébillonian narrator is looking for allies, that is, for an informed readership that can decode his implicit references and playful, ironic comments and laugh with him, even when the riddles he poses are hard to decipher. In doing so, the narrator is asking the reader to become aware of the act of reading itself: neither the characters nor the narrator are the sole bearer of truth, and readers should be able to extract their own moral conclusions from the text. It is not a surprise, then, that Crébillon fils's novels should read as a never-ending language game with wide-ranging implications for characterization, style, and the production of textual meaning. The implicit explains the author's tendency to stage mysterious and secretive characters and to let readers piece together coherent portraits from scattered elements in the narration. In fact, Crébillon fils rarely focuses on the physical quality of his characters, as if they were solely constituted by language and by the verbal exchanges they have with one another. Generic pronouns are often used, indicating that language itself can not solve the communication breakdown that characterizes polite society in the...

Calvin’s views on church governance

This article investigates whether the church was seen by Calvin as a mere human community based on laws, an association functioning on the basis of a constitution, or as a dynamic domain of the governance of Jesus Christ which functions on the basis of the Word through his Spirit. According to Calvin the church is a new order ordained by Christ in which He never delegated his authority to his officers. He Himself, as the Head, remains the sole bearer of authority. Nevertheless, they receive full power, as representatives of Christ, to minister his Word and to administer the sacraments in his church. As such the church received the power to teach (“potestas docenda”), to govern (“potestas gubernatio”) and to make laws (“potestas regiminis”). This competence (“potestas”) is, however, exercised particularly as a ministry (“ministe- rium”) because it rests on God’s Word and is only ministered in conjunction with it. In the procedure of church governance Calvin considered faith and love as two key concepts. In order to give a practical foundation to a spiritual mode of governance in the church as God’s new order in the world, a church order is needed which is founded in the Word. This church order must aim at the protection of the governance of the Spirit in the church. For Calvin church government is, therefore, primarily a process of governing the heart – the hearts of those among whom God’s new order in the world exists.

Calvin’s views on church governance

This article investigates whether the church was seen by Calvin as a mere human community based on laws, an association functioning on the basis of a constitution, or as a dynamic domain of the governance of Jesus Christ which functions on the basis of the Word through his Spirit. According to Calvin the church is a new order ordained by Christ in which He never delegated his authority to his officers. He Himself, as the Head, remains the sole bearer of authority. Nevertheless, they receive full power, as representatives of Christ, to minister his Word and to administer the sacraments in his church. As such the church received the power to teach (“potestas docenda”), to govern (“potestas gubernatio”) and to make laws (“potestas regiminis”). This competence (“potestas”) is, however, exercised particularly as a ministry (“ministe- rium”) because it rests on God’s Word and is only ministered in conjunction with it. In the procedure of church governance Calvin considered faith and love as two key concepts. In order to give a practical foundation to a spiritual mode of governance in the church as God’s new order in the world, a church order is needed which is founded in the Word. This church order must aim at the protection of the governance of the Spirit in the church. For Calvin church government is, therefore, primarily a process of governing the heart – the hearts of those among whom God’s new order in the world exists.

Does Pleasure Have Intrinsic Value?

Ethical hedonists hold that pleasure and avoidance of pain are the sole bearers of intrinsic value. At times, ethical hedonism has been the dominant view in moral philosophy and continues to retain a strong following today. Opponents of ethical hedonism have tended to base their case, inter alia, on establishing that pleasure is not the only thing of intrinsic value. Matthew Pianalto goes a step further by claiming that pleasure does not have intrinsic value at all, only extrinsic, instrumental value.

Dosage compensation for the birds

Dosage compensation for the birds

The Ontology of Action: Arendt and the Role of Narrative

The Ontology of ActionArendt and the Role of Narrative Leslie Paul Thiele (bio) Hannah Arendt is best known for her trenchant analysis and original evaluation of political life. The sine qua non of politics is human action, which she celebrates above all other human capacities. Arendt equates action with freedom. Action in concert is identified as power. As the key element of power and the meaning of freedom, action brings about and preserves the public realm. Arendt considers politics a facet of the human condition distinct from - and in many respects superior to - the biological and the social realms, with their characteristic activities of labor, work, and life management. Political action, occupying the highest echelon of the vita activa, is also distinguished from the vita contemplativa, that is to say, from the intellectual realm, characterized by reflective thought. Notwithstanding her chosen vocation as a theorist, deep esteem for her own intellectual mentors (including Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers), and enduring reluctance to involve herself in political affairs, Arendt refused to abide the Platonic subordination of politics to philosophy. Arendt's depreciation of the philosophical, social, and biological facets of life is frequently censured. Critics chafe against her apparent nostalgia for the vita activa of antiquity and question whether action (specifically, and politics more generally) deserves Arendt's accolade as the defining feature of a truly human existence, the sole bearer of freedom, the most endangered faculty in the modern world and, consequently, the feature of contemporary life most in need of our solicitude. In particular, critics reject Arendt's comprehensive divorce between the public and the private spheres, a divorce Arendt employs to champion political action over social concerns. To be sure, Arendt's bald distinction between the social and the political - wherein efforts devoted to satisfying basic human needs lie on the other side of an unbridgeable chasm from great words and deeds - obscures more than it reveals. I do not defend her stark bifurcation. But neither do I wish to reiterate standard critiques. Rather, I explore how Arendt illustrated the prerogatives of political action by underlining its narrative dimensions. To best understand Arendt, we need to shift our focus from what political speech and action are about to how political speech and action are engaged. Building on Arendt's suggestive remarks on the significance of stories facilitates this shift. Had Arendt more thoroughly developed this line of thought, she might have successfully deflected the charge of excluding social concerns from the purview of political life. Entering the Labyrinth of Arendt's Thought Arendt devotes a full chapter of The Human Condition to the concept of action. It is prefaced by two epigraphs, the first being a pungent dictum of Isak Dinesen (the nom de plume of Karen Blixen), one of Arendt's favorite authors. The second epigraph is a freely translated excerpt from Dante's De Monarchia, which reads: For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows…. Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self. The political realm, for Arendt, is a place of appearances, or better said, a place of performances. The agency involved in these performances is not seated in a pre-existing, unified, deliberate, self-knowing subject. Rather, Arendt's actors are fragmented beings that achieve coherence by way of a self-revelatory, theatrical performance. In this vein, Arendt understood the Greek polis as "a kind of theater where freedom could appear" (Arendt 1968a, 154). Patchen Markell offers an insightful exegesis of Arendt's translation of Dante's passage in an effort to come to terms with her understanding of self-revelatory action and its relationship to democratic life. Dante's latent self, Markell argues, is not an identity but rather "action's point of departure" (Markell 2006, 10). Effectively, the self that the doer discloses is formed upon...

Castoriadis and the Permanent Riddle of the World: Changing Configurations of Worldliness and World Alienation

The problematic of world articulation is central to post-phenomenological approaches. With Castoriadis, it emerges as a significant if shadowy thematic. Its shifting contours in his thought are redolent of the ongoing dialogue between romantic and enlightenment currents. They are also indicative of the ambiguity inherent to cultural articulations of the world in modernity. Here, two world perspectives open up various — and conflicting — interpretative challenges to which a response is necessitated. In Castoriadis's case, these take on particular forms of more general trends of `alienation' and `worldliness'. In particular, the isolation of the social-historical as the sole bearer of creativity tends to result in world alienation, whilst his later shift towards radical physis indicates a trend towards vertical worldliness. Arnason's theorization of world articulation in its twofold sense re-imagines the worldliness of the social-historical both in terms of the world tout court and our concrete stance towards it (or the world towards us). As such, it offers a corrective to the `worldless freedom' of the social-historical in Castoriadis's thought.

Hosea (review)

Reviewed by: Hosea Mignon R. Jacobs Hosea, by Ehud Ben Zvi. The Forms of Old Testament Literature, volume 21A/1. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. 321 pp. $55.00. In keeping with the form-critical model used in the Forms of the Old Testament Literature series (FOTL), Ben Zvi's volume includes discussion of the genre, setting, and intention of the book of Hosea and its individual units. The discussion is accompanied by a representation of the structure of the individual units along with extensive bibliography on each macro-unit. The clarity of the presentation seen in his volume on Micah (also in the FOTL series) is also reflected in his discussion of Hosea. Most valuable is his delineation of the intent of his task and the clarification of the method as applied to the book of Hosea. First, he clarifies that while he affirms the place of the book of Hosea in the Book of the Twelve, he also recognizes its independence as a distinct unit within that corpus. Second, Ben Zvi distinguishes between the formal and the conceptual structure of the book. Regarding formal structure, he identifies the macro-structure of Hosea as a typical prophetic book, namely: introduction (1:1), Prophetic Reading (body of the book) (1:2–14:9), and a conclusion (14:10). Ben Zvi identifies the conceptual structure of the book as a "very common metanarrative in postmonarchic Israel" (p. 8) and notes that while the book is not a narrative, the four stages of the metanarrative are reinforced in reading and rereading the book. Third, Ben Zvi's application of the form-critical method illustrates an adaptation within the method, namely, he focuses on the extant text rather than attempting to discern or reconstruct a form behind the text, and he embraces the tenets of literary criticism. Consequently, he emphasizes the reading and rereading of the text, further highlighting the role and identity of the actual reader on the reading process. In this perspective, Ben Zvi defines genre as a fluid product of the readers, readers' expectation, and the reading process that incorporates the textual markers and assign intention to the implied author of the text. According to this understanding of genre, Ben Zvi posits that the genre of the book of Hosea is "Prophetic Book" or "Authoritative, Ancient Israelite Prophetic Book," namely, one that communicated a claim for authoritativeness and was affirmed by a readership as such, and whose communicator is perceived as authoritative (p. 11). For Ben Zvi the reading and rereading of the Prophetic Book shapes and influences the readers' perspectives; therefore, he is adamant that the text is a theological rather than an historical document of the past. Accordingly, the images of the past preserved within the book are constructed by the authors in accordance with their perspectives and intent for their readers and are not necessarily consistent with social realities. Likewise, Ben Zvi proposes that [End Page 158] one of the primary intentions of the book is to socialize its readers in a way that idealizes them as the sole bearers of Yhwh's words and revelation. Ben Zvi's adaptation of the form-critical method is further evident in his understanding of setting. Regarding the intellectual setting, he proposes the literati and specifically the highly literate by and for whom the book was composed. More specifically, regarding the historical setting of the book, Ben Zvi proposes that its themes are crucial for discerning between the monarchic and postmonarchic times. Of these the exile, the unification of Israel and Judah, and the Davidic ruler are significant to the proposal that the readership of the book was situated in the postmonarchic period. Notably, for Ben Zvi this period is the most likely because it "provides the most reasonable historical background for such a text" (p. 14). Even so, Ben Zvi argues that while the readership of the book is situated in the postmonarchic period, the "world of the book" is the monarchic period. Accordingly, the readership lived out the events that the speakers/authors anticipated. The volume focuses on the formal structure or the individual units of the book of Hosea. The Superscription (1:1) orients the...