scholarly journals Editorial: Stupidity

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-118
Author(s):  
PAUL RAE

As anyone who has dealt with bureaucrats or authoritarian regimes knows, sometimes it pays to act a little dumb. Glazing over good-naturedly in the face of a petty or corrupt demand can occasionally bring to light the inanity or cruelty of the situation in such a way as to prompt a momentary softening, be it through pity, impatience or even embarrassment. The stakes in such situations can be high: in the domain of the international with which this this journal is preoccupied, it might concern free passage on the one hand, or the right to remain, unhindered, on the other. More often the circumstances are banal, though not, for all that, without complexity. They point not only to the importance of stupidity as an enabling feature of life in complex and diverse modern societies, but also to the myriad forms it can take, from strategic ignorance, through the stupefaction necessary to manage the teeming stimuli of urban environments, to willing, if circumspect, participation in whichever confederacy of dunces makes up our place of employment, the organizations with which we affiliate, or the communities in which we participate.

Author(s):  
A. Haddadi ◽  
F. Ravaz

Under criminal law, euthanasia can have two distinct qualifications: that of homicide in the event that the act of directly killing another person is characterized, or that of assisting a third party in the suicide. These two qualifications are applicable on the condition that the agent — the author of the act of causing death — is not the one who went through it. In fact, selfeuthanasia is nothing more than suicide.In addition to euthanasia imposed to a third party (such as in the case of Malevre, nurse from Mantes-la-Jolie, tried in 2003), the euthanasia requested and subscribed constitutes a complex legal question. Answering this question first involves specifying the position of contemporary criminal law in the face of suicide.In the event that suicide is only decriminalized, in fact, the author of the act — regardless of the outcome of his actions, who is himself the victim, cannot be prosecuted. Nor ultimately receive any condemnation.However, this lack of prosecution and conviction is by no means an endorsement of the act — suicide — by the law.Moreover, in the event that suicide is a right, it would then be necessary to agree that any candidate for this act can request assistance in the accomplishment of his death. Given these two opposing approaches, imposed on us the question of whether there is a right to die.Although the euthanasia imposed is unequivocally under ordinary criminal law, the euthanasia requested and granted is not based on any rights. To date, there is no right to approve a death request, but on the other hand, it does allow it to be respected and to some extent promotes its approach with dignity. This work will focus on two central points which are the possibility that euthanasia is a homicide under common law (I) and the attitude of French law concerning the right to death (II).


Author(s):  
Sharon Dolovich

In this chapter, Sharon Dolovich argues that the Supreme Court deploys three “canons of evasion” that undermine core constitutional principles: deference, presumption, and question substitution. The chapter shows how the Court on the one hand affirms basic constitutional principles—such as the right to counsel or the right against cruel and unusual punishment—that courts are to enforce against the state for the protection of individual penal subjects. Yet on the other hand, the doctrinal maneuvers of deference, presumption, and substitute question encourage judges in individual cases to affirm the constitutionality of state action even in the face of seemingly egregious facts. As a result, judicial review delivers almost automatic and uncritical validation of whatever state action produced the challenged conviction, sentence, or punishment. Dolovich identifies troubling questions raised by pervasive use of these canons for the legitimacy of the state’s penal power.


2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
Émilie Pontanier

The author discusses the political and legal implications of French secularism in an Islamic context. To this purpose, she focuses on the French educational system in Tunisia, which allows the distinction between public and private spheres to be emphasized. By way of a discursive analysis of conversations with parents who school their children there, the author shows that the school system strengthens, on the one hand, the religious autonomy of families and, on the other hand, religious abstention. Secularism is therefore analyzed as a vector of religious resistance in the face of the transformation of Tunisian society in that it promotes a modern or “moderate” Islam and recognizes the right to be atheist.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization


Trictrac ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petru Adrian Danciu

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.


Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marine Vekua

The main goal of this research is to determine whether the journalism education of the leading media schools inGeorgia is adequate to modern media market’s demands and challenges. The right answer to this main questionwas found after analyzing Georgian media market’s demands, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, differentaspects of journalism education in Georgia: the historical background, development trends, evaluation ofeducational programs and curricula designs, reflection of international standards in teaching methods, studyingand working conditions.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Sophie Till

Three years ago Sophie Till started working with pianist Edna Golandsky, the leading exponent of the Taubman Piano Technique, an internationally acclaimed approach that is well known to pianists, on the one hand, for allowing pianists to attain a phenomenal level of virtuosity and on the other, for solving very serious piano-related injuries. Till, a violinist, quickly realized that here was a unique technical approach that could not only identify and itemize the minute movements that underlie a virtuoso technique but could show how these movements interact and go into music making at the highest level. Furthermore, through the work of the Golandsky Institute, she saw a pedagogical approach that had been developed to a remarkable depth and level of clarity. It was an approach that had the power to communicate in a way she had never seen before, despite her own first class violin training from the earliest age. While the geography and “look” on the violin are different from the piano, the laws governing coordinate motion specifically in playing the instrument are the same for pianists and violinists. As a result of Till’s work translating the technique for violin, a new pedagogical approach for violinists of all ages is emerging; the Taubman/Golandsky Approach to the Violin. In reflecting on these new developments, Edna Golandsky wrote, “I have been working with the Taubman Approach for more than 30 years and have worked regularly with other instrumentalists. However, Sophie Till was the first violinist who asked me to teach her with the same depth that I do with pianists. With her conceptual and intellectual agility as well as complete dedication to helping others, she has been the perfect partner to translate this body of knowledge for violinists. Through this collaboration, Sophie is helping develop a new ‘language’ for violinist that will prevent future problems, solve present ones and start beginners on the right road to becoming the best they can be. The implications of this new work for violinists are enormous.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 2007-2016
Author(s):  
Yoram Reich ◽  
Eswaran Subrahmanian

AbstractDesign research as a field has been studied from diverse perspectives starting from product inception to their disposal. The product of these studies includes knowledge, tools, methods, processes, frameworks, approaches, and theories. The contexts of these studies are innumerable. The unit of these studies varies from individuals to organizations, using a variety of theoretical tools and methods that have fragmented the field, making it difficult to understand the map of this corpus of knowledge across this diversity.In this paper, we propose a model-based approach that on the one hand, does not delve into the details of the design object itself, but on the other hand, unifies the description of design problem at another abstraction level. The use of this abstract framework allows for describing and comparing underlying models of published design studies using the same language to place them in the right context in which design takes place and to enable to inter-relate them, to understand the wholes and the parts of design studies.Patterns of successful studies could be generated and used by researchers to improve the design of new studies, understand the outcome of existing studies, and plan follow-up studies.


Grotiana ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-353
Author(s):  
Dire Tladi

Abstract The concept of a Grotian moment remains rather obscure in international law. On the one hand, it can refer simply to an empirical fact which galvanises the ordinary law-making processes, whether treaty-making or State practice, resulting in major shifts in international law. On the other hand, a Grotian moment might be seen as an event so significant that it results in an extraordinary shift in international law without full adherence to the processes for law-making. The former understanding has little legal significance, while the latter, which would be legally significant, would be controversial and without legal basis. Against this background the article discusses the intersections between peremptory norms and Grotian Moments. It does this by looking at the intersection between the two concepts as well as the intersection between Grotian Moments, on the one hand and, on the other hand, particular jus cogens norms. With respect to the former, for example, the article will consider whether the high threshold of peremptory status facilitates and hinders Grotian moments. With respect to the latter, the article will consider particular norms that have been said to have shifted on account of the Grotian moments, namely the right to use of force in self-defence as well humanitarian intervention.


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