Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-27
Author(s):  
Youpa Andrew
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Qualitative Character ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Way

This chapter shows that Spinoza believes that an episode of emotion represents a change in the power of the subject’s body in the way that a symptom represents that of which it is symptomatic. On the reading here defended, some emotions symptomatically represent increases in the power of the subject’s body. Others symptomatically represent decreases in power. Regardless of whether it is symptomatic of an increase or a decrease, an episode of an emotion qua mental item is symptomatic of the state of the power of acting of the subject’s body, and an emotion serves as a symptom in virtue of its qualitative character. It represents a change in power by virtue of the way it feels to experience an emotion. While an episode of the qualitative character of joy signals an increase in the body’s power, an episode of the qualitative character of sadness signals a decrease in its power.

“I'd make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented”: Discourse of Law in Ben Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Legal Procedures ◽  
The Way

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

The Developmental Trading State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
East Asia ◽  
National Economy ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The State ◽  
State Model ◽  
Principal Function ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
The Way

This chapter demonstrates that the downwards pressure that state consolidation placed on mass violence was amplified by the type of state that emerged. Across East Asia, governments came to define themselves as “developmental” or “trading” states whose principal purpose was to grow the national economy and thereby improve the economic wellbeing of their citizens. Governments with different ideologies came to embrace economic growth and growing the prosperity of their populations as the principal function of the state and its core source of legitimacy. Despite some significant glitches along the way the adoption of the developmental trading state model has proven successful. Not only have East Asian governments succeeded in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the practices and policy orientations dictated by this model helped shift governments and societies away from belligerent practices towards postures that prioritized peace and stability. This reinforced the trend towards greater peacefulness.

The Trafficking Panic in Late Imperial Austria

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy M. Wingfield
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Reform Organizations ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores a variety of issues central to the turn-of-the-century Austrian panic over trafficking. They include anti-Semitism, Jews as protagonists and victims, and mass migration in an urbanizing world, as well as why particular Austrian cities were associated with the trade in women. The chapter analyzes the government’s domestic and international efforts to combat trafficking, as well as the role bourgeois reform organizations played. It explores the relationship between the trafficker and the trafficked, arguing that these women and girls were not simply victims, but sometimes willing participants, or something in between, in order to sketch a more nuanced picture of turn-of-the-century “white slaving.” The term “trafficker” is employed to reflect the way sources (the state, journalists, reform groups) viewed the issue, not because it can be proved that the problem was as widespread as they claimed.

Counting the Seven Weeks War: Dyads, Disputes and Balances of Power

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Moul
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
The State ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Inter State ◽  
The Way

Abstract. The usual quantitative study of inter-state war and peace tallies observations on hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dyads or pairs of states. These observations miss elementary features of inter-state relations that should be examined when testing Realist explanations of war and peace. The way in which three prominent studies (Bremer, 1992; Bueno de Mesquita, 1981; 1985) chose to count the Seven Weeks War dramatically reveals the theoretical difficulties when tallying dyads. Re-analyses of these studies demonstrate the sensitivity of the results to particulars of 1866 Germany and, more importantly, illustrate the merits of analyzing the dispute rather than the state dyad or the state-dyad year.Résumé. L'étude quantitative des périodes de guerre et de paix entre États comptabilise des observations relatives à des centaines, parfois des milliers de dyades ou paires d'États. Ces observations ne prennent pas en compte certaines caractéristiques élémentaires des relations entre États qui devraient pourtant être examinées lorsque l'on teste les théories réalistes expliquant guerre et paix. La manière dont trois études reconnues (Bremer, 1992; Bueno de Mesquita, 1981; 1985) ont choisi de comptabiliser la guerre des Sept Semaines révèle de manière éclatante les difficultés théoriques dans la comptabilisation des dyades d'états. De nouvelles analyses de ces études ont démontré la sensibilité des résultats aux caractéristiques de l'Allemagne de 1866, mais soulignent surtout les mérites de l'analyse des disputes par rapport à l'analyse des dyades d'États ou des dyades d'États annuelles.

scholarly journals Trauma and Sacrifice in Divided Communities: The Sacralisation of the Victims of Terrorism in Spain

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Eliana Alemán ◽  
José Pérez-Agote
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
The State ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Public Demonstrations ◽  
The Way

This work aims to show that the sacrificial status of the victims of acts of terrorism, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings (“11-M”) and ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) attacks in Spain, is determined by how it is interpreted by the communities affected and the manner in which it is ritually elaborated a posteriori by society and institutionalised by the state. We also explore the way in which the sacralisation of the victim is used in socially and politically divided societies to establish the limits of the pure and the impure in defining the “Us”, which is a subject of dispute. To demonstrate this, we first describe two traumatic events of particular social and political significance (the case of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the 2004 Madrid train bombings). Secondly, we analyse different manifestations of the institutional discourse regarding victims in Spain, examining their representation in legislation, in public demonstrations by associations of victims of terrorism and in commemorative “performances” staged in Spain. We conclude that in societies such as Spain’s, where there exists a polarisation of the definition of the “Us”, the success of cultural and institutional performances oriented towards reparation of the terrorist trauma is precarious. Consequently, the validity of the post-sacrificial narrative centring on the sacred value of human life is ephemeral and thus fails to displace sacrificial narratives in which particularist definitions of the sacred Us predominate.

Epítetos e insultos de grupo en español: Sobre una ambigüedad y sus implicaciones sintáctico-semánticas

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-205
Author(s):  
Andrés Saab ◽  
Eleonora Orlando
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Expressive Content ◽  
Conventional Implicatures ◽  
Expressive Dimension ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Proper Analysis ◽  
The Way

Abstract In this paper, we further elaborate on a syntactic ambiguity between slurs and epithets first noticed in Orlando, Eleonora & Andrés Saab. 2020b. A stereotype semantics for syntactically ambiguous slurs. Analytic Philosophy 61(2). 101–129. Here, we discuss in detail the large theoretical implications of such an ambiguity both for the proper analysis of binominal constructions in Spanish (e.g., el idiota de Juan) and for the way in which it is advisable to model the expressive content slurs and certain epithets (those deriving from slurs) have. As for the first aspect, we contend that mainstream approaches in terms of predicate inversion for binominal constructions cannot account for why slurs lose their predicative import when occurring as epithets in binominal environments. In consequence, we propose a new analysis for epithets both in simple occurrences and in binominal constructions. This analysis derives the above-mentioned ambiguity as a type of structural ambiguity, according to which certain slurs can occur in predicative and in non-predicative positions. When they occur as predicates, they have a mixed semantics (McCready, Eric. 2010. Varieties of conventional implicatures. Semantics & Pragmatics 3. 1–57) reflected both in the truth-conditional and the expressive dimensions, but when they occur as epithets, the truth-conditional dimension is lost and only the expressive content survives. As for the second aspect, we defend a stereotype semantics, according to which stereotypes are modeled as Kratzerian modal bases (i.e., set of propositions) in virtue of which stigmatizing theories of human groups are reflected in a parallel, expressive dimension of meaning. This way of modeling some kinds of expressive contents explains how different slurs and epithets manage to communicate different theories about particular human groups, which are the target of derogation.

The internalized vermin of exile in Montréal: Rawi Hage’s Cockroach

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Divided Self ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This article argues that the protagonist in Hage’s Cockroach (2008) introjects the vermin as a representation of internalized antagonism. As the unnamed narrator struggles in an inhospitable city, he internalizes this unflinching feeling of estrangement through introjection. This process reveals how the loss of home entails the state of a vagabond who resists normalization and seeks the unruly life of the underground. The way the city of Montréal is portrayed as notorious for its indifference towards newcomers aggravates the condition of the divided self in exile, which necessitates the intrusion of the monstrous. In effect, not only does introjecting the cockroach signify a menacing presence but also suggests a decolonizing act of insubordination against a city whose hegemonic order, like its freezing weather, looms large.

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