Nation States and Political Unions

A political union is a distinct form of polity. Unlike the nation-state, it does not require consensus on demos (the people), telos (purpose), ethos (common values) or the locus of sovereignty. At one time it was believed that unions would give way to nation-states in the process of modernization. In recent years, the concept of union has been revived, to refer both to plurinational states and to international bodies like the European Union. Thinking about sovereignty has been revised to encompass shared and divided sovereignty. Union has several dimensions, including political, social and economic, which do not necessarily coincide in space. Managing unions requires distinct forms of statecraft to balance centrifugal and centripetal tendencies.

Larger Than Life

If two or more substances, distinct in essence not merely in number, can form a union, it is little wonder that collections of such composites can also form unions. The difference between the union of mind and body and social and political unions, however, is that the latter depend not upon God (directly) but upon the wills of individual humans who create them. The force behind the creation of communities is a passion, love, which Descartes defines as a willing to join oneself in union with others. As a passion, love is dependent upon the body, and as an act of will, upon the divine element within the soul. It is argued in this chapter that such unions rely on organizational and mereological principles similar to those which account for the integrity of organic bodies. It is from here that the idea of a “body politic” emerges, demonstrating the continuity of Descartes’ thinking in natural philosophy, politics, and ethics.

Tatăl Ei, Lucian Blaga. Reconstituiri Biografice

The volume Tatăl meu, Lucian Blaga has a double meaning: first of all, Dorli Blaga intends to shape the writer's portrait and, above all, the man Lucian Blaga himself, for whom the act of creation becomes a refuge. Secondly, it creates an autobiographical work, appealing to her own memories and exposing her own opinion regarding the writers and political unions of the 20th century. This volume clearly shows the daughter's duty to defend her father's name. This essay Tatăl ei, Lucian Blaga. Reconstituiri biografice presents the impediments ecountered by Lucian Blaga in his literary and political career, but also his image in the intimate position as a parent and husband. The sacrifices accomplished on behalf of his family, the fear of having his work plagiarised and the strength to bear the injustices of the Romanian state are just some details from Lucian Blaga's life, presented by his daughter or revealed by the writer himself in his correspondence.

The activity of the Union of Unions in the period of the Russian Revolution of 1905

The article deals with the activities of the Union of Unions during the Russian revolutionary unrest in 1905-1907. The author focuses on the fact that the organisation consisted of united various socio-political unions and was aimed at the fighting for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and for universal suffrage. The main attention in the article is paid to the decisions of the delegate congresses of the Union, which took place during 1905-1906. The association was headed by Pavel Milyukov, who had always regarded the Union as a prototype of the future party of constitutional democrats. The author gives a generalised description of the Union’s initiatives to boycott the elections to the first State Duma, to participate in the all-Russia political strike and the December armed uprising in the fall of 1905. The article traces the difficult relationship of zemstvos and the Union of Unions, which failed to determine its position in relation to them. As a result, the author makes a conclusion that during the recession of the revolution, the Union of Unions ceased to carry out active work and gradually disintegrated, it had failed to find its place among revolutionary organisations.

1963: Herman Kahn and Projection

The rise of specific production in the face of new political unions. Clones and transplantation. New strategies of the body in time. The use of new technologies to describe the artist’s presence. The consciousness of production sites.