Nondeterminacy and Population Ethics

This paper synthesizes a general view out of Derek Parfit’s last views on how to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion and presents the general features of a plausible theory of population ethics based on Parfit’s suggestions. The paper argues that a plausible population axiology provides only partial orderings and implies that some outcomes are nondeterminate in their ranking. The paper shows, first, how the combination of what Parfit calls “imprecise equality” and the “Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle” allows one to avoid both the Continuum Argument and the Improved Mere Addition Paradox. Second, the paper shows how this is enough to in principle also refute Gustaf Arrhenius’s impossibility theorems. Third, the paper suggests that a plausible population axiology must allow for nondeterminacy, that whatever the substance of the axiology is, it can only provide partial orderings of outcomes, and that if we revise Arrhenius’s adequacy conditions these can condition what a satisfactory population axiology looks like. Finally, the paper illustrates how one can apply normative theories that allow for nondeterminacy and also infer formal constraints on the theories in light of the consequences of their application.

ORAGE MYSTIQUE DE FRANÇOIS DE CUREL : MISE EN QUESTION DE LA « PIÈCE BIEN FAITE »

François de Curel, dont le théâtre est tombé quelque peu dans l’oubli, est considéré comme un représentant de « pièces à thèses ». Pourtant, malgré un certain attachement de l’auteur à la tradition classique, on lui reprochait de saborder les fondements mêmes de l’art dramatique. De fait, en étudiant Orage mystique, force nous est de constater qu’il tourne résolument le dos aux principes régulateurs de la fable, principes hérités des conceptions aristotéliciennes. Si le premier acte du drame semble obtempérer aux contraintes formelles d’une « pièce bien faite », dès le deuxième, l’écrivain brise le déroulement de l’action linéaire pour se focaliser non sur la dynamique des événements, mais sur la vie psychique du protagoniste. Ce faisant, Curel semble proposer le nouveau paradigme dramatique, où, au lieu de conflits interpersonnels censés pousser l’action en avant, nous assistons à des affrontements intrasubjectifs se déroulant dans la psyché du personnage central. François de Curelis considered a representative of “problem plays”, though his theatre has fallen into oblivion. However, despite the author’s attachment to the classical tradition, he was criticized for scuttling the very fundamental dramatic art. In fact, when studying Orage mystique (Mystical Storm), it is clear that he disregards the regulatory principles of the fable, principles inherited from Aristotelian conceptions. If the first act of the drama seems to comply with the formal constraints of a “well-made play”, in the second, the writer breaks the course of the linear action to focus not on the dynamics of events, but on psychic life of the protagonist. In this way, Curel proposes a new dramatic paradigm, in which intra-subjective confrontations develop within the psyche of the central character, instead of interpersonal conflicts meant to push the action forward.

Authoritarian Liberalism Writ Large: the Spectre of a ‘German Europe’

<Online Only>This chapter explores how inter-state relations after Lisbon represented a fudge; the Lisbon Treaty maintaining much of the substance of the failed constitutional project, but without the constitutional symbolism. It traces how, through the euro crisis, this fudge became unsustainable: the issue of sovereignty could no longer be held in suspension, increasingly exercised outside the EU legal framework, as new informal formations took centre stage, notably the ‘Troika’ and the Eurogroup, which exercised both de facto power and de jure authority. They did so in such a way as to avoid the formal constraints of the Maastricht Treaty, but maintain its ordoliberal spirit. The chapter goes on to consider how sovereignty, in practice, was increasingly drained of any content, its loss appearing as the quid pro quo for accepting financial assistance. The chapter concludes by examining how all of this put the issue of German hegemony back on the agenda, suggesting a regional authoritarian liberalism writ large, more coercive and less consensual than in the foundational era, but ultimately underpinned by an ideological Europeanism.</Online Only>

Powers, Possibilities, and Time

Of equally fundamental importance to the current debate over causal powers are its Megaric consequences, the connection between powers and modality. One of the central motivations for adopting a powers ontology is said to be the support causal powers provide for grounding and explaining alternative possibilities. Calvin Normore provides a robust defence of this idea by defending the deeper thesis that time makes a difference for modalities because the existence of powers at a time impose formal constraints on the structural conditions governing the accessibility relation between the actual and the possible. Some alternative states of affairs are not genuine possibilities in the actual world, he argues, because of the powers that obtain in the actual world. Normore, moreover, roots his defence of this thesis in the medieval debate between Scotus and Ockham over whether what is possible is possibly actual (Scotus maintained ‘no it need not be’, whereas Ockham maintained ‘yes it had to be’).

One Day at a Time: The Political Limits of the Domestic Sitcom

Most critics argue that the television comedy One Day at a Time (2017), produced in the United States, is a progressive show, mainly due to its cast, its attempt at faithfully representing an ethnic minority, and its courage in advancing relevant, sensitive topics. In order to qualify such assumptions, we will review the history of the sitcom formula, particularly the genre often defined as domestic comedies of the 1970s, and argue that its formal constraints impose unsurmountable limits on a progressive agenda. Finally, we proceed with an aesthetic analysis of the first season, which further demonstrates that the genre’s need of family stability—what we call a hierarchy of values—compromises the dramatization of political content. We hope that by examining the genre’s history and analyzing the show’s aesthetic, we can contribute to a better understanding of its inherent shortcomings and compromises.

A la dérive

The notion of the formless found a lasting definition in Documents, the dissident Surrealist magazine led by Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein and Michel Leiris from 1929 to 1931. In an unassuming short entry for its ‘Dictionnaire’, Bataille presents the informe emphatically not as a system or a structure, but as ‘un terme servant à déclasser’; yet neither the disruptive impulse of the 'Dictionnaire', nor the more recent exhibitions it has generated, can avoid a measure of taxonomic organisation (L'Informe: mode d'emploi, 1996; Undercover Surrealism, 2006). In the realm of poetry, free verse has eroded the boundaries of the poetic, but its freedom from formal constraints is limited too; as Jay Parini (2008) contends, ‘formless poetry does not really exist, as poets inevitably create patterns in language that replicate forms of experience.’ Through a small number of case studies, this chapter will consider the legacy of Bataille’s definition while assessing the ongoing tension between form and its undoing in textual and visual art of the twenty-first century.

Mediator and their role in collective disputes

Mediation, as a way of resolving disputes, including collective disputes, is associated with relatively small regulatory interference by the legislator, which is reflected by one of its features, i.e. a lack of formal constraints. Therefore, the question arises about the mediator’s role in resolving collective disputes. Undoubtedly, they must guarantee to be impartial, however, it should be remembered that parties to a collective dispute are its hosts. Hence, it seems that the importance of an appropriate mediation technique cannot be overstated and it can be concluded that it will have a decisive impact on the successful completion of mediation. Therefore, the mediator’s role is primarily to help the parties communicate so that the conflict does not escalate during the mediation process.

The Normative Structure of Request

Joseph Raz holds that, whereas a commander in issuing her command intends to impose an obligation on the commandee, a requester in making her request purports to create a pro tanto reason for the requestee through her act of request. Chapter 2 uses a series of examples to develop a set of “formal constraints on the concept of request” and then uses these constraints to argue that Raz’s account of request does justice to neither the relation between requester and requestee nor to that between a requester and her own request. The chapter then marshals elements from Kant’s ethics and Elizabeth Anscombe’s work on testimony in order to articulate an alternative conception of the normative structure of request, one according to which request should be understood in terms of a principle obligating requester and requestee to jointly harmonize their ends.