The Cambridge Companion to Hugo Grotius

The Cambridge Companion to Grotius offers a comprehensive overview of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) for students, teachers, and general readers, while its chapters also draw upon and contribute to recent specialised discussions of Grotius' oeuvre and its later reception. Contributors to this volume cover the width and breadth of Grotius' work and thought, ranging from his literary work, including his historical, theological and political writing, to his seminal legal interventions. While giving these various fields a separate treatment, the book also delves into the underlying conceptions and outlooks that formed Grotius' intellectual map of the world as he understood it, and as he wanted it to become, giving a new political and religious context to his forays into international and domestic law.

Cultural-Loaded Words in Journalistic Translation Between Arabic and English

An increasing number of contributions have appeared in recent years on culturally loaded words. This translation needs familiarity with cultural, linguistic and semantic features. Some news is full of culturally loaded words, strange terms and one of them is the religious or in general term ‘political words’ which play a key role in journalism translation through times. The cultural terms in journalism translation are definitely difficult and controversial to some journalist translators. This difficulty maybe because of the differences between different cultures, religions, ideologies, and beliefs. Translation of political writing or journalistic article needs great cultural familiarity with L1 and L2 and the targets receivers by the translator. Therefore; effective methods were provided to solve culture-bound problems in journalism translation from Arabic into English. This article suggests an article from CNN News translated into Arabic entitles“ Islamists Take Foreign Hostages in Attack on Algerian Oil Field” will be taken as a case study. The researcher applies some examples in the languages of English and Arabic to make the statements more clear. The main objective of this present paper is to show the problem of culturally loaded words in journalistic writing and explain different translations used in this article from English to Arabic. After analyzing all the samples, it has been also determined that the ideologies and politics influence the way used in journalistic translation which means that the journalist translator is not free but under the censorship of CNN Agency. Moreover; in this paper, the various cultural words must be translated in their own context in order to establish their significance when translated into another language and culture and the target audiences and amateurs must be convinced of this type of translation.

Niccolo Machiavelli and His Influence on Lesotho Political Rulers

In his famous “The Prince”, Machiavelli drastically differs from all political writing of ancient antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance that had one central question: the end of the state. Machiavelli assumes that power is an end in itself, and maintains that the ruler ought to focus on acquiring, retaining and expanding power. While the moralist adheres to the supremacy of his moral code and the ecclesiastic to his religious code, Machiavelli recognizes the supremacy of the precepts of his code in politics: the acquisition, retention and expansion of power. It is argued that most Lesotho political rulers follow in the footsteps of Machiavelli, and this has occurred from gaining independence in the Mountain Kingdom. For Lesotho political rulers heavily influenced by Machiavelli’s amorality, power is regarded as an end in itself. Consequently, the Mountain Kingdom governed by ruthless and tyrant rulers whose aim is to retain and expand power, have subjects who live below poverty line.

Feminism and the Position of Women

Feminism in its modern meanings attests to a movement for change in the social, economic and legal position of women. In the Romantic period, no such movement existed. There were, however, individual women whose voices, separately and together, suggest the existence of a commonality of feeling around the intellectual advancement of the female sex. This article examines writing by women on female education and sexual and social reform, focussing on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Robinson, and Mary Lamb. It connects political writing and educational treatises to the novels and essays written by these women and it reflects on the shared concerns from which modern feminism emerged.

Nondimeno. Una nota sul linguaggio dell’eccezione e della circostanza nel Carteggio sforzesco

On the basis of the recent monograph by C. Ginzburg and G. Pedullà’s review, it is possible to identify the word nondimanco/nondimeno (nonetheless) as an important element in Renaissance political writing. However, it does not only appear in the work of Machiavelli or Guicciardini and in the more conscious reflections by the intellectuals, but also in the huge amount of letters that constitute the government correspondence of the time. In these kinds of pragmatic texts, referring to the state of Milan in the Sforza age, it recurs as a key word of a dilemma: the friction between law and transgression (or exception considered legitimate) and also between law and practice. On one hand, it expresses an assumption invested in value: the duke must honor his promises and the contents of the chapters agreed on with his subjects; custom demands respect; factional divisions must be overcome. At the same time it reveals the concern that this principle could be trampled upon, or instead the will, if not the need, to attenuate the more general rule. This conjunction thus summarized the requirement to nuance the law, to adapt it to circumstance, and to conciliate potentially conflicting rights or reasons. In short, it stands as an indicator of one of the main causes of open tensions in the late medieval state, debated by a long tradition of scholars ranging from O. Brunner to R. Fubini: the opposition between the authority of the prince, as arbiter of the exception requested from time to time from the same variety of concrete situations, and the legalistic culture of the territorial bodies, which, referring to law and custom, tempted to stem the “extraordinary” powers that the duke was attributing to himself.

Shakespeare's Body Parts

This book provides a sustained, formalist and theoretically-informed reading of the multiple body parts that litter the dialogue and action of Shakespeare’s history plays, including Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, King John, and the Henry IV plays. Starting with a literary critical analysis of these dislocated bodies, the book follows Shakespeare’s own relentless pursuit of a specific political question: how does human flesh, blood, and bone relate to sovereignty? Shakespeare’s treatment of the body is also read against two other bodies of work: early modern political writing, and twentieth- and twenty first-century critical theory. Like Shakespeare’s histories, these develop understandings of sovereign power through considerations of the body: from Jean Bodin’s inalienable sovereignty, located in the body of the monarch, through Hobbes’ mechanistic Leviathan, to Kantorowicz’s “two bodies” and Derrida’s “prosthstatics” in which forms of sovereign power are imagined as machine- or animal-like. Along the way, particular body parts – knees, hands, heads, and throats – come to the fore as particular objects of interest.

Theopoetics to Theopraxis

The theological turn in continental philosophy has beckoned several new possibilities for theoretical discourse. More recently, the question of the absence of a political theology has been raised: Can an ethics of alterity offer a more substantive politics? In pursuing this question, the article considers the late work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo. It argues that, contrary to caricatures of Caputo’s “theology of event,” his notion of theopoetics evinces a “materialist turn” in his mature thought that can be considered the beginning of a “radical political theology.” This position is not without its challenges, however, raising concerns over deconstruction’s ability to navigate the immanent but necessary dangers of politics. In order to attempt to speak of a form of “radical political theology”—i.e. a movement from theopoetics to theopraxis—the article turns to some of the political writing of Simon Critchley. It is argued that a much desired “political viscerality” for a radical political theology is supplied by Critchley’s anarchic realism. The latter is neither conceived as utopian nor defeatist, but as a sustained program of inventive and creative political interventions, which act as responses to the singularity of the situation.

Chomsky and Genocide

Noam Chomsky may justly be considered the most important public intellectual alive, and the most significant of the post-World War Two era. Despite his scholarly contributions to linguistics, at least three generations know him primarily for his political writings and activism, voicing a left-radical, humanist critique of US foreign policy and other subjects. Given that a human-rights discourse is prominent in Chomsky’s political writing, and given that genocide-related controversies have sometimes swirled around him, it is worthwhile to consider the overall place and framing of genocide in his published output. The present paper undertakes such an inquiry. It employs a broad and systematic sampling of Chomsky's published work (including online sources and interviews) to explore: - How Chomsky understands the concept "genocide," and how this has evolved over the years; - His skepticism towards the term and and criticisms of its political manipulation; - Past genocide-related controversies involving Chomsky (the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia/Kosovo, Rwanda); - Cases of mass violence that Chomsky considers genocides, "near" or "virtual" genocides, and propagandistic non-genocides; - The place of the Holocaust and Israel in Chomsky's analysis; and - Structural forms of genocide, especially those linked to contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism. The attempt is to provide a critical and wide-ranging evaluation of a leading public intellectual's writing and commentary on genocide over the past half-century.