Might and Right

The chapter sets out to critically discuss the methodological approach that Ripstein chooses when reconstructing Kant’s position and in particular how he defines and relates “constitutive” and “regulative” principles with respect to peace and public right. Forst focuses on what he calls a paradox of peace: peace is supposed to avoid, end, or overcome war as the practice of might making right; but the principle of peace itself at crucial points seems to require us to accept that might makes right, at least as far as the past is concerned. Specifically, Forst offers a different interpretation of the relevant constitutive principle in the realm of the practical, namely that of freedom, and he invites Ripstein to move beyond Kant in questioning rather than affirming the paradox of peace.

Similia Similibus Curentur: Theory, History, and Status of the Constitutive Principle of Homeopathy

A clear definition of its subject and correct application of its tenets are the basis of any science. Conversely, the want of a unanimous understanding of its constituting principles by the homeopathic community is undermining its scientific practice, research and discussion. To facilitate these, first and foremost the Principle of Similars, similia similibus curentur, has to be clarified and assessed in terms of its theoretical meaning, historical development, and epistemological status. Hahnemann's conceptions, explanations, and appraisals were not static but evolved and hardened over the years, especially from 1796 to 1810. While initially he related similia similibus to an imitation of similar cures by nature and proposed it as an opposition to contraria contrariis, he later generalised it to the treatment of any disease. Whilst originally he considered it to be a hermeneutical principle, or a hint towards a curative remedy, Hahnemann later dogmatised it as the only truth. Considering advances in epistemology and theory of medicine, however, the Principle of Similars may not be assessed as a final truth or natural law to be empirically verified or falsified for good, but rather as a practical maxim, guiding the artist of healing in his/her curing of diseases rationally and individually.

The Agonal Principle of Russian Consciousness in the Concept of M.O. Koyalovich

he article shows that M.O. Koyalovich demonstrated an amazing independence of thinking and thus made valuable synthesis formulations of Slavophil ideologies. He was the first to turn to the material of the history of Russian historical science with a specific approach showing the consistent maturing of Russian historical consciousness. This approach allowed M.O. Koyalovich to define the constitutive principle of Russian historical consciousness, - the principle of agonality, i.e. the struggle against the imposition of foreign views on Russian history. M.O. Koyalovich carries out the substantiation of his theory at three levels of the material analysis –the struggle of the southern Russian people against the Catholic Union; general definitions of Russian consciousness in the spirit of classic Slavophils; and the analysis of the history of Russian historical science. On the basis of Russian classical historiography texts Koyalovich showed the process of Russian historical consciousness formation in response to its suppression by foreign influences, which makes this analysis especially relevant nowadays. All this allows us to consider the scientific heritage of M.O. Koyalovich extremely valuable and requiring study already at the secondary school level.

The Political Significance of Luck: A Thucydidean Perspective

Contemporary authorities invoke luck to explain the arbitrariness of economic success, to emphasize our shared vulnerability to disaster, and to urge more generous policy, legislation, and governance. According to Robert Frank, Martha Nussbaum, and Ronald Dworkin, for example, extreme bad luck can befall individuals no matter what they know or do. By redefining luck as a psychological phenomenon (rather than as a constitutive principle of the world), this article challenges the contemporary consensus. My approach to luck arises out of my engagement with the political thought of Thucydides. Whereas influential interpreters present Thucydides as a witness to the crushing power of bad luck, and whereas they criticize Thucydides’ Pericles for being insufficiently deferential to luck, I revisit and defend Pericles’ skeptical and psychological approach to luck, and I argue that Thucydides shares this approach, at least in the main. The pathological intellectual and emotional responses to apparent good or bad luck diagnosed by Pericles in his final speech recur throughout the History and influence the evolution of the whole war. Going beyond Pericles, Thucydides shows that the appeal of luck arises out of a human need to explain, beautify, or lament what is merely natural necessity, haphazard coincidence, or awful suffering.

Middling Romanticism

The book examines the “middling” work performed by writers of the Romantic period such as Lessing, Kleist, P. B. Shelley, and Hölderlin. It traces their attempts to re-imagine the middle as a constitutive principle, which begin with dislodging terms such as medium, moderation, and mediation from their conventional roles as self-evident, self-effacing tools that conduct from one pole to another or provide a compromise between two extremes. What they offer instead is a dwelling in and with the middle: an attention to intervals, interstices, and gaps that recognize their centrality to the concept of relation. This produces a profound medial ambivalence that underpins romanticism’s re-writing of conceptual pairs such as origin and destination, speaker and addressee, deficit and surplus, self and other. In this light, we might also ask what it means for us to recognize our mediated relationship to romanticism. To address this question, the readings consider romantic writing in the context of a double juxtaposition: alongside the legacy of romantic middling in the twentieth century but the classical sources about the middle that romanticism draw on. The challenge is to see romanticism as neither ancient nor modern, but as the historical hinge upon which such distinctions turn, the mirror in which our own image is mediated and cast back to us.

Introduction

Romanticism is often understood as an age of extremes, yet it also marks the birth of the modern medium in all senses of the word. Engaging with key texts of the romantic period, the book outlines a wide-reaching project to re-imagine the middle as a constitutive principle. Sng argues that Romanticism dislodges such terms as medium, moderation, and mediation from serving as mere self-evident tools that conduct from one pole to another. Instead, they offer a dwelling in and with the middle: an attention to intervals, interstices, and gaps that make these terms central to modern understandings of relation.

Memórias da violência no drama pós-catástrofe / Memories of Violence in Post-Catastrophe Drama

Resumo: A partir, principalmente, de Walter Benjamin e Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, esse trabalho analisa a insurgência na dramaturgia de Plínio Marcos de um embrião narrativo que, fazendo uso da memória traumática dos personagens e da crítica do poder como violência (Gewallt), encontrará sua realização plena em Querô, uma reportagem maldita, romance e drama da década de 1970. Na adaptação teatral do romance, a forma biográfica da matéria rememorada, princípio constitutivo da ação dramática, impôs mudanças na fábula que, negando a estrutura sintagmática da ação, passou a assumir uma configuração pós-catástrofe da cena, na qual o passado de violências do personagem é agenciado no presente da enunciação por uma “dramaturgia do retorno” e por um processo descontínuo e disjuntivo das lembranças. Na comparação entre drama e romance, compreende-se como a memória da educação sentimental de Querô coloniza a ação teatral, caracterizando uma dramaturgia da intrassubjetividade em que o personagem, testemunha de si mesmo, narra a própria Paixão.Palavras-chave: crítica da violência; drama pós-catástrofe; Plínio Marcos.Abstract: Grounded mainly on Walter Benjamin and Jean-Pierre Sarrazac’s work, this article analyzes the insurgency in Plinio Marcos’s dramaturgy of a narrative embryo that, using the traumatic memory of characters and the critique of power as violence (Gewallt), will find its full materialization in Querô, a Damned Report (“Querô, Uma reportagem maldita”), romance and drama on the 1970s. In the theatrical adaptation of the novel, the biographical form of the remembered matter, constitutive principle of dramatic action, imposed changes in the fable that, denying the syntagmatic structure of the action, began to assume a post-catastrophe configuration of the scene in which the violent past of the character is settled in the present of the enunciation by a “dramaturgy of return” and by a discontinuous and disjunctive process of remembering. Comparing the drama and the novel, one understands how the memory of Querô’s sentimental education colonizes the theatrical action, characterizing a dramaturgy of intra-subjectivity in which the character, witness of himself, narrates his own Passion.Keywords: criticism of violence; post-catastrophe drama; Plinio Marcos.

Women’s Coalitions beyond the Laicism–Islamism Divide in Turkey: Towards an Inclusive Struggle for Gender Equality?

In the 2010s in Turkey, the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) authoritarian-populist turn accompanied the institutionalization of political Islam. As laicism was discredited and labeled as an imposed-from-above principle of Western/Kemalist modernity, the notion of equality ceased to inform the state’s gender policies. In response to AKP’s attempts to redefine gender relations through the notions of complementarity and fıtrat (purpose of creation), women across the political spectrum have mobilized for an understanding of gender equality that transcends the laicism–Islamism divide yet maintains secularity as its constitutive principle. Analyzing three recent attempts of women’s coalition-building, this article shows that, first, gender equality activists in the 2010s are renegotiating the border between secularity and piety towards more inclusive understandings of gender equality; and second, that struggles against AKP’s gender politics are fragmented due to different configurations of gender equality and secularity that reflect class and ethnic antagonisms in Turkish society. The article thereby argues for the need to move beyond binary approaches to secularism and religion that have so far dominated the scholarly analysis of women’s activism in both Turkey and the Nordic context.