Romantyzm krańców Europy. Portugalia, Polska i Chrystus narodów

This article tentatively provides acomparative outlook on Polish and Portuguese Romanticism. Taking as a starting point the famous parallel between the opposite ends of Europe sketched by the 19th-century historian Joachim Lelewel, the author claims that Polish and Portuguese literature, although they had almost no direct contact with each other, participated in the same system of cultural coordinates established by European Romanticism. At the same time, both nations had some sort of dispute or clash with Europe, developing syndromes of inferiority, as well as megalomaniac visions of their moral superiority. Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano tried to provide a solution, harmonising their country with its European context. The conclusion accentuates the uttermost victory of this harmonising vision, presenting the contemporary Portuguese culture as fully Europeanised and contrasting it with the doubts concerning European identity that may be observed in contemporary Poland.

The Legitimation Strategies of “Progressive” Prosecutors

This article focuses on the self-legitimation strategies of frontline prosecutors working in a Northeastern city in the United States (“Belton”). The research took place in a self-described “progressive” prosecutor's office in the midst of a legitimacy crisis that prosecutors faced across the country. The prosecutors in Belton spoke about their role and practices in the face of this legitimacy crisis through a strategy of differentiation from other criminal justice actors, aimed at establishing their purported positional and moral superiority in enacting criminal justice practices, and through minimizing their responsibility for the systemic harms that prosecutors more generally have been said to perpetuate.

From Nobility and Excellence to Generosity and Rights: Sophia's Defenses of Women (1739–40)

This article examines two early modern feminist works, Woman Not Inferior to Man (1739) and Woman's Superior Excellence Over Man (1740), written by “Sophia, A Person of Quality.” Scholars once dismissed these texts as plagiarisms or semi-translations of François Poulain de la Barre's De l’égalité des deux sexes (1673). More recently, however, Guyonne Leduc has drawn attention to the original aspects of these treatises by highlighting Sophia's significant variations on Poulain's vocabulary (Leduc 2010; 2012; 2015). In this article, I take Leduc's analysis a step further by demonstrating that Sophia's variations amount to unique and distinctive arguments for the restoration of women's rights, based on both the natural equality and the moral superiority of women compared to men. I argue that Sophia goes beyond Poulain's Cartesian insights to mount a critique of male tyranny characterized as a lack of generosity toward women. My contention is that Sophia's texts represent a culmination in a line of reasoning that extends from the querelle des femmes of the Renaissance to Poulain's Cartesian feminism of the seventeenth century, through to arguments for women's rights in the eighteenth century. Her works thus warrant greater recognition as significant turning points in the history of feminist thought.

Reframing cancer: challenging the discourse on cancer and cancer drugs—a Norwegian perspective

Background As the range of therapeutic options in the field of oncology increases, so too does the strain on health care budgets. The imbalance between what is medically possible and financially feasible is frequently rendered as an issue of tragic choices, giving rise to public controversies around health care rationing. Main body We analyse the Norwegian media discourse on expensive cancer drugs and identify four underlying premises: (1) Cancer drugs are de facto expensive, and one does not and should not question why. (2) Cancer drugs have an indubitable efficacy. (3) Any lifetime gained for a cancer patient is an absolute good, and (4) cancer patients and doctors own the truth about cancer. Applying a principle-based approach, we argue that these premises should be challenged on moral grounds. Within the Norwegian public discourse, however, the premises largely remain unchallenged due to what we find to be unjustified claims of moral superiority. We therefore explore alternative framings of the issue of expensive cancer drugs and discuss their potential to escape the predicament of tragic choices. Conclusions In a media discourse that has seemingly stagnated, awareness of the framings within it is necessary in order to challenge the current tragic choices predicament the discourse finds itself in. In order to allow for a discourse not solely concerned with the issue of tragic choices, the premises that underlie it must be subjected to critical examination. As the field of oncology advances rapidly, we depend on a discussion of its opportunities and challenges that is meaningful, and that soberly addresses the future of cancer care—both its potential and its limits.

The Democratic Peace Theory: Is War a Means to Peace?

In the twenty first century, the idea of democracy has transcended its original conception of domestic governance to actively influence international relations. The nature of state—democratic or nondemocratic—has come to determine hierarchy, alliances, and status in international relations. It tends to bestow a degree of moral superiority to democratic states in dealings of international relations. This moral superiority in its most aggressive form, in the past two decades, has led to wars in the name of democracy. It has been used to justify military intervention in nondemocratic states by democratic nations. The use of force to bring about desired consequences has become the norm in inter-state relations. The focus is not on the action, but on its intent. This article studies the use of force and war by Western democratic countries to establish democracies through military intervention in other parts of the world. The article analyzes the widespread impact of foreign policies of the stronger nation-states and seeks to understand if the desired results are achieved or not. Beginning with the democratic peace theory that is held in high opinion by democracies of today, the article moves toward Immanuel Kant and his idea of perpetual peace. The democratic peace theory finds its base in Kant’s perpetual peace and finds an echo in Western democracies’ foreign policies. The article then sees how this theory is used to justify war, through the case study of Afghanistan, and what is the intention behind the wars. The article concludes that the desired aim of “positive peace” cannot be achieved via violent means. In the process of establishing peaceful and healthy democracy, Kant’s categorical imperatives are crucial.

A Dark Green Religious Analysis of the Life and Work of Wangari Maathai (1940 - 2011)

Dark Green Religion (DGR), is an umbrella term formulated by Bron Taylor, to describe nature revering movements that do not fit into the category of organized religion. These movements use religious-like emotions to express their convictions and display a sincere commitment towards the environment. A central focus of DGR is a deep-felt kinship with all living organisms on Earth (arising from a Darwinian understanding that all forms of life have developed from a common ancestor), accompanied by feelings of humility coupled with a critical view of human moral superiority. This article presents a Dark Green Religious analysis of the life and work of Wangari Maathai (1940-2011). She was the first woman in East Africa to receive a doctorate, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work with the Green Belt Movement (GBM). In the DGR analysis, it is illustrated that the principles of belonging, interconnectedness and sacredness are revealed through Maathai’s written legacy. Evidence is also presented that she could be viewed as an example of Naturalistic Gaianism, one of the four types of DGR. In conclusion, a link between ecofeminism and DGR is proposed by highlighting the shared concepts between the two phenomena.

Benjamin Drew and Samuel Gridley Howe on Race Relations in Early Ontario: Mythologizing and Debunking Canada West’s “Moral Superiority”

This essay examines the respective mythologizing and debunking of Canada’s “moral superiority” over the United States on matters of white-Black race relations in Benjamin Drew’s 1856 The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada and Samuel Gridley Howe’s 1864 The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West. Their accounts of the impact of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and American Civil War on Canadian and American political reputations are instructive. The historical presence of Black people in the making of Ontario’s history and its relationship to American ante-bellum history helps to understand in part from where the superiority myth originates. The impact of the American Civil War on the making of Canada as a political entity has been studied by historians but its cultural force is less studied, particularly in literary studies. The relative absence of such knowledge seems part and parcel of the negative definition of Canada as not-American, indeed anti-American, and has helped to continue the mythology of Canada’s moral superiority over the US on matters of white-Black relations. Drew’s and Howe’s work on the substantial presence of Black settlers in early Ontario has been invaluable for the study of both the diaspora and settlement of Black freedom seekers in Upper Canada/Canada West in the antebellum period. Analysis of the rhetoric of national differences on racism in Drew’s The Refugee (1856) and Howe’s The Refugees (1864), particularly on education and law, counters, as does a wealth of scholarship by Black scholars, the myth of Canada’s racial benevolence.

Revisiting Plural Marriage in the 21st Century: Polygamy, Politics and Power

This paper reviews the complex history of plural marriage associated with the Mormon Church, giving consideration to views that are both favorable and unfavorable to the practice of polygamy. Interdisciplinary in nature, this paper delves into the religious underpinnings common to the practice of polygamy in the United States, alongside a discussion of media framing and court decisions that could impact the future of polygamy. Utilizing a social constructionist framework informed by historical information, media narratives from women who have experienced polygamy first-hand, and legal arguments surrounding the practice of plural marriage, the author argues that modern opposition to polygamy is rooted in ideas of moral superiority and is not aligned with many historical accounts of polygamy nor with the changing tides of legal recognition of fundamental rights and familial status occurring in the United States in the 21st century.

Articulating Logics of Social Rights

This chapter uses temporalities of migration as a conceptual tool to explain its manifestation among Taiwanese immigrants as they consider intimate relations with their home and host societies. It analyzes the way aging immigrants reconsider their worthiness for “social care” provided by both the US and the Taiwanese governments. It also points out how older immigrants constructed moral boundaries to govern their use of public resources and how they attempted to justify their right to government-sponsored entitlements for senior citizens and claim moral superiority over newcomers by denigrating other migrant groups. The chapter explores how temporal variation offered aging immigrants new options and resources for organizing their lives across national borders. It mentions public benefits programs that offer older returnees a new means for overcoming the difficulties they had encountered in the United States.

Pseudonyms as carriers of contextualised threat in 19th-century Irish English threatening notices

This paper explores functions of pseudonyms in written threatening communication from a cognitive sociolinguistic perspective. It addresses the semantic domains present in pseudonyms in a corpus of 19th-century Irish English threatening notices and their cognitive functions in the construction of both cultural-contextualised threat and the threatener’s identity. We identify eight semantic domains that are accessed recurrently in order to create threat. Contributing to the notion of threat involves menacing war, violence, darkness and perdition directly, while also constructing a certain persona for the threatener that highlights their motivation, moral superiority, historical, local and circumstantial expertise, and their physical and mental aptitude. We argue that pseudonyms contribute to the deontic force of the threat by accessing cultural categories and schemas as well as conceptual metaphors and metonymies. Finally, we suggest that pseudonyms function as post-positioned semantic frame setters, providing a cognitive lens through which the entire threatening notice must be interpreted.