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The aim of the present article is to demonstrate that people who explore the mountains or have ties to the mountains are among those who bring progress or at least believe they do. The author also seeks to show that in many periods mountain treks had a rather significant social or religious dimension, and specific groups or classes becoming mountaineers often became a political matter. In order to substantiate the thesis the author uses a number of examples, moving non-chronologically from the twentieth century, especially its first half, through the second half of the nineteenth century, and ending with romanticism and the Enlightenment era. The examples illustrating the author’s thesis are limited territorially to Central Europe, mainly its part that was historically or still is today German-speaking.

Glocalization as the dominant trend in the development of socio-political being: conflict models and constructs

Being a complex dialectical interaction process for differently directed social centrifugal and centripetal movements, glocalization leads to a significant transformation of political being and consciousness (Chumakov, 2016). Being a natural reaction to the developing unification narrative, the localization and differentiation tendencies, on the other hand, become a causal basis of the struggle for overcoming differences. Both trends symbolize, within their frameworks, the basic values of each narrative and create their political mythologies, each of which has an impact on the collective stratum of consciousness and, as a consequence, on a certain model of socio-political behavior of individuals. Political "myths of global unity" lead the core constructions of political and social being - the nation and the state - to a decrease in their authority and legitimacy level; at the same time, the "mythology of difference", while preserving the dominant political values, reorients them to local manifestations, also losing their connection with the central elements of the political matter. Thus, special conflictual forms of development are formed in contemporary society and are conditioned by both real objective preconditions and artificially generated constructs. Socio-political being, therefore, is in a state of dialectical equilibrium and develops within the conflict paradigm.

The Religious beliefs of Critias the Sophist: Rational Theology or Atheism?

Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. IX. 54. = B 25 DK) has preserved a fragment of a work attributed to the sophist and tyrant Critias. This fragment has long been considered a manifesto not only of atheism but also, perhaps, the first text in which religion is a purely political matter and the work of men's hands. Nevertheless, this text is still very problematic, because, taking into account the evidence of the primary sources, there is no real reason to believe that a) its author is precisely Critias who lead the Thirty Tyrants, b) that this is the fragment of the play "Sisyphus", c) that the "Sisyphus" is a satyr-play, d) that its author is not Euripides, and e) that it is indeed the manifesto of atheism and not a rational theological system that is completely loyal to everyday religious beliefs, which, without belittling religion, on the contrary, postulates its permanent benefit for any society. Whoever the author of this hypothetical "Sisyphus" might have been, he acted as a true sophist and rhetorician - by influencing one of the most important existential human experiences - the feeling of fear. And he had done it using logos and persuasion. The philosophical and moral issues of the fragment in question are entirely within the scope of intellectual debate in the second half of the fifth century BC. And one of the most important topics is the possibility of committing a secret crime that would not be detected not only by the law of the city of Athens but also by the gods.

Aeneas the colonist

It has not been sufficiently acknowledged that Virgil repeatedly, even systematically, presents Aeneas in the characteristic and unmistakable guise of a Greek oecist: the Aeneid is, amongst much else, very much an epic of urban settlement and colonization. That so much of the political matter of the Aeneid seems to be clarified when studied in terms of Greek colonial history will perhaps come as a surprise. Colonial settlement is a major thread in the texture of the poem, and a great deal still remains to be done towards elucidating the refinements and complexities of Virgil’s political argumentation.

Out of sync, out of society: Political beliefs and social networks

Who is more likely to be isolated from society in terms of political beliefs? To answer this question, we measure whether individuals’ beliefs are “out of sync”—the extent to which their views differ with their contemporaries—and examine how the level of synchronization is associated with the size of important-matter and political-matter discussion networks. The results show that people with weaker belief synchronization are more likely to have smaller important-matter discussion networks. However, additional analyses of political-matter discussion networks show that weaker belief synchronization is associated with smaller networks only among those without a high school diploma and even provides some advantage in maintaining larger networks for the college-educated. Overall, the results imply that political beliefs that are “out of sync” correspond to the individual being “out of society,” whereas the aspects of “out of society” are quite different among educational groups.

Deterritorialising the Jungle: Understanding the Calais camp through its orderings

Research on refugee camps and camp-like institutions has gained momentum over the last few decades, as camps have been spreading everywhere in Europe under the impact of the massive increase of migrants stuck at border zones. While early conceptualisations are based on the paradigm of the exception, some scholars have recently posited camps as socio-political spaces which are negotiated and reproduced by the everyday entanglements of the multiple bodies that contribute to their making. This article aims to make a contribution to this strand of literature by understanding camps as the temporary result of spatial and material processes of ordering. By grounding my reasoning on fieldwork in Calais, I explore the countless negotiations and the attunement of multiple rhythms that organised and segmented the Jungle. I focus on the territories built by aid groups, the state and stuff, namely the supplies that flew into the encampment, how their assembling produced orderings and control, and how those orderings shaped the political space of the camp. This territorial account aims to stress the role of the affective and the material in mediating encounters that may produce new orderings while opening up to lines of flight and the configuration of political matter.

The Legal Limbo of Counter-Terrorism Criminal Law and Armed Conflict Anti-Regime and Anti-IS (Foreign) Fighters Before European Courts

The Syrian conflict has reached public prosecution offices and courts in numerous European states with full force. Criminal investigations and proceedings against so-called foreign fighters returning from Syria as well as against persons who arrived as refugees or migrants and were involved in the conflict as members of non-state armed groups have rapidly increased in recent years. Most of the fighters returning or arriving from Syria to Europe are members of the so-called Islamic State or comparable jihadist groups and are being prosecuted for counter-terrorism crimes. In this contribution, however, the focus will be on those groups for which classification as “terrorist organization” is less clear. This paper takes a closer look at the criminal investigations and proceedings that are being conducted in several European states against anti-regime and anti-IS (foreign) fighters. Do members of these groups also face prosecution under counter-terrorism criminal law after their return to or their entry into the country? Or does counter-terrorism criminal law differentiate between the groups involved in the Syrian conflict? Is this differentiation a legal or a political matter? Who is responsible for the decision? What criteria apply?

Przewrót Machiavellego

MACHIAVELLI’S SUBVERSION The article features a short recapitulation of intellectual achievements in the sphere of politics of Niccolò Machiavelli. On many points he broke with the established way of thinking about politics and steered it in new directions. His revolution was expressed, among other things, in the positioning of politics as a central human activity, in the development of a new methodology for penetrating political matter, in the development of a new perspective on the tasks of political power and on relations between states, in the re-drawing of the relationship between morality and politics, and in an innovative view of the nature of man.

Opening and Changes of the Firms TIC: Case of Cuts Internet in Political Matter in Democratic Republic of Congo

The cuts of Internet in political matter started with "Arab spring" and since then know a fast progression in Africa at the point to become an international public problem today putting in scene the modes in place, in certain African States, and their opponents. Indeed, in what appears as a battle for the control of information and the control of the public opinion, there are on a side the African governments which, to justify the interruption of Internet, propose the need for safeguarding of the law and order like act of sovereignty, in fact the right to prevent the misinformation and any illegal publication of the electoral data. On the other side, there are the oppositions which view this step as the violation of the principles of freedoms, in particular the freedom of expression, at ends of fiddle of the electoral data. The scientific stake of this analysis, starting from African case studies, and of the RDC in particular, is to reflect on the ambivalence of the decision to cut Internet, in order to as well show the consequences of these restrictions on the economy, the credibility of the elections, the social one and, by the same occasion, to carry a glance on the reaction of the international community.

Elizabeth the Rhetorician. An Analysis of the Greatest Speeches by the Virgin Queen

In the recent past Elizabeth Tudor’s rhetorical charisma has raised an ever-increasing interest within the academic domain. The scope of this paper is to examine the queen’s abilities to persuade and captivate her subjects, as well as her diplomatic attitudes and magniloquence; in pursuing this aim, great attention will be given to the most remarkable speeches she gave before the dignitaries of the royal crown and the English militancy, with particular regard to those rhetorical skills she learnt to master and sharpen over the years. Since the political matter was, to her, an expression of ‘inwardness,’ Elizabeth’s way of ruling has always reflected her personal vicissitudes. Looking at her public speeches with a discerning eye means probing her mind quite consciously and attempting to identify with one of the greatest sovereigns whose mark on the sixteenth century European scene remains indelible.