This chapter uncovers a less investigated aspect of the relationship between the two most important scholastic schools of the Renaissance, Thomism and Scotism: the influence of Scotist literature on distinctions as seen in some sixteenth-century Thomists. The chapter has a primary focus on Chrysostomus Javelli’s engagement in his discussion of divine attributes with the Scotist doctrine of distinctions, but also considers other Thomist sources. First, the beginnings of the highly specialised Scotist literature on distinctions are traced back to the start (...) of the fourteenth century; I show how some early followers of Duns Scotus, in particular Francis of Meyronnes and Petrus Thomae, systematised Scotus’ ontology of the various grades of being by compiling lists of subtle distinctions to be applied to various levels of reality. I give some indications as to the later reception of these models of distinctions in the Scotist school. Special attention is paid to Étienne Brulefer, since his summary of Petrus Thomae’s model of seven distinctions was Javelli’s source for the Scotist doctrine. I then investigate how Javelli worked with Brulefer’s summary, and how he sought to integrate the Scotist doctrine into his own discussion of divine attributes. Thomists traditionally allowed only a rational or mental kind of distinction among divine attributes, and between them and the divine essence. Javelli, however, endeavours to show how the Thomist position may be reconciled with the Scotist doctrine of a formal or ex natura rei distinction. He did not always endorse this conciliatory approach; I hypothesise that he changed his mind on the subject over time. Finally, I show how other Renaissance Thomists reacted to the Scotist system of distinctions; in particular, I draw attention to the Thomists Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Bartolomeo Manzoli, and Mattia Gibboni da Aquario, who all wrote treatises on Thomist distinction theory modelled on the Scotist system of distinctions. In some of this literature, lists of distinctions based on Thomist metaphysics were compiled in order to replace the Scotist system. I argue that Javelli’s approach is more conciliatory and, in fact, has some overlap with the concordist thought of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who himself considered Scotus and Aquinas to be in fundamental agreement as regards the distinction between divine attributes. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of criminalisation address, with varying emphasis, themes concerning the harmfulness and the wrongfulness of the conduct. In his article for the present issue, Antony Duff relies chiefly on notions of wrongfulness as the basis for his proposed criminalisation doctrines; whereas in their 2011 volume on criminalisation, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch invoke both wrongfulness and harmfulness as prerequisites for prohibiting conduct. The present article assesses the comparative merits of these approaches, and argues in favour of the (...) latter, two-element perspective. In this article, the author puts forward a number of reasons suggesting why the two-element approach is preferable. These reasons include, firstly, an inductive argument—that the kinds of wrongful conduct for which criminalisation seems a plausible response are those that include an element of harm or risk of harm. Secondly, a defining role for the state is one of resource-protection: of safeguarding the means and resources through which citizens can live good lives. Thus the concept of citizens’ living resources—and the related conception of harm—should be made a constitutive and explicit element of criminalisation theory, rather than subsuming resource-protection under a general rubric of wrongfulness. Thirdly, a two-element approach provides reciprocal limiting principles concerning the scope of criminalisation. One can, for example, employ wrongfulness requirements to limit the criminalisation of conduct that has remote harmful consequences; and, conversely, use a harmfulness requirement as means for restricting the criminalisation of wrongful acts. (shrink)

The essay departs from a detailed discussion of Jakobson’s description of the »poetic function.« It comes to the conclusion that the distinctive feature of poetic language, defined by Jakobson as the production of paradigmatic similarity, cannot be understood as a result of the projection of the paradigmatic axis of language onto its syntagmatic axis. Furthermore, the semantic effect of these similarities does not consist exclusively in a production of ambivalence; frequently, they produce coherence, as can be shown with reference to (...) examples of metaphors, metonymies and allegories. In a second step, the essay turns to a detailed interpretation of the 8th sonnet of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, which examines its intertextual relations to other son- nets of this cycle as well as those to scholastic theology and Platonic philosophy. This interpretation further develops the idea that poetic language produces coherence; for, precisely those lines that at first seem incomprehensible can be understood as implicit propositions and coherencecreating statements. In its concluding section, the paper characterizes the implicit production of coherence as the specific feature of poetic language and discusses the necessity of a hermeneutics of literary texts. (shrink)

The article examines the record of compliance with the UN Committee against Torture’s decisions in individual complaints cases. Theoretically, I expect that compliance will be the outcome of a combination of normative and rationalist factors: States committed to human rights protection will comply even in the absence of enforcement but only as long as compliance costs remain relatively low. Using a data set covering all adverse decisions issued until 2018 and information on their compliance status, I employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative (...) analysis to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for the outcomes of compliance and noncompliance. The analysis reveals that the conditions tested—liberal democracy, nonuse of political terror, violation type, and strong civil society—are in part individually (near-)necessary and jointly sufficient for compliance, while the presence of their complements is consistent with noncompliance. The Committee against Torture thus appears to be able to elicit (some) state compliance with its decisions, if mostly only with respect to certain kinds of states and select types of violations. (shrink)

Information technology (IT) is continuously making astounding progress in technical efficiency. The time, space, material and energy needed to provide a unit of IT service have decreased by three orders of magnitude since the first personal computer (PC) was sold. However, it seems difficult for society to translate IT’s efficiency progress into progress in terms of individual, organizational or socio-economic goals. In particular it seems to be difficult for individuals to work more efficiently, for organizations to be more productive and (...) for the socio-economic system to be more sustainable by using increasingly efficient IT. This article provides empirical evidence and potential explanations for this problem. Many counterproductive effects of IT can be explained economically by rebound effects. Beyond that, we conclude that the technological determinism adopted by decision-makers is the main obstacle in translating IT’s progress into non-technical goals. (shrink)

We discuss and respond to the contributions of Tatjana Hörnle, John Kleinig, and John Stanton-Ife, and clarify some aspects of the arguments made in Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs.

Trust is widely regarded as a critical component to building artificial intelligence (AI) systems that people will use and safely rely upon. As research in this area continues to evolve, it becomes imperative that the research community synchronizes its empirical efforts and aligns on the path toward effective knowledge creation. To lay the groundwork toward achieving this objective, we performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, supplemented with a qualitative content analysis of over two decades of empirical research measuring trust in AI, (...) comprising 1’156 core articles and 36’306 cited articles across multiple disciplines. Our analysis reveals several “elephants in the room” pertaining to missing perspectives in global discussions on trust in AI, a lack of contextualized theoretical models and a reliance on exploratory methodologies. We highlight strategies for the empirical research community that are aimed at fostering an in-depth understanding of trust in AI. (shrink)

The present study aimed to examine the relations between physical self-concept, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well as physical performance of 1,082 children aged 7–8 years. The central objective of this study was to contrast a mediation model assuming physical self-concept as a mediator of the relations between both types of motivation and physical performance to a mediation model assuming both types of motivation as mediators of the relations between physical self-concept and physical performance. Physical self-concept and both types of (...) motivation were measured by using self-reported questionnaires, while physical performance was measured with 10 motor skill tests. All tests were carried out during regular school hours (8–12 A.M.) by qualified test personnel. Beyond correlation analyses, structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed to find evidence for the predictive relations between the variables under study. Results showed that physical self-concept was significantly positively related to both types of motivation and physical performance (allp< 0.001). In contrast, results of SEM revealed that only physical self-concept (p< 0.001) and intrinsic motivation (p< 0.05) were significantly positively linked to physical performance. Furthermore, physical self-concept proved to significantly mediate the relations of both types of motivation to physical performance (p< 0.001), while only intrinsic motivation, but not extrinsic motivation, proved to significantly mediate the relation between physical self-concept and physical performance (p< 0.05). These results suggest that school-based or extracurricular interventions targeted at improving younger children's physical performance only by means of an increased level of physical activity or by external factors without supporting children's physical self-concept and intrinsic motivation may have less or no effects on their physical performance. (shrink)

As a contribution to the emerging field of corporate social responsibility cognition, this article reports on the findings of an exploratory study that compares SME owner–managers’ mental models with regard to CSR and related concepts across six European countries. Utilising Repertory Grid Technique, we found that the SME owner–managers’ mental models show a few commonalities as well as a number of differences across the different country samples. We interpret those differences by linking individual cognition to macro-environmental variables, such as language, (...) national traditions and dissemination mechanisms. The results of our exploratory study show that nationality matters but that classifications of countries as found in the comparative capitalism literature do not exactly mirror national differences in CSR cognition and that these classifications need further differentiation. The findings from our study raise questions on the universality of cognition of academic management concepts and warn that promotion of responsible business practice should not rely on the use of unmediated US American management terminology. (shrink)

The delivery of education in refugee camps has become a key component of humanitarian programs. Since the late 1980s, camps have become the dominant way through which refugee movements are managed around the world. Children, the perfect embodiment of the innocent victim, are particularly targeted by humanitarian aid. When refugee situations become protracted and the temporary permanent, their learning structures tend to be become actual schools made of an administration, a teaching staff and a curriculum. Generally funded and coordinated by (...) the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, these camp schools contribute today to the schooling of almost 3,5 millions of refugee children. Going beyond an idealized vision of education as a “basic human right” and an instrument of “protection,” this article looks at the ways in which humanitarian aid contributes to establishing the school norm in the margins of the Nation-States while at the same time being closely intertwined with the politics of controlling human mobility. Based on the case studies of schools in two Congolese refugee camps, we explore which registers of legitimization and understandings of the child they are built on; how they are governed and negotiated on a daily basis by multiple actors; and how they are perceived by the students. What emerges from this analysis are a variety of tensions that characterize the dynamics of these schools: they simultaneously include their students in and exclude them from the dominant social order; they victimize them at the same time as they project them as future citizens, and they produce the conditions of their confinement while creating opportunities for certain socio-spatial mobilities. (shrink)

The vast majority of empirical research on stakeholder management has traditionally focused on multinational corporations. Only in recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to the stakeholder management concept in relation to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The few existing studies in this area, however, discuss SMEs as a context free category or remain focused on single country analysis. This cross-national empirical research investigates SME owner-managers' perceptions of stakeholder management in six European countries. The comparative analysis is followed by (...) a discussion of how institutional, cultural and linguistic contexts can influence owner-managers' sensemaking of stakeholder management. Our study questions the universality of specific management terms and proposes that more attention should be paid to the institutional, cultural and linguistic environments that shape economic activity in different parts of Europe. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz analysiert sowohl historisch als auch thematisch die Bedeutung des lebensphilosophischen Ansatzes Diltheys für die Entwicklung der hermeneutischen Position Heideggers in die Richtung, die zu der Fassung von Sein und Zeit 1927 führte. Eine Paralleluntersuchung der Haupttexte beider Autoren zeigt, dass für den jungen Heidegger die Perspektive Diltheys eine wesentliche Ergänzung der phänomenologischen Methode Husserls in Richtung eines nichtobjektivierenden Zuganges zum ,,Leben“ war. Die Problematisierung der geschichtlichen Zeit im geistigen Leben ist der Punkt, an dem Heideggers Annäherung an die (...) Philosophie Dilthey sowohl sein Höchstmaß als auch seinen Bruch erreichte. Diltheys bahnbrechendes Verständnis des Phänomens ,,Zeit“ zeigte sich durch Heideggers ,,Destruktion“ noch begrenzt und durch wissenschaftliche (d. h. noch objektivierende) Voraussetzungen gekennzeichnet. (shrink)

Up to now only three lunar tables by Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), published in 1745, 1746, and 1772, were known. For a long time, however, it was assumed that the first two of these tables were identical. The author compared these tables with each other and proved the contrary. This fact also transpires from an examination of their history, which was reconstructed using Euler’s correspondence. In addition, evidence has been found in Euler’s voluminous scientific correspondence and in contemporary publications of the (...) eighteenth century that, between 1742 and 1750, Euler published additional lunar tables anonymously. The author proved Euler’s authorship of at least five lunar tables containing some 100 pages, which were neither recorded in the list of his works nor published in the Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia. (shrink)

Jenseits von Gut und Böse ist ein Werk, mit dem Nietzsche einen neuen Ton fand, um so die „Philosophie der Zukunft“ zu initiieren. Es untergräbt gewohnte Gewissheiten in fundamentalphilosophischer, religiöser, moralischer und politischer Hinsicht. Zugleich verspricht es, die Perspektiven, das Leben der Leser grundlegend zu verändern. Signalbegriffe wie „Wille zur Macht“ und „Sklaven-Moral“ dürfen nicht als feste Lehren missverstanden werden.

This article sheds new light on Alexander von Humboldt’s political position in the revolutionary decade between 1789 and 1799. The young naturalist interacted with both supporters and opponents of the revolution. In July 1790, he even participated in the preparations for the Festival of the Federation in Paris together with Georg Forster. However, Humboldt remained detached from Europe’s polarized politics. He avoided taking a firm stance and distanced himself from revolutionary violence. Continuous emotional and physical crises, in addition to his (...) immersion into scientific studies, fuelled this retreat. While steeped in Enlightenment ideas and committed to a cosmopolitan understanding of liberty, Humboldt absorbed the critique of the French Revolution and the skeptical take on rationalism that the philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander’s brother, articulated.By recognizing these influences and reexamining autobiographical sources, we can identify the various intellectual and political contexts in which Alexander von Humboldt operated during the 1790s. This polycentric approach leads to a nuanced understanding of Humboldt’s political thinking in revolutionary Europe. It explains his caution in political matters and revises the conventional image of Humboldt as a fervent supporter of the French Revolution. (shrink)