Vehement resentment and indignation are rife in societies emerging from dictatorship or civil conflict. How should institutions deal with these emotions? Arguing for the need to recognize and constructively engage negative public emotions, Mihaela Mihai contributes theoretically to the growing field of transitional justice. Drawing on an extensive philosophical literature and case studies of democratic transitions in South Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe, her book rescues negative emotions from their bad reputation and highlights the obstacles and the opportunities (...) such emotions create for democracy. By valorizing negative emotions, either through the judicial review of transitional justice bills or the criminal trials of victimizers, institutions realize the value of respect and concern for all while contributing to a public culture hospitable to democracy. (shrink)

Introduction: Play, Power, and the Western Mentality Whereas play has always had an important, if sometimes unthemat- ized, role in Western literary ...

Tracing the interrelationship among play, poetic imitation, and power to the Hellenic world, Mihai I. Spariosu provides a revisionist model of cultural change in Greek antiquity. Challenging the traditional and static distinction made between archaic and later Greek culture, Spariosu's perspective is grounded in a dialectical understanding of values whose dominance depends on cultural emphasis and which shifts through time. Building upon the scholarship of an earlier volume, Dionysus Reborn, Spariosu her continues to draw on Dionysus--the "God of many (...) names," of both poetic play and sacred power--as a mythical embodiment of the two sides of the classical Greek mentality. Combining philosophical reflection with close textual analysis, the author examines the divided nature of the Hellenic mentality in such primary canonic texts as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, Works and Days, the most well-known of the Presocratic fragments, Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' The Frogs, Plato's Republic and Laws, and Aristotle's Poetics and Politics. Spariosu's model illuminates the many of the most enduring questions in contemporary humanistic study and addresses modern questions about the nature of the interrelation of poetry, ethics, and politics. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 5, Page 1322-1341, October 2021.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

We develop an abstract proof calculus for logics whose sentences are ‘Horn sentences’ of the form: $(\forall X)H \Rightarrow c$ and prove an institutional generalization of Birkhoff completeness theorem. This result is then applied to the particular cases of Horn clauses logic, the ‘Horn fragment’ of preorder algebras, order-sorted algebras and partial algebras and their infinitary variants.

The paper seeks to contribute to the transitional justice literature by overcoming the Democracy v. Justice debate. This debate is normatively implausible and prudentially self-defeating. Normatively, transitional justice will be conceptualised as an imperative of democratic equal concern. Prudentially, it can prevent further violence and provide an opportunity for initiating processes of democratic emotional socialisation. The resentment and indignation animating transitions should be acknowledged as markers of a sense of justice. As such, they can help the reproduction of democracy. However, (...) their public expression must be institutionally filtered through democratic norms. The consistent institutional instantiation of equal respect can educate and recuperate negative emotions for democracy. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant remarks that the feeling of the dynamically sublime is actually conditioned and that its foundation is the moral feeling, which he addressed in the Critique of Practical Reason. In order to elucidate those transient yet significant remarks, this paper confronts the analytic of the dynamically sublime from the third Critique with the analytic of the moral feeling from the second Critique. By uncovering an architectonic, constitutive and structural kinship between the two (...) feelings, the paper contributes to the reconsideration of the relation between Kant’s aesthetics and his ethics. (shrink)

It can be argued that only the equational theories of some sub-elementary function algebras are finitistic or intuitive according to a certain interpretation of Hilbert's conception of intuition. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation of those restricted forms of equational reasoning to classical quantifier logic in arithmetic. The conclusion reached is that Edward Nelson's ‘predicative arithmetic’ program, which makes essential use of classical quantifier logic, cannot be justified finitistically and thus requires a different philosophical foundation, possibly (...) as a restricted form of logicism. (shrink)

The present work approaches a series of wide exploratory investigations in the Romanian rural area, most recently in Livezile-Rimetea micro-region (Apuseni Mountains). Within the civil society and public participation debate context, the study focuses on the variable of religious affiliation (orthodox, non-orthodox), which differentiates the real potential public participation at the population level in the studied area. The immediate conclusion to be drawn is that in the differences in religious affiliation induce variations in expressing the civic activism and in the (...) real or the potential public participation. At the end of our study, the paradox of public participation as diminishing factor of the civil society role is taken into account and this concerns new reflections and investigations on the subject. (shrink)

We use a new version of the Definability Theorem of Beth in order to unify classical theorems of Yuri Matiyasevich and Jan Denef in one structural statement. We give similar forms for other important definability results from Arithmetic and Number Theory.

The fall of the Berlin Wall stood for a symbol of change and freedom across the socialist bloc and inspired the inhabitants in Eastern Europe to take action and revolt against dictatorial regimes. A long and often painful process of social, economic and political transformation began. Scholars grouped their research dealing with such transformations under the label of “Transitology” and the developing subfields of “transitional justice” and “memory studies” expanded and caught the academic interest. The present argument looks at the (...) emergence and evolvement of these fields in parallel with a growing and changing society. (shrink)

With this nuanced and interdisciplinary work, political theorist Mihaela Mihai tackles several interrelated questions: How do societies remember histories of systemic violence? Who is excluded from such histories' cast of characters? And what are the political costs of selective remembering in the present? Building on insights from political theory, social epistemology, and feminist and critical race theory, Mihai argues that a double erasure often structures hegemonic narratives of complex violence: of widespread, heterogeneous complicity and of "impure" resistances, not (...) easily subsumed to exceptionalist heroic models. In dialogue with care ethicists and philosophers of art, she then suggests that such narrative reductionism can be disrupted aesthetically through practices of "mnemonic care," that is, through the hermeneutical labor that critical artists deliver—thematically and formally—within communities' space of meaning. Empirically, the book examines both consecrated and marginalized artists who tackled the memory of Vichy France, communist Romania, and apartheid South Africa. Despite their specificities, these contexts present us with an opportunity to analyze similar mnemonic dynamics and to recognize the political impact of dissenting artistic production. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, the book intervenes in debates over collective responsibility, historical injustice, and the aesthetics of violence within political theory, memory studies, social epistemology, and transitional justice. (shrink)

The paper brings a challenge to Cartesian dualism, while introducing some under-explored manuscript remarks from Wittgenstein’s middle period, which are methodologically and thematically akin to some passages from Merleau-Ponty’s early period. Cartesian dualism relegates pain to mental awareness and location to bodily extension, thus rendering common localizations of pain throughout the body as unintelligible ascriptions. Wittgenstein’s and Merleau-Ponty’s attempts at doing justice to common localizations of pain are mutually illuminating. In their light, Cartesian dualism turns out to involve an objectification (...) and a deappropriation of one’s body. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s unveiling a heterogeneous multiplicity of corporeal spaces (e.g. visual-space, tactile-space, feeling-space) rehabilitates the view, reinforced by Merleau-Ponty, that corporeal pain is intimately related to corporeal localization, while corporeal space is not part of the physical space of things. (shrink)

We give a model-theoretic proof of the fact that for all infinite Abelian groups P ≠ NP in the sense of binary nondeterminism. This result has been announced 1994 by Christine Gabner.

Relations between some theories of semigroups (also known as theories of strings or theories of concatenation) and arithmetic are surveyed. In particular Robinson's arithmetic Q is shown to be mutually interpretable with TC, a weak theory of concatenation introduced by Grzegorczyk. Furthermore, TC is shown to be interpretable in the theory F studied by Tarski and Szmielewa, thus confirming their claim that F is essentially undecidable.

Finitism is given an interpretation based on two ideas about strings (sequences of symbols): a replacement principle extracted from Hilberts class 2 can be justified by means of an additional finitistic choice principle, thus obtaining a second equational theory . It is unknown whether is strictly stronger than since 2 may coincide with the class of lower elementary functions.

Apology An apology is the act of declaring one’s regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, harmed or wronged another. Some apologies are interpersonal (between individuals, that is, between friends, family members, colleagues, lovers, neighbours, or strangers). Other apologies are collective (by one group to another group or by a group to an […].

Assuming that all cultures have gender roles, religion affects women differently than men. What have Catholic women’s religious lives, roles, and images been like? Although all women share a common experience of being women, differences of class, race, religion, culture, and sexual orientation separate them, and therefore taking into account women’s experiences and views can be a difficult task in complex religious contexts. Religious practices have different significance to men and women and their engagement is different. In foraging and horticultural (...) societies, women and men have more egalitarian and complementary roles and women play significant roles in religion – while in agrarian societies the situation is quite different. Large denominations such as Roman Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Orthodox Judaism are strongly against the ordination of women to sacramental ministry. Catholic women are left with a God with whom they cannot identify and who cannot identify with them. (shrink)

This article focuses on the most recent debates in a certain area of the ‘law and emotion’ field, namely the literature on the role of affect in the criminal law. Following the dominance of cognitivism in the philosophy of emotions, authors moved away from seeing emotions as contaminations on reason and examined how affective reactions could be accommodated within penal proceedings. The review is structured into two main components. I look first at contributions about the multi-dimensional presence of emotions within (...) ordinary criminal proceedings. Second, I examine work done on the use of criminal trials under the emotionally stressful circumstances of post-conflict societies. In the conclusion I sketch a theoretical proposal for moving the discussion forward. (shrink)

In a previous paper of the author it was shown that the question whether systems of exponential diophantine equations are solvable in $${\mathbb {Q}}$$ is undecidable. Now we show that the solvability of a conjunction of exponential diophantine equations in $${\mathbb {Q}}$$ is equivalent to the solvability of just one such equation. It follows that the problem whether an exponential diophantine equation has solutions in $${\mathbb {Q}}$$ is undecidable. We also show that two particular forms of exponential diophantine equations are (...) undecidable. (shrink)

The point of view expressed in the present research is directed towards the ideational “torsion” from rationalism to the “language-games” drawing up an analysis according to which one can notice the rationalist and post-rationalist aspects in the philosophy of communication, and the consequences of these perspectives, which could be of great interest as regards the philosophical concepts related to communication, to man or to the human community. As a matter of fact, “the torsion” is only apparent; it cannot hold a (...) dramatic change of the thinking range, from “rationalism” to “neo-positivism”, as regards the comment on Habermas’ theory of communication, as compared to Wittgenstein’s ideas about “the language-games” as central elements of human communication. Jürgen Habermas manifest a specific turn in his way of thinking, aiming at the contemporary modulation of the rationalist approach by means of inter-subjectivism orhumanism, and stressing the modulation of the logical approach, by means of “language-games” and “life-forms.”. (shrink)

The theological aspect of the dispute between the modern philosopher René Descartes, and the Calvinist theologian, Gisbertus Voetius, remains a chapter insufficiently explored in Cartesian studies. This paper highlights a set of objections on natural theology addressed by Descartes and Voetius to each other. It shows and expands the common ground Descartes and Voetius held within natural theology. It argues that their contrasting views revolved mainly around the limits of natural theology. For Voetius, natural theology is extrinsically limited by the (...) revealed God, the external principle of faith. For Descartes, metaphysics or natural theology is intrinsically limited by the incomprehensible idea of the Infinite. (shrink)

The notion of computation has changed the world more than any previous expressions of knowledge. However, as know-how in its particular algorithmic embodiment, computation is closed to meaning. Therefore, computer-based data processing can only mimic life’s creative aspects, without being creative itself. AI’s current record of accomplishments shows that it automates tasks associated with intelligence, without being intelligent itself. Mistaking the abstract for the concrete has led to the religion of “everything is an output of computation”—even the humankind that conceived (...) the computer. The hypostatized role of computers explains the increased dependence on them. The convergence machine called deep learning is only the most recent form through which the deterministic theology of the machine claims more than what it actually is: extremely effective data processing. A proper understanding of complexity, as well as the need to distinguish between the reactive nature of the artificial and the anticipatory nature of the living are suggested as practical responses to the challenges posed by machine theology. (shrink)

In [2] John Burgess describes predicative versions of Frege's logic and poses the problem of finding their exact arithmetical strength. I prove here that PV, the simplest such theory, is equivalent to Robinson's arithmetical theory Q.

Silence features prominently in both political and academic debates about resistance and complicity with repressive orders. On the one hand, the dictum ‘silence is complicity’ is frequently taken for granted. On the other hand, heroes are thought to be those who ‘speak up’ or ‘break the silence’, contest the regime and its henchmen, agitate and take up arms. This paper troubles these assumptions about silence as complicity and speech as resistance. It argues that silence provides an interesting and productive angle (...) for criticising the idealised, temporally static, voluntarist, act-centred and virtuous vision view of heroes that usually dominates national-myth making. The many ways in which resisters deployed silence selectively, strategically, sometimes courageously, sometimes cowardly is erased from redemptive, idealising national narratives of heroism. It is by looking at these silences theoretically and historically that I hope to decentre this hegemonic heroic understanding of resistance. The work of Nobel Laureate Herta Müller serves as an illuminating example. (shrink)

In an effort to delineate a more plausible account of political change, this paper reads Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory as a corrective to exaggerated enthusiasm about the emancipatory force of reflection. This revised account valorizes both Bourdieu’s insights into the acquired, embodied, durable nature of the political habitus and judgment theorists’ trust in individuals’ reflection as a perpetual force of novelty and spontaneity in the public sphere of democratic societies. The main purpose of this exercise is to reveal the mix (...) of continuity and discontinuity that is characteristic of most transformations in the political common sense of democratic societies. In other words, this paper seeks to offer a more complex understanding of the inertial character of reflective judgment and of the difficulty of shifting the categories that define the political common sense. By cross-pollinating the ever-growing literature on reflective judgment and Bourdieu’s sombre theory of politics, we can better calibrate our expectations regarding the possibilities of significant democratic transformation in late capitalist societies. (shrink)