Chapter 1 covers the raising of consciousness and conscience and the interplay of authenticity and estrangement through a reading of Hannah Arendt, whose work we have found a profound inspiration throughout the book, notably her re-imagining of the ancient Greek city state of Athens and the polis as its political forum. The polis is an idealized space in whose relational confines an organized condition of authenticity can appear. It is a space to which those responsible for the administrative defence of the city, the strategoi, belong, but over which they have no authority. Separated from the household (oikos, the root term for economics), the polis is not primarily concerned with necessity, a condition Arendt calls labour, preoccupied with activity aimed at sustaining the metabolic persistence of life. Nor is it primarily a matter of work, of making and fabricating functional, symbolic and institutional things that last, such as temples, or laws, and that in return let the makers and fabricators ‘live on’ in reflection of the things they have produced. Drawing from the structure of the polis, we argue in this chapter for the intimacy between strategy and authenticity

We briefly mentioned in Chapter 2 that the main source of contractual obligations under Qatari contract law arises from: (i) the contract itself; (ii) the intention of the parties at the time of forming the contract; and lastly; (iii) the relevant laws regulating contractual affairs. Here, we need to highlight the fact that obligations in general under the civil law are comprised of three tiers: (i) civil obligations; (ii) natural obligations; and (iii) moral duties. Understanding these is vital to one’s appreciation of contractual performance. Civil obligations include statutory and contractual undertakings, such as the sale of goods and services. Civil obligations also include civil-wrongdoings, which are governed by the law of delict under the CC. Civil-wrongdoings are concerned with personal injury, negligence, defamation, mental distress, etc. All civil obligations are enforceable.

This chapter deals with a single, yet complex and over-arching topic, namely termination of the life of a contract. When a contract is terminated it no longer demands obligations from the parties, although the parties may be liable for damages or restitution. As will be shown, the CC distinguishes between two types of termination: termination proper and rescission. Given that termination produces significant consequences for the parties, the CC sets out general and subject-specific rules. General rules include those on force majeure, impossibility of fulfilment, discharge, set-off, novation and the effects of the death of one of the parties to a contract (among others). Subject-specific rules concern the likelihood of termination in respect of particular contracts, such as leases, deposits, employment and others. The chapter goes on to show that, exceptionally, termination or rescission is automatic, while in the majority of cases one of the parties, typically the debtor, must apply to the courts for termination or rescission.

In chapter 8 we discussed the defects of consent, whereas here we shall dive deeper into the effects of defects in general. Before doing so, we need to lay the foundations by which to evaluate the legal impact of each defect on civil and commercial contracts. It will be recalled that under the civil law tradition, contracts are predicated on three general pillars, namely: (i) consent, consisting of offer, acceptance and intention to be legally bound; (ii) subject-matter; and (iii) cause. In addition there might, but not necessarily, exist two further requirements (special pillars), namely: (iv) form and (v) delivery.

This chapter deals with the formation of contracts under the civil code and shows that the process is effectively the same as in Western legal systems, requiring an offer and a corresponding acceptance, as well as common intention among the parties.

Chapter 3 plays out a philosophical engagement with organization and technology following Martin Heidegger’s well-known association of industrialization with technological enframing in which the question of self-knowing had been thoroughly and perhaps irredeemably concealed. Were it possible to ask such a question, then Heidegger identifies an essential un-at-homeness to the being (Dasein) able to question its condition of being, its ‘thereness’, thereby setting in play an uncanny condition of being able, in principle (qua being human), to dis-conceal one’s essence, and yet continually falling short of ever doing so. It is this uneasy revealing that sets the scene for our investigation of the self in its environment. It is because of his essentialized association of technology, industrialization and the concealing of being that Heidegger equates the possibility of its being unconcealed with a political movement that pushes back at the global order, and restores a more archaic, human-centred version. The profound and horrific irony being that it was in totalitarian national socialism that he found such a movement, an enduring affiliation that has been unmoored in detail in his Black Notebooks.

In the previous chapter, we examined the notion of capacity and legal personality under the Qatari civil and commercial law. In general, article 108 CC conflates capacity and consent by stating that consent (to contract) is only valid in respect of entities that possess capacity under the law. Overall, the law distinguishes between persons with full legal capacity and those with partial or no legal capacity. Persons with limited capacity may contract through a guardian and in limited circumstances not involving a significant financial commitment they are free to contract without guardianship. Entities with full capacity may freely contract in their person.