Chapter 9 revisits our central contributions and considers the scope conditions of our argument. While the underlying governance conditions of a recipient state matter for the impact of migration management aid, we argue that it is migration management aid itself, rather than the regime type of recipient states, that carries the risk of increased repression or worsening authoritarian practices. We argue that reform of migration management aid is possible but that it requires decoupling its focus on building the migration state capacity of recipient countries from more “traditional” development or humanitarian aid, and that it must be accompanied by stronger accountability measures. Finally, we consider the impacts of continuing migration management aid not only for recipient countries, but also for donor countries, particularly those in Europe. The EU’s willingness to forego normal procedures to quickly implement the EUTF has not only undermined its commitment to democracy but has also yielded ground to the political maneuvering of far-right parties, spelling disaster for its own citizens as well as noncitizens within and beyond its borders.

In this chapter, the phenomenology of emotions in people with schizophrenia is explored. A nuanced understanding of the specific emotional challenges in schizophrenia, together with their transformative potential, can inform psychotherapeutic and rehabilitative approaches and help to uncover their healing dimensions. The first section of the chapter examines the emotional world of the person with schizophrenia, focusing on profound emotional vulnerabilities and the alienating role that emotions can assume in this condition. The second section turns to the edge of human experience that gives rise to breakthrough and transformative experiences, all of which are intimately tied to emotion. People with schizophrenia often have a low threshold for a range of such breakthrough experiences, from falling into a ‘black hole’ of utter despair and anxiety‑laden psychotic states to moments of clarity and insight that resemble mystical experiences. The third section explores the therapeutic and healing potentials inherent in these emotional states.

This chapter sets the scene for comprehending the vices of capitalism. I discuss contemporary US politics and use these discussions as a springboard to explore moral psychology – particularly the psychology of fairness – and the theory of relative deprivation. Relative deprivation focuses our attention on the social comparisons people make, and whether, through making these comparisons, they feel treated fairly or unfairly. I trace the development of the theory from its original basis in sociology to its application throughout the social sciences, situating it within a globalized, interconnected, and technologically advanced world. Social comparisons are no longer made only with immediate others but also with imagined others across the globe, leading to varied appraisals of what is and is not fair. The consequences of these judgments are introduced at the end of the chapter.

Why do democracies backslide into dictatorships? Exploring this question is the central contribution of this chapter. I start by discussing how citizens in Colombia voted against the 2016 peace deal and how citizens in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Months later, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for the first time. I take these events as a point of departure and then provide a model to explain the psychological appeal of populism. This focuses on the distinction between “them” and “us,” how this classic in-group/out-group dynamic intersects with the psychology of status hierarchies, and ultimately how people feel about their group’s position in relation to others. I then offer a broader psychological model – “the wonderland model” – to explain how democracies, such as the United States, can re-elect authoritarian leaders and then turn into dictatorships.

This chapter explores the long Latin Meditations on the Life of Christ in MS 410, focusing on its structure, sources, and intended mode of use. It situates the text within the traditions of Franciscan Passion meditation, highlighting its engagement with the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and Bonaventure. The chapter examines the text’s composition, arguing that it functions as a coherent guide to contemplation, synthesizing Passion meditation with bridal mysticism and moral instruction. It further demonstrates that in MS 410 images operate in concert with this program of contemplative ascent, directing the reader toward its realization. Through visual repetition and thematic linkage, the manuscript encourages associative meditation rather than purely affective visualization, ultimately guiding the reader beyond Christ’s humanity toward contemplation of his divinity.

Throughout human history, societies have striven to comprehend the universe, each constructing a distinct cosmological model reflective of its era’s knowledge and beliefs. Edward Harrison (2003) compellingly argues that each of these cosmologies – be it the ancient Greek conception of a world composed of earth, air, fire, and water; Saint Augustine’s vision of the universe as the Word of God; or the modern scientific depiction of a cosmos governed by atoms and waves – is essentially a “mask.” Harrison notes how each generation tends to view the cosmological models of its predecessors with a degree of pity, confident in the superiority of its own understanding. This historical pattern invites a crucial question: “People in the past strongly believed in the truth of their universes, and because they were so greatly mistaken, might not we be a little mistaken also, and if a little, why not a lot?” (Harrison 2003, 6).

Chapter 4 shows that while one cannot deny Swift’s use of a Tory “conspiracy thesis” in foreign policy tracts like The Conduct of the Allies, Swift relied more heavily on legitimate arguments and sources of international politics and law that have been underrated: Aristotle, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf. Aristotle taught a concept of foreign policy centered on constitutionalism, geography, naval power, self-defense, and public reason. Grotius and Pufendorf provided a foundation of natural and international law, as well as just war theory, that was secular yet grounded on classical learning and Christian ethics. Grotius’s underappreciated influence undermines the idea that Swift’s politics were purely Hobbesian, realist, or authoritarian. Swift had a realist and an idealist strain but “Grotian rationalism” predominated in the controversy over the Utrecht Peace. Grotius also fed Swift’s growing skepticism about the Whig concept of the balance of power.

Chapter 4 analyzes the concept of the unnameable or ineffable in ritual and art. The ineffable refers to the difficulty of comprehending specific contexts of intense individual and collective experience that frequently arise during the ritual process. The ensuing totality or emptiness of meaning emerges as a challenge to account for that which eludes logical representation within the social order. The chapter also explores how the experience of the ineffable manifests in the realm of art and aesthetic experience, investigating how this problem has been addressed within continental philosophy, particularly within phenomenology and poststructuralism. Finally, the chapter analyzes poetry’s role as a privileged means of accounting for that which lacks a name and apparent meaning, and of presenting itself to consciousness’s immediacy. Through poetry, it becomes possible to preserve the transient process of the experience of the hidden and unnameable in its existential and anthropological dimensions.

Body movement has often been relegated to the margins in the study of emotion, psychopathology, and psychotherapy, being seen as more of a byproduct than a producer of experience and behaviour. By centralising the body movement’s role in the organisation and production of experience, we might better understand how to work from an embodied, phenomenological perspective in psychotherapy. Adapting a theory from animal biology – called the mobility gradient – this chapter posits a structure for the use of conscious movement by various clinicians. This structure complements several areas of inquiry in psychotherapy, most notably attachment theory, trauma studies, and non-verbal communication research. Using the mobility gradient as a phenomenological guide, clinicians can assess, plan, and co-create embodied healing experiences with their clients, ones that can reach and work with their emotional lives in an effective and meaningful way.

This chapter examines Tuesday’s meditation, which consists of six extended text sections divided into two parts. The first addresses the Flight into Egypt, the Return from Egypt, and the search for the Christ Child in Jerusalem; the second focuses on Christ’s Baptism and the temptations he faced in the desert, centring on the poverty of his youth and his revelation as Saviour. These three journeys structure the reader-viewer’s own meditative search, enacted through reading and turning the folios as she repeatedly seeks and finds Christ on the manuscript page. The pictorial program sustains this active search by juxtaposing Christ’s majesty with his humility through visual analogies and repetition.

This chapter explores the intersection of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Husserl’s phenomenology within the context of dementia research, emphasising the concept of habits. By introducing curability as the counter-pole to vulnerability, the chapter highlights a shift towards integrating medical and philosophical perspectives. It argues that embodied practices, regarded as meaningful, are key in both preventing and treating dementia. Through Aristotle’s ethics, the chapter examines malign habitualisation in touch with the preventive turn. Here, the vice of intemperance is related to excessive alcohol consumption, alcohol dependence, and Korsakoff’s dementia. Through Husserl’s phenomenology, the chapter examines the power of benign habitualisation, connecting embodiment, narrativity, and affectivity. Drawing on a video of Marta Cinta, a former ballerina with Alzheimer’s, the chapter rethinks influential concepts, such as narrative identity and second nature, through the lens of embodiment. The chapter ultimately demonstrates that embodied habits, when perceived as meaningful, can aid in balancing health, well-being, and eudaimonia. Focusing on the affective sphere, the study contemplates whether we can still feel home in embodied habits despite dementia.

Chapter 6 traces the common elements of three field sites and research themes: Cuban espiritismo, Brazilian Umbanda, and Chilean ufology, to understand how cosmology is fractured, incomplete, emergent, and, in some cases, without an exterior referent. In Cuba and Brazil, not-knowing becomes a facet of a cosmology that is not entirely forthcoming, or of a cosmos of spirits that are simply unknowable in their essences, despite their overt appearances in cultural “clothes.” Unknowing here excites the cosmogonic, or world-producing impulse, very often through materials and objects. In ufology, instances of the “absurd” – where no sense can be made of visual perceptions or experiences – are attributed to the deceitful characteristics of their alien perpetrators who remain in a continuous conceptual dark. If in the first two cases it is the body and its cosmos which are negated as sources of knowledge, whereas in the third it is physical reality itself.