This chapter offers a phenomenological reconfiguration of vulnerability in borderline personality disorder (BPD). The focus is on the temporal embedding of self-experience. Departing from dominant biological and cognitive models, the chapter examines how temporal fragmentation and affective instability influence the formation of BPD identity. Drawing on the authors’ previous qualitative findings and Roman Ingarden’s stratified model of identity, the analysis uncovers a paradoxical temporal structure. BPD experience is marked by discontinuity between a detached past and an immersive present as well as entanglement marked by the persistence of the wounding past. The resulting tensions produce a dual-layered identity. The static stratum consists of persistent identifications with wounded historicity and rigid self–world interpretations, while the dynamic stratum manifests as frequent, affect-driven self-recreations. The latter overwhelms the integrative function of the static layer, resulting in a cyclical structure of self-experience that inhibits narrative coherence and developmental change. Consequently, BPD temporality undermines the possibility of novelty, agency, and future-oriented self-regulation, resulting in a form of identity that is both unstable and rigidly structured by past harms. Ingarden’s philosophical framework thus provides a scaffold for the temporal disruption being constitutive of felt vulnerability in BPD.

I introduce the “equality–difference paradox.” This is the observation that ethnically homogenous countries like Ireland and Denmark tend to have low levels of income inequality, while countries such as the United States and South Africa, with high levels of ethnic diversity, tend to have higher levels of income inequality. I situate this paradox within the context of historical and contemporary demographic change. I explore possible explanations of the paradox in relation to Sierra Leone, South Africa, Denmark, the United States, China, and India. The paradox draws attention to two broader issues: first, the role of pluralism in complex, globalized, multicultural societies; and second, how ongoing efforts to address the paradox raise fundamental questions about how we organize future societies. I conclude this chapter by closing Part II of the book and orienting towards Part III, which explores three possible futures of economic inequality and capitalism.

These conclusions do not intend to summarize and even less to close the debate but instead to revert to the main issues addressed during the conference and maybe identify further issues for research. All contributors agree that not only a discussion on democracy and representation in and by international organisations is not purely speculative or theoretical, but that it seems necessary today. Despite this, contributors are not all in agreement on the need to use the concept of representation when discussing democratization of international organizations. Some question the link between democracy and representation, or whether using representative systems is even feasible in international organizations. This, in turn, leads to the various definitions of the concept of representation in political science and in law. A multiple international representation system (MIRS) as proposed by Besson and Marti is based on a strict concept of democratic representation and contrasts with other more flexible concepts such as ‘descriptive’ or ‘mimetic’ representation. In the end, the chapters address the merits of various systems, including in existing processes of global governance, for further democratizing international organisations.

Many contemporary international organizations (IOs) are empowered to adopt international law that claims to bind their Member States (and, directly or indirectly, their peoples). Certain IOs have also become members of other Ios or, at least, active participants in international lawmaking processes that claim to bind those IOs and their Member States (and their peoples).Generally speaking IOs play a central role in contemporary international lawmaking: they institutionalize most of the processes through which international law is adopted today, be it through international conferences, international courts, or as IO secondary law. From the perspective of the democratic legitimacy of international law, this raises the question of the conditions under which those Ios may be regarded as democratic representatives of their Member States’ peoples and, accordingly, under which the international law they have the right or discretion to adopt inside and outside of IO organs and processes may claim to bind those peoples legitimately.

This chapter examines how inner conflict and difficulties with habit regulation render agents with bipolar disorder vulnerable to concerns about authenticity. Because what they value or care about depends on whether they are manic, depressed, or in remission, they may not have a strong grasp of who they ‘really’ are. To make sense of this, some theorists have maintained that a ‘true self’ account of authenticity is needed. However, authenticity is not merely a matter of discovering some ‘true self’ that captures someone’s essence; it also involves self-creation. This chapter describes how an agent’s habits of behaviour, attention, and affective engagement are central to the self. By way of habit regulation, agents navigate fluctuating environmental conditions, balance competing priorities, and gain a sense of what really matters to them. Because subjects with bipolar disorder encounter difficulties with habit regulation, their sense of self destabilizes and they become concerned about authenticity.

In this chapter, we trace the history of how the EU emerged as a leader in using development aid and diplomacy to restrict migration, particularly from Africa. We also broadly describe the scope of migration management projects, including their intended impact on state capacity, economic development, a country’s domestic governance including civil society, and the return of a country’s nationals via forced and voluntary repatriation. We then turn to the EUTF, analyzing where and how the EU spent more than €5 billion across the African continent. We explore which actors benefited the most, what projects received the most funding, and where these interventions had the most impact. Overall, the EUTF prioritized state capacity, security, and economic development, while civil society and other non-state actors received significantly smaller allocations.

This chapter looks at how to deal with extreme events using extreme value theory.

In October 1957, humans on Earth, for the first time, made a definitive detection of an artificial signal coming from outer space. 1 This signal originated from a small spacecraft, put in orbit around the planet by an intelligent technological civilization. The signal didn’t have an explicit message (amateur radio enthusiasts tracking its location would have simply heard a beeping sound from a carrier signal) but it nevertheless had a strong message to convey from the civilization that sent it.

Chapter 3 reviews Swift’s rapid emergence as England’s chief foreign policy propagandist and analyzes his ethical, religious, political, geopolitical, and economic reasons for opposing the War of Spanish Succession. He became a Tory partisan after two recessions and adopted the ideology of the old propertied elite against the new capitalist elite. He revealed a nativist strain and opposed foreign influences, including national debt and continental military involvement. But he did not abandon basic Whiggish political principles like rule by consent or the right to resist tyranny. He defended emergency executive action not as a pretext for absolute power but as a limited constitutional device for resolving an immediate and objective crisis, notably abroad. Unilateral powers can easily be abused but Swift shows himself concerned about that risk in a way that is not characteristic of authoritarians. His opposition to Dutch national debt went along with opposition to French power politics, revealing middle ground.

Chapter 2 discusses Swift’s statement of political principles, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions (1701), and shows how international relations proved essential both to his fully developed, neoclassical balance-of-power theory as well as his practical political objectives in contemporary debates about the constitution and emerging War of Spanish Succession. Swift wrote against the Tory majority in the House of Commons and thus attacked the tyranny of the majority – but he also took a more realistic and permissive view of popular political participation than has been acknowledged. That view reflected his belief in the voice of the people and consensual government, including when discovering the national interest within the international context. The masses helped to rescue England from French imperialism, just as threats of French hegemony put the domestic political need for power-sharing into perspective. Swift defends executive action for the sake of national security but does not abandon constitutional constraints.

Hatred can be understood as a persistent affective disposition that is based on an experienced grievance and injustice and aims at revenge against its originator, in extreme cases at the destruction of the enemy. The special dynamics and radicality of hatred result from the retention of affect, which is caused by the perceived own weakness or powerlessness of the hater. It is precisely this retention that allows hatred to grow and accumulate in the latency phase until it can finally turn into acute destructive actions. This individual dynamic is found in potentiated form in the hatred of groups, which can be traced back to social and political experiences of grievance. The chapter examines the phenomenology of hatred and the resulting form of individual and collective destructiveness on the basis of literary examples, psychological disorders, and societal phenomena.

This chapter investigates the question: Should therapists be like a mirror and ‘opaque’ to their patients, or should they be empathetic, build trust, and establish a personal relationship? The starting point is a critique of the Freudian conception of transference, countertransference, and affectivity. Next, the chapter addresses Martin Buber’s thesis on relationships in his famous essay I and Thou, and attempts to clarify the ambiguous concept of empathy as both ontological and psychological. Finally, the chapter examines how empathy, unlike sympathy, pity, or compassion, can serve as the foundation of a therapeutic relationship, and the objections concerning the limitations of this approach are addressed.