Many philosophers find welfare perfectionism implausible because it is arguably underinclusive, as it fails to count as good certain acts, events, and things that intuitively improve one's quality of life. Likewise, philosophers intuit that the experience of pleasure directly contributes to well-being. The problem for welfare perfectionism is straightforward: neither desire-satisfaction nor the experience of pleasure seem to perfect (or be perfections of) one's nature.

This leaves two options for the welfare perfectionist. He can “bite the bullet” and argue that these intuitions are mistaken and that pleasure and desire-satisfaction don't impact well-being. Alternatively, he can explain how such intuitive goods can directly contribute to well-being, despite initial appearances. I advance the latter approach.

I argue that at least for some perfectionists, desire-satisfaction and pleasure both directly contribute to well-being. One cannot argue that welfare perfectionism necessarily neglects the intuitive importance of desire-satisfaction and pleasure.

Relying on inference to the best explanation (IBE) requires one to hold the intuition that the world is ‘intelligible’, that is, such that states of affairs at least generally have explanations for their obtaining. I argue that metaphysical naturalists are rationally required to withhold this intuition, unless they cease to be naturalists. This is because all plausible naturalistic aetiologies of the intuition entail that the intuition and the state of affairs which it represents are not causally connected in an epistemically appropriate way. Given that one ought to rely on IBE, naturalists are forced to pick the latter and change their world-view. Traditional theists, in contrast, do not face this predicament. This, I argue, is strong grounds for preferring traditional theism to naturalism.

Numerous tārīḫs (chronicles) were written in Timbuktu and its surrounding world from the seventeenth to the twentieth century CE. They constitute the Timbuktu tārīḫ tradition. The tārīḫs were embedded in different political projects, which became possible and necessary only under certain historical conditions. Hence, tārīḫs do not all belong to one single genre of historical literature. A chronicle that belongs to the Timbuktu tārīḫ tradition is the twentieth-century Kitāb al-turjumān. It sheds light on history writing in the Sahel during a crucial time, namely European colonial rule and the political realities it gave birth to thereafter. One of modern historians’ most important tasks is precisely to identify, describe, and analyse the different genres within the tārīḫ tradition. We attempt to do that in the case of the Kitāb al-turjumān.

This article explores how the Kingdom of Yugoslavia tried to co-opt Slovenes who emigrated from the Italian Julian March/Venezia Giulia region to Argentina (a community of around 25,000 emigrants) into the frame of its unbound nation and analyzes the emigrants’ attitudes towards the Kingdom. As emigrants derived from the territory were considered by Yugoslav authorities to be “unredeemed,” the article, explores how Yugoslavia addressed its “two diasporas,” one of stranded minorities and one of emigrants. Secondly, it examines how diplomatic representatives suppressed emigrants’ opposition during times of economic crisis and dictatorial government in Yugoslavia and Argentina. Thirdly, it analyzes the rapprochement between the emigrant community and diplomatic representatives which occurred in the second half of the 1930s. It argues that because the diplomatic corps were ultimately unable to provide the emigrants socio-economic assistance or address the issue of the Julian March minority, emigrants devised alternative visions of belonging. In addition, the article suggests that many emigrants, caught between a powerless homeland and a host society unwelcoming of their particular identities, drifted into Argentine anonymity.

Is there such a thing as corona solidarity? Does voluntary mutual aid solve the problems caused by COVID-19? I argue that the answer to the first question is “yes” and to the second “no.” Not that the answer to the second question could not, in an ideal world, be “yes,” too. It is just that in this world of global capitalism and everybody looking out for themselves, the kind of communal warmth celebrated by the media either does not actually exist or is too weak to rule out the uglier manifestations of group togetherness, driven partly by the pandemic. I make my point by offering two approaches to understanding what solidarity is. According to the first, it is essentially partiality: “us” against “them.” According to the second, it can be many things, including the impartial promotion of the good of others. I show that the second reading would make it possible for mutual aid to solve the problems caused by COVID-19 and other crises. This would happen at the expense of conceptual clarity, but that is a minor concern. The major concern is that the more natural manifestations of group togetherness are incited by negative feelings. This is par for the course within the narrower reading of solidarity, but it means that the potentially positive ideas of identity, care, communal values, and special relations are displayed in violent confrontation instead of a calm recognition of the threats that most of us face together.

A new wave of scholarship has made major advances in how we understand the politics of civilizational identity by drawing powerfully from conceptual tools developed over the years to study other forms of identity. What unites this wave is treating civilizations not as distinctive “things” that might “clash” but as meaningful social imaginings. This growing body of work is far from monolithic, generating alternative theories that should structure scholarly debate going forward. Central issues include whether civilizational identity is primarily elite led or mass driven, whether it inherently involves conflictual human impulses, what the role of religion and values are in driving it, what its relationship is to nationalism, and how similarly we can expect the countries and people who share civilizational identity to behave. We also find emerging debates on what this newly conceptualized civilizational identity explains in contemporary world politics. Social scientists are now only beginning to apply important tools of social science to this question, with even public opinion research in its infancy. Early findings suggest civilizational identity may be shaping not only elite foreign policy making but also patterns of domestic politics, including the recent rise of populism and levels of democracy and authoritarianism more generally.

While the Antarctic Treaty System intended to keep Antarctica an area of international cooperation and science free from militarisation and international conflict, the region has not been completely shielded from global power transitions, such as decolonisation and the end of the Cold War. Presently, emerging countries from Asia are increasingly willing to invest in polar infrastructure and science on the back of their growing influence in world politics. South Korea has also invested heavily in its Antarctic infrastructure and capabilities recently and has been identified as an actor with economic and political interests that are potentially challenging for the existing Antarctic order. This article first assesses the extent and performance of the growing bilateral cooperation between South Korea and one of its closest partners, New Zealand, a country with strong vested interests in the status quo order. How did the cooperation develop between these two actors with ostensibly diverging interests? This article finds that what may have been a friction–laden relationship, actually developed into a win-win partnership for both countries. The article then moves on to offer an explanation for how this productive relationship was made possible by utilising a mutual socialisation approach that explores socio-structural processes around status accommodation.