This chapter critically examines trust-based leadership (TBL), arguing that its core principles – trust, empowerment, and autonomy – function within a managerialist framework to reproduce, rather than redress, asymmetrical power relations between managers and workers. Drawing on Scandinavian reform examples and contemporary studies, the chapter presents TBL as a managerialist concept. It shows that trust, empowerment, and autonomy are typically granted conditionally by managers, constrained by managerial definitions of ‘trustworthy’ behaviour and bounded by strategic and administrative prerogatives. Rather than realising workplace democracy or redistributing authority, TBL often consolidates managerial discretion, produces an illusion of participation, and reframes worker agency as something to be authorised. The ‘dark side’ of TBL therefore lies not in implementation failures but in the principles themselves as deployed within managerialism: they normalise managerial authority while obscuring the political dimension of labour, agency, and collective governance.

Chapter 1 provides an overall introduction to the book and its underlying motivations. It proposes and defines the concept of Clever Computing. It presents the historical emergence of the Internet of Things, AI, and Ubiquitous Computing, and analyses the risks of technological visions of the future which often neglect current social and human needs in favour of techno-led solutions. It explores the need to account for human needs in design and, by extension, legal values. The term Clever Computing is contextualised by exploring different examples of how AI and IoT are increasingly converging. This focuses on the ways AI is changing and improving interaction techniques with IoT; how AI is being used to make sense of IoT data and enabling distributed data analysis; and how AI is augmenting the existing functionality and increasing the autonomy of IoT systems.

Shared decision-making (SDM) offers a model for prescribers and patients to arrive at treatment decisions in a collaborative way. SDM in psychiatry holds out the promise to better honor our patients’ autonomy in a field which historically has failed to honor or has even oppressed it. At the same time, psychiatric prescribers who incorporate SDM in their practices should not forget their crucial roles as educators and advisers, especially for patients whose decision-making may be compromised. In this chapter, we will review the core principles of SDM as they apply to psychiatric prescribing, discuss potential benefits and pitfalls, and provide vignette examples of SDM in practice.

The perspective that a patient has about treatment, especially when it comes to medication, is often very different from that of the psychiatric provider. Providers and patients alike may find it difficult to acknowledge and reconcile these divergences in their perspectives, leading to stuck points and potentially unhelpful or contentious dynamics in treatment. In this chapter, we explore some common types and sources of divergence, as well as some practical steps both providers and patients can take to understand and perhaps remedy them.

Written as a first-person narrative, this chapter draws upon personal experience to present critical perspectives of the consumer movement, with an emphasis on Human Rights, a person-centered approach to treatment, a goal of establishing mutual trust and responsibility, and shared decision-making.

This introduction begins by explaining the volume’s starting point: Traditional assumptions concerning Beethoven as an “enlightened” composer rest on an overly simplistic conception of the Enlightenment emphasizing secular humanism and political liberalism. This conception has been called into question in much historical scholarship on the Enlightenment over the past few decades, which has created a more pluriform view of the Enlightenment as encompassing different outlooks on issues such as politics and religion that were often in tension with one another. The goal of the volume is thus to invite a diverse group of scholars to consider the implications of new perspectives on the Enlightenment for our understanding of Beethoven’s life and music. The introduction briefly summarizes the various contributions in each of the volume’s three sections. The first section concerns Enlightenment historiography and its impact on established narratives in Beethoven reception. The other two sections focus on Beethoven’s life in Bonn and Vienna respectively. A number of common themes connect several different chapters with each other: religion, politics, social life, and material culture. The introduction concludes by clarifying that the volume does not seek to overthrow entirely the received wisdom concerning Beethoven and the Enlightenment, but to introduce more nuance and complexity in the way this issue is treated.

This chapter examines how state neutrality can be assessed by reference to the provision of certain information, with a particular focus on information provided through prenatal testing programmes. The information that parents receive about prenatal tests and procedures, and about disability, can be powerfully influential, and can shape the choices that are made. The chapter reviews a number of reasons why the provision of information might not reflect a neutral position: the information might be overly negative about disability, for example, and there is a risk that women will be blamed for any choice that they make. Although it must be acknowledged that it is not possible to have an entirely neutral framework, the chapter compares and evaluates different options that are thought to support autonomy. The chapter also considers nudge theory in order to critically assess both the state’s intention and some limits to individual choice. Although many of these limits are ones that the state cannot entirely avoid, it is important to consider how they put the parents in a particularly vulnerable position, where there is a risk of manipulation.

This chapter examines some further difficulties in interpreting the meaning of state neutrality in the context of prenatal selection practices, and that are tied to the state’s approach to disability. A first set of difficulties relates to the challenging or impossible task of identifying a value-neutral definition or concept of disability. If such a definition cannot be found, it is certainly hard to see how the liberal and neutral state can act, although a review of liberal commitments can indicate that certain approaches are more neutral than others. A second set of difficulties is associated with the fact that many parents of disabled children feel that some of their most important values change after their child is born, though they could not have anticipated or understood this change in advance. This common experience, which could be a type of transformative experience, suggests that prospective parents might not be able to make an entirely rational and informed choice, and that the state’s supposed support for autonomy might need some qualification.

The primary threat of AI is not a dystopian uprising, but the quiet, rational surrender of human autonomy for convenience. While existing risks like discrimination and disinformation are concerning, another profound danger is one we willingly embrace: a life optimized by AI. As we delegate increasingly consequential decisions – from career paths to personal relationships – to demonstrably superior AI systems, we become meat puppets, happier and healthier, yet stripped of meaningful agency. The chapter argues that this philosophical loss, driven by the competitive pressure to optimize our lives, likely cannot be curbed by regulation and will be the defining, irreversible tragedy of the AI age.

This final and concluding chapter highlights the main points discussed in the book and explains the importance that Early German Romanticism can have in the ecological and environmental-philosophical debate today.

The Introduction poses the book’s central question: Can Kant’s aesthetic theory support a meaningful practice of art criticism? The prevailing view says no, citing his rejection of aesthetic testimony and general principles as evidence that criticism is impossible. If testimony is ruled out, critics’ judgments lack authority; without principles, descriptive reasons seem arbitrary. The Introduction reframes these challenges and locates their solution in Kant’s neglected notion of judgments of perfection – attributive good judgments that, while nonaesthetic, can inform and support aesthetic evaluation without violating Kant’s two aesthetic tenets. Building on this insight, the book develops a hybrid model of Kantian art criticism that combines this underappreciated resource with selective elements from contemporary generalist theories, particularly Carroll’s concept of success value. The Introduction situates this project as both a response to gaps in Kant scholarship and an intervention in current debates on the role of reasons in criticism.

The Conclusion synthesizes the book’s two central phases: a revised interpretation of Kant’s theory of artistic beauty and a constructive proposal for Kantian art criticism. It recaps the main theoretical tools developed – especially the role of judgments of perfection – and their implications for contemporary debates about normativity, testimony, and the nature of criticism. The hybrid model advanced throughout the book offers a distinctive and timely alternative to both generalist and particularist frameworks. It upholds Kant’s critical legacy while equipping art criticism with renewed philosophical rigor and relevance.

This chapter is devoted to the Romantic women philosophers, and it groups their reflections on subjectivity. This chapter aims to identify a common thread that unites these women thinkers and contributes to the understanding of the Romantic Self. Despite the diversity of their perspectives, they shared a common understanding of the self as shaped by relationships with others and nature, and as incapable of imposing herself on them, a view that echoes arguments presented by the men philosophers of Romanticism. However, these women thinkers tend to focus on a particular point: the possibility for the self to create a space for her own voice and, on occasion, her actions. After the explanation of Sophie Mereau’s notion of agency, and the differences between her and Caroline Schlegel-Schelling’s political thought, the chapter focuses on Mereau’s and de Staël’s interpretations of Fichte's philosophy and their idea of autonomy. The role of memory and love in Sophie Tieck's and Dorothea Veit’s conception of the self is then analysed. The chapter closes with Günderrode’s and Bettina von Arnim’s notion of subjectivity, and its relationship with nature and society.

The development of new therapeutic methods for intervening in brain function has the potential to influence aspects of a person’s agency, including their autonomy and authenticity. To determine whether or not this is the case, we need an assay that can measure aspects of agency before and after neurointervention. This chapter introduces a framework for thinking about agency as a multidimensional construct, and describes a research project aimed at measuring agency. The authors develop an Agency Assessment Tool (AAT) using survey methods and present preliminary results from the project that shows that the AAT can characterize control and patient groups along several dimensions with a factor analysis; the results show some interesting patterns among putative conceptual dimensions with network analysis. Although the data do not go so far as to include interventions to help understand causal relations, the authors discuss the prospects for using data-driven tools to come up with ontologies of agency.