In Leviathan, the foundation and stability of commonwealth arises from agreement about what is good and how the good is to be obtained. Hobbes argues that we all agree that peace and the means to peace are good, and such agreement, which Hobbes associates closely with reason, is a necessary condition on the covenant to form the commonwealth. However, there is also significant diversity. The chapter offers an account of this diversity, which poses a threat to the stability and success of commonwealths. Overcoming the threat depends upon the plasticity of our passions. Hobbes suggests that the passions that characterize us, even if they are diverse, are not plastic: most of us are dominated by fear; a few of us by other passions; and we cannot change who we are in this respect enough for such changes to matter to social theory. Reason also is fixed: a few, great social scientists perhaps can acquire the ability to reason better than they do, but whole populations cannot. We are notably plastic, however, in the objects of our passions. It is this plasticity that prudent sovereigns can exploit in order to bring about thriving commonwealths.

Hobbes is sharply criticizing the phenomenon of dueling. He is famous for the claim that the fear of death is the strongest passion and that the security provided by the state is the decisive source of its legitimacy. He is, therefore, often regarded as the founder of liberalism with a new, security-oriented, or bourgeois mentality and made responsible for a decline of honor in early modernity. The chapter aims to critically discuss and enrich this decline-of-honor hypothesis. Hobbes’s redefinition and devaluation of honor is important – but it is only one part of the story. The other part is a subliminal morality of natural honor that is in tension with the security-oriented morality. The chapter discusses different explanations for this tension and offers a complimentary one: The subliminal morality of natural honor might be a part of Hobbes’s goal to get the power-seekers on board, to pacify them, and to turn them to the economic realm. The chapter thus contributes to the differentiation of the decline-of-honor hypothesis, sheds light on the complex and puzzling role of honor in Hobbes’s political philosophy, and offers a starting point to reflect on the role of honor in contemporary liberal democracies.

The natural condition of mankind in Chapter 13 of Leviathan marks the evolution not only of Hobbes’s state of nature, but also of his appreciation of and attention to human psychology. Building on insights gathered from readers’ reactions to his earlier political treatises, in Leviathan Hobbes paid greater attention to the obstacles posed by a reader’s vainglory and attempted to move past them by elevating the reader to the status of both maker and destroyer of the commonwealth, as well as arbiter of the validity of his theory. Hobbes’s wager was that, thus satisfied, the reader would be more amenable to seeing both subjectively and objectively why no reasonable person would risk the dangers of anarchy, no matter the benefits promised.

This chapter goes beyond a descriptive view of crime hot spots to explore how hot spots and non-hot spots vary within and across communities. Using the characteristics we focused on in Chapter 2, we ask whether the extent to which hot spots and non-hot spots differ depends on the type of community they are nested within. We also examine to what extent hot spot streets have similar characteristics across the city, or whether hot spots look different depending on the community they are nested within. We find that hot spots differ on most characteristics from streets with little crime regardless of the type of community they are nested in (as indicated by levels of concentrated disadvantage). At the same time, community context does matter in terms of understanding characteristics such as structural measures of social disorganization and disorder. Even so, we find that hot spots of crime have similarly low levels of informal social control irrespective of the communities in which they are nested.”

This chapter brings social context and social structure into the story of crime hot spots. We begin by examining why criminologists have, for the most part, ignored micro geographic study of crime until the late twentieth century. This was, in part, the result of not having data available at the micro geographic level, but also related to the overriding interests of sociologists in the study of spatial criminology with micro geographic units, such as neighborhoods and communities. We then turn to the importance of new theoretical innovations that focused interest on hot spots of crime, but led criminologists to largely ignore the social context of these places. Having placed the study of crime hot spots in historical perspective, we bring social context into the study of crime and place by examining variability of measures of social disadvantage and social disorganization across hot spots and non-hot spot streets in our study. We pay particular attention to informal social control as measured by collective efficacy in communities (Sampson et al., 1997). We also examine characteristics of hot spots that are often seen as tightly linked to crime, such as social and physical disorder and fear of crime.

Emotions and motivation are tied intimately together. Some motivations are based in emotions: fear, anger, and disgust. In other cases, though not forming their bases, emotion strongly interact with motivation; for example, disgust can strongly interact with sexual and feeding motivations. The chapter asks – what are the general properties of emotion and what do all emotions have in common? Emotions serve functionally coherent roles in behaviour, conscious experience, cognition, and the organization of the body’s physiology. The chapter draws a distinction between emotion, affect, and mood. It discusses specific action tendencies and Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. The chapter places central importance upon affective neuroscience. It reviews the evidence for seven basic affective systems as postulated by Jaak Panksepp: seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic/grief, and play. Links are described between these basic emotional systems and high-level cognition.

This chapter looks on the evidence relating to fear as the basis of a motivational system, avoidance, and security motivation. The chapter describes the evolutionary significance of certain fears (e.g. of snakes), and the associated fast automatic processing of sensory information derived from them. The notion of a fear module is introduced. Neutral stimuli paired with a fear-evoking stimulus acquire a conditional capacity to trigger fear, as revealed in such phenomena as the conditioned emotional response. The neural model of LeDoux is described. Fear and anxiety are distinguished. A central motivational state of fear is proposed. The chapter discusses the logic behind Bolles’ suggestion of ‘species-specific defence reactions’ and the defence motivation system of Masterson and Crawford. Someone ironically, the notion of a security motivation system has been only recently developed. However, such a need was placed at the base level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The chapter discusses the idea of a security motivation system as proposed by Szechtman and Woody. The chapter concludes with a discussion of when fear and security systems fail, such as in pathological anxiety.

This chapter contrasts the growing acceptance of anger and grief in political theory with the persistent, one-sided pathologization of fear. While anger and grief are now frequently defended as politically valuable, fear is still dismissed as a primitive, irrational force threatening public life. Rather than defend fear, however, I criticise a pervasive argument against it, which relies on two dubious claims: (1) neuroscientific findings supposedly prove fear is inherently destructive in politics and (2) entire groups are driven by fear. I dispute the first claim by drawing on the work of LeDoux to show that ‘fear’ in neuroscientific research often differs fundamentally from the subjective experience of fear that critics often target. I dispute the second by arguing that attributions of fear to social groups and populations frequently hinge on weak evidence, such as conflating perceived threat with the emotional state of fear. Finally, I argue that the fear of fear in political theory is harmful. It fuels unwarranted attributions of fear that oversimplify the complexities of political behaviour and risk compounding the marginalisation of socio-economically disadvantaged people.

Fear-inducing tragedy encompasses the deadly consequences of contaminating the atmosphere, including through nuclear radiation. Theatrical works juxtapose the threat of extinction with the benefits of energy obtained from nuclear, coal and oil power sources as they indicate that the earth’s atmosphere can no longer be regarded as an exploitable resource. The degradation of breathable air is life-threatening for human and nonhuman species alike. The depiction of human-induced contamination from mid twentieth-century theatre encompasses life-threatening atmospheric nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean region and on mainland Australia. First Nations theatrical performance about nuclear-damaged ecological systems broadens the emotional commons of climate change theatre in which characters confront atmospheric contamination and the threat of annihilation.

Fundamentally, a psychiatric patient’s relationship with the health professionals treating her depends on developing trust and that trust relies on understanding on both sides: that is why it is so critical for a clinician to have as deep an understanding as possible of his or her patient’s perspective. It’s unusual for a patient with a physical ailment to feel a need to deliberately conceal things from her clinician but this is a common occurrence for women in a perinatal mental health setting. The main reason for this is fear; fear of having her children taken away, fear of being ‘judged’ for wanting to have a child while coping with a chronic mental illness. This chapter will provide an overview of the research I have conducted since 2010 to identify and record the experiences of women in receipt of perinatal mental health services or, in some cases, of women not in receipt of the services they needed.

This chapter considers how Australian theatre responds to, represents and stages floods, and how those representations have changed over the last half-century and more. Beginning with Eunice Hanger’s Flood and Mona Brand’s Flood Tide from the 1950s, the chapter traces how dramatic characters are fashioned in response to increasingly extreme climates. Alana Valentine’s (2008) Watermark, a work of community/verbatim theatre, draws on the oral testimony of survivors of a fast-moving flood that in 1998 swept through the town and surrounding areas of Katherine in the Northern Territory. In Jackie Smith’s (2009) The Flood, rising flood waters have a materiality and agential capacity to provoke fear and anger in the three characters of three dramatic characters trapped inside a run-down farmhouse. Between Two Waves by Ian Meadows (2012) is a politically engaged climate change drama that represents the increasing hysteria of a climate scientist’s warnings as they this to these are distorted and denied by conservative politicians and media.

This chapter explores the neuroscience of fear, examining how our brains detect and respond to threats, both real and imagined. It introduces major theories of emotion and focuses on the role of the limbic system in processing fear-related stimuli. Through research in animals and humans —including lesion studies and the famous case of patient S.M.—the chapter distinguishes between behavioral responses to danger and the subjective experience of fear. It also challenges the idea of a single “fear center,” emphasizing that fear arises from dynamic interactions across multiple brain regions. These concepts are then applied to ambiguous situations, such as sensing a presence in a dark room, where the brain may interpret uncertainty in emotionally charged ways. Finally, this chapter encourages readers to consider how the brain constructs meaning from unclear stimuli, laying the groundwork for a scientific exploration of the supernatural.

Chapter 3 begins with how the Donatist controversy shaped Augustine’s theology of justification by faith because the Donatists represented the real possibility of having faith without charity. The chapter then turns to the key features of Augustine’s theology of justification formed by the Pelagian controversy, especially participation in Christ’s righteousness. Both controversies pressed Augustine to consider how justification is by faith if faith sometimes fails to justify, as in Donatists, lax catechumens, and impenitent Christians. In both de spiritu et littera (The Spirit and the Letter) and his sermons, Augustine addresses this through a deeper psychology of faith: faith only obtains the grace of justification when it is motivated by hope and fails if it is motivated primarily by fear. The chapter concludes with de fide et operibus (Faith and Works), exploring Augustine’s understanding of faith, works, and charity, his criticism of sola fide (faith alone), and his development of a new terminology for justifying faith: fides Christi (faith in Christ).

The USA has among the highest levels of mental illness of all countries, together with the most treatment. We seek happiness through mechanisms that produce pleasure, most of which are not effective. Those lower down in the hierarchy use more destructive means to gain gratification, thereby becoming worse off. Americans may suffer more pain than people in other rich nations, especially social pain in response to chronic stressors present here. We consume 80% of the world’s opioids Smartphone use, especially among youth, may be harmful for mental health. Evolutionary pressures make us live to reproduce and nurture the progeny until they can have children. Various mental illnesses that don’t impact propagation can manifest, especially in later life, such as anxiety to cope with danger. Mental health is political, like other aspects of health

To explore what it meant to own and possess in the eighteenth century, Keeping Hold looks to instances in which people lost possessions and how they responded to such experiences. Chapter 2 begins the book’s focus on loss and does so by looking to urban sites. It looks to the city of the eighteenth century: London. The capital was of growing importance in this period as an economic powerhouse and social hub. Guidebooks emerged as an important genre for those seeking to comprehend London’s densely filled and ever-lengthening streets. The chapter explores these sources and finds how the capital was increasingly imagined as a site of deception and loss, where possessions might be pickpocketed or simply left in the bustle and in which servants and apprentices regularly ran away. The chapter examines how eighteenth-century Londoners responded to such perceived threats by utilising technologies of security, such as pockets and collars. By doing so they worked to prevent loss.

This chapter begins with an in-depth exploration of neuroanatomy, including macroscopic features like the cerebral cortex, brain stem, and basal ganglia, as well as the pathways between the brain and body such as the spinal cord and cranial nerves. Against this background, four potential applications are introduced: first, the creation of motor prosthetics that use brain activity to control artificial limbs; second, the development of sensory prosthetics to restore vision or hearing; third, the artificial reactivation of memories through targeted brain stimulation; and fourth, the treatment of anxiety by incorporating either neuroimaging or brain stimulation. Each application is framed in terms of the modularity debate, which focuses on whether specific psychological functions can be localized to distinct brain regions. These four examples illustrate some cases in which it is useful to localize a behavioral function within a single region, but also where it may be more useful to appreciate either the diversity that exists within a region or the coordination that exists across regions.

Analyzes the superficial and underlying motives of initiators for the use of force.