This chapter discusses the work of twelfth-century theologians in Paris who laid the foundations for the development of theology as a discipline in the university. These thinkers explored the characteristics and limits of the discourse on God in theological treatises and summae, which employed increasingly sophisticated technical terminology drawn in part from grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

This chapter takes its departure from the views expressed by Newtonian humanism, post-Newtonianism, and para-humanism that shape different conceptualizations of power as an instrument of calculable control in small worlds and as a source of incalculable protean power in large ones (section 1). By way of summary, it shows how both kinds of power have operated in the domains of risk and uncertainty in finance, nuclear crisis, and global warming/AI discussed in chapters 4–6 (section 2) and in another ten cases. As the main source of the modern conception of control power Thomas Hobbes articulates a rigid, authoritarian theory of language that fits into a Newtonianism formalized about forty years after Hobbes had published Leviathan. Niels Bohr’s post-Newtonian perspective and its permissive core construct of complementarity differ profoundly from Hobbes’s insistence on the necessity of a sovereign’s total control of language. During the last half century updates of these two positions by social theorist Michel Foucault and physicist-feminist Karen Barad have clarified further the yawning gap that separates them (section 3). The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Machiavelli’s understanding of fortuna and the potentialities of protean power (section 4).

This chapter sorts out how we can distinguish small worlds and conditions of risk from large worlds and conditions of uncertainty along three dimensions (section 1). Unnoticed by students of world politics, in many domains of knowledge the twentieth century saw an important collective shift in terminological resources from Newtonian humanism to post-Newtonianism and para-humanism. These two worldviews are therefore discussed (in sections 2 and 3). Both engage uncertainty more openly than Newtonian humanism does. In any field of study, including world politics, “speaking differently” in a new conceptual language can make distinct contributions to understanding – contributions that can be as important as “arguing well” by relying on conventional terminology. In this case, speaking differently helps us rethink the risk-uncertainty conundrum.

This book is designed for readers interested in the rise of absolutism in seventeenth-century France, as well as those interested in language and political discourse of this period. It demonstrates how the political discourse in the late Middle Ages, based on ancient Roman ideas that government existed for the common good (le bien public, or la chose publique, a French translation of the Latin res publica), began to evolve in the 1570s. Though references to the common good continued to be used right up to the French Revolution, they began to be overtaken by the language of the State (le bien de l’État). This evolution in language existed at every social level from the peasant village up to the royal court, and they accompanied the rise of absolutism in France, as the book demonstrates by analyzing scores of local, regiona,l and national lists of grievances presented to provincial estates and the Estates-General.

The manipulation of risk and uncertainty by decision makers who are more or less rational and are experiencing more or less fear offers a first cut of the crisis (section 1). A second cut enriches the individual-level analysis by attending to organizational malfunctioning as a potential cause of inadvertent nuclear war. In this analysis political agency is widely dispersed across many layers of the American and Russian militaries (section 2). A symposium on nuclear politics refers briefly to “very innovative” work on nuclear issues without engaging with work in science and technology studies (STS) (section 3). Exemplifying large world thinking, it does away with dualities such as rational and irrational, politics and technology, risk and uncertainty. It integrates human agency, organizational functioning and malfunctioning, and politics across all levels. And embedding the observer fully in a world that does not exist “out there,” it acknowledges the importance of the risk-uncertainty conundrum. In the politics of the crisis, its meaning for different actors, and its effect on shaping the complementarity of risk and uncertainty language matters hugely (section 4). The analysis of nuclear politics has shaped profoundly a widely accepted rational model of war (section 5). And the conclusion illustrates the evolution of a crazy nuclear politics (section 6).

A singularity condition is elaborated. It is discussed how perception can anchor or ground singular judgments. Without a link to perception, there would not be any knowledge of individual objects, since mere concepts cannot secure reference. This fact is also reflected in language. For ‘This F’ in a singular judgment ‘This F is G’ about the perceived scene cannot be divorced from an intuition of that scene. The use of demonstratives like “This” and “That” for direct reference are supplemented with non-conceptual content that comes from outer intuition, with in-built spatial orientation. By way of intuition and attention, there is mental demonstration of particulars, which may or may not be accompanied by overt demonstrations as well, like pointing gestures. Thus, the perceived scene is contained within a demonstrative space, as outlined by all possible embodied orientations of the perceiver in some fixed location or other. Intuition cuts in a perspectival manner from such a demonstrative space, and attention cuts even more finely.

This chapter offers, first, some how-to tips for close analysis of documents and other texts to uncover a greater range and depth of meaning. Examining the choice of words, the grammatical structures, and the leaps of logic within metaphors and other figures of speech can yield fresh insight into the assumptions, the categories of analysis, and the overt as well as the less conscious agendas of historical actors. Cadence, inflection, repetition, and even silences can in this sense “speak.xy4 Physical presentation, cultural practices, and personal behaviors can suggest how leaders oriented themselves toward others and their likely intents. Second, this chapter explains how historians can read sources for evidence of the interplay between more emotional and more rational modes of thinking. Historians studying the emotions do not need training in neuroscience or psychology. Rather, they need to read texts carefully and evaluate such evidence as discussion of emotion, words signifying emotion, emotion-provoking tropes, and bodily actions triggered by emotion. Also significant is language evidencing excited behaviors, ironies, silences – and the cultural milieus of these and other expressions. Like all historical evidence, such signs of emotion should be interpreted and contextualized rather than taken at face value.

This chapter explores the contested terrain of “subsidies” as applied to the Gulf region’s energy policies by multilateral organizations. It reviews how the Gulf states navigate the definitions and regulations established by international bodies such as the World Trade Organization and the International Energy Agency, and reviews the region’s defense of its energy pricing regimes in the face of international scrutiny. The chapter also analyzes how these low and regulated energy pricing frameworks, viewed as integral to the Gulf’s social contract and industrial strategy, present a challenge to established international norms and trade policies. Furthermore, this analysis extends to the strategic positioning of Gulf states within global forums, where they strive to align their energy practices with international trade standards while safeguarding their development priorities. By doing so, Gulf states aim to shape the future direction of global energy governance in a way that accommodates their specific economic and developmental needs.

According to Cassirer, Kant’s Critique achieves a new look at the dichotomy between “consciousness and actuality, the I-world and the world of things.” Indeed, the Critique of Reason “sets out a new positive concept of subjectivity and objectivity […]. The world of the subject and objects no longer stands as two opposing halves of one absolute being; rather, being constitutes one and the same realm of spiritual functions through which we obtain the content of both […]. This abstract result was introduced by Humboldt, through the mediation of language in the concrete consideration of spiritual life.” Humboldt seizes on a possibility indicated in the first Critique and builds his philosophy of language as a mediation of the subjective and the objective. This is an original way of understanding Humboldt. Understanding Humboldt’s philosophy of language in light of Kant will constitutes the first part of this chapter. In the second part, I spell out what this Humboldtian interpretation of language means for Cassirer. Cassirer sees Humboldt as a precursor to his own work on language. My chapter sheds light on a possibility regarding language indicated by Kant, worked out by Humboldt, and then exploited by Cassirer.

Much useful attention has been focused on Kant’s views of the relation between language and thought, as well as the relation between grammar and logic, asking especially whether Kant thinks that the activity of thinking depends on or involves linguistic phenomena – that is, whether Kant upholds the linguisticality of thinking. Here I focus instead on the relation between language and ‘the senses,’ and sensibility more generally. After sketching what such an interpretation might look like and providing some initial textual grounds for its support, I then turn to some of the details of accounts of the linguisticality of sensibility among Kant’s historical predecessors (Berkeley, Baumgarten), to help round out and deepen our understanding of what sorts of commitments might go into such a view, before returning to the closer examination of Kant’s own texts. I conclude that Kant does in fact maintain a fairly well-developed version of the linguisticality interpretation of sensibility, and raise some questions about what this means for the linguisticality of thought itself.

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on clusters of re-narrated episodes in Cyril’s response to Julian. Chapter 5 is organized by one of Julian’s own categories: the “gifts of the gods” which, he had argued, were given in surpassing quality and quantity to the Hellenic people. This chapter groups Julian’s various iterations of gifts and Cyril’s sprawling responses in three, interrelated categories: exemplary characters, intellectual superiority, and military and political domination. In Cyril’s responses, Minos was no legendary hero but rather imitated the fallen angels’ lust for domination; the Attic language itself (not to mention the convention of writing) derived from proto-Christian sources; and the Jewish people’s turbulent history and the present ascendance of Roman superiority equally reflect the Christian God’s management of the cosmos.

Transcultural ethnography is about understanding the flows of culture and its consequences as organizations expand their global reach across national boundaries. This scope of research focus beyond a company’s nation of origin is precisely what distinguishes international business from other types of business studies that are primarily domestic. Yet, the concept of national borders is fraught with controversy both in real world actuality as well as in ivory tower discussions. An ethnographic perspective that considers both culture and borders as concepts that are often overdetermined in our efforts to put together aggregated understandings of a world increasingly characterized by cultural flows as well as barriers is essential to theory building. Since transcultural ethnography involves research at globally distributed sites, a comprehensive understanding of how changing cultural contexts affect multinational enterprises (MNEs) and in turn the reciprocal effects of the MNEs on the host environments is essential to advancing transnational theory.

Brandom gives two inconsistent accounts of the prehistory of his inferentialism: that Kant only contributed its concept–>judgment component, which was not taken up again until Frege vs. that Kant also contributed its judgment–>inference component, which was already taken up by Hegel. This chapter supports a version of the latter account. It argues against Brandom both that by 1790 Kant, like Brandom, espoused an inferentialist position incorporating a ‘linguistic turn’ and that Kant’s inferentialism is superior to Brandom’s (by providing better arguments for its concept–>judgment component and a necessary limitation of its judgment–>inference component thanks to the analytic/synthetic distinction). The chapter also argues that Kant’s inferentialism led him to the additional project of a “transcendental grammar.” Finally, it pursues the influence of this whole Kantian version on successors: Hegel did indeed take over Kant’s inferentialism, but whereas Brandom detects this in Hegel’s Phenomenology, it is even more evident in Hegel’s Logic, and whereas Brandom leaves it at that, for Hegel inferentialism was only the beginning of a more original and daring project. Not only did Kant’s inferentialism motivate Humboldt’s holistic conception of language, but in addition Kant’s project of a “transcendental grammar” inspired Humboldt to the same.