The creation of a federal structure in which sovereignty is divided between the state and national governments was generally agreed to be a significant constraint on political factions. The lawmaking authority of the national government was conferred on a Congress of enumerated powers, leaving all other inherent powers of government in the states. Factional efforts would be fragmented across multiple and overlapping seats of power.

Kant shares with Locke the project of establishing the limits of human knowledge. But they execute this project differently. Locke is primarily concerned to establish the limits of empirical knowledge based on the limits of human sensibility, while Kant is concerned to establish the limits to claims of metaphysical knowledge based precisely on the necessity of sensibility as well as understanding for all human cognition. Kant places no a priori constraints on the possible refinement or extension of our senses and thus no particular limits on empirical knowledge, but instead derives the limits of metaphysical knowledge from his transcendental analysis of the conditions of the possibility of knowledge, or his transcendental theory of experience. But his delimitation of human knowledge depends on his inference to transcendental idealism from his transcendental theory of experience, by means of an argument that is criticized in this chapter as well as in Chapter 5.

International law is a system of rules, institutions and practices that govern the relations of States with one another. It is designed to distribute resources and solve problems that States identify as relevant for creating order in the world. In a world without a centralised government States use international law and its institutions to generate solutions for emerging and complex issues and problems, such as climate change and terrorism. The effectiveness of international law is often called into question when it fails to stop certain kinds of activities that appear abhorrent to most people from around the world. However, it also manages to resolve and address issues and challenges that would otherwise get ignored without international cooperation. A lot of international law is designed to meaningfully contribute to establishing order. States also use it to legitimise disruptions to global relations.

The final chapter concludes with broader implications. After recapping how the previous chapters fit together to form a larger window on social control beyond coercion, it scrutinizes the limits of political atomization with a focus on perverse outcomes that result from the accumulated effects of individualization. Next are implications for China for inequality, the economy, migrant welfare and citizenship, and the authoritarian state’s social control toolbox. China is not alone in using political atomization, and a comparative perspective can spur future research on how the phenomenon already exists in not only other developing and authoritarian countries but also in democracies and developed countries. It ends with an examination of inequality and the state, noting that individual-level schemes are no match for systemic deflection and demobilization to address the entrenchment of inequality in social policy.

This chapter seeks keywords and concepts that will enable us to grasp the contradictory and conflictive globality of the current moment and sharpen our analysis of equally contradictory and conflictive global pasts. In a plea to move beyond equating the global with openness, connection, and integration, I address the role of closure, boundaries, and limits in global history in a wider sense. For this purpose, I explore in an experimental and deliberately open-ended fashion how thinking about global spherescan be utilised fruitfully for the current practice of history writing. The first part explores the radically inclusive yet claustrophobic vision of the globe as a closed sphere from which there is no escape. Building on earlier closed-world and one-world discourses, this thinking gained prominence after the Second World War in the face of the threat of nuclear destruction and environmental degradation. I then move to think about the globe as composed of many bounded spheres – geopolitical but also social. Here, I take central examples from the realm of communication and language and discusses the public sphere as an exclusionary rather than inclusionary figure of thought.

This is a discussion of sequences and first-order recurrence (or difference) equations and the behaviour of the solutions to such equations. It contains some economic applications.

I look at Wittgenstein’s statement, in his letter to Russell, of the “main contention” of his book. I consider also the relation between his main contention and what he describes in the book as his fundamental idea. I discuss also what he means when he says that what he calls his main contention, and his main point is the cardinal problem of philosophy.

There are still may supporters of laissez faire and of a market that is supposed to operate efficiently and smoothly if left alone. That free market is supposed to “lift all boats” and leave everyone better off and free. However, reality indicates otherwise. Abuses of the market are common, corruption exists, rent seeking is easily observed, and differences between rich and poor grow, leading to resentment and to populist policies. It would help if the market fundamentalists were more explicit about the role that they would expect the government to play. Socialists and leftists do not seem to have any doubts. Some role is obviously needed for the government, and that role cannot remain constant over time. It is not sufficient to keep repeating that the government should stay out of the market.

This chapter concluds the book and sketches some of the limits of what may be expected from international law

Part III is dedicated to the critique of pure reason, namely, the discipline contained in the Critique that is charged with accomplishing its task as the doctrine of method of metaphysics. I argue that the critique of pure reason has a positive and a negative task. Chapter 5 is dedicated to its negative task. The critique must show that metaphysics is capable of systematic coherence. I take a body of cognitions to be systematically coherent when: (a) the cognitions belonging to it are interconnected in a way that involves relations of either logical implication, explanatory support or both, and (b) it does not contain contradictions. Kant establishes that metaphysics is able of systematic coherence by setting limits to cognitions. I argue that Kant sets these limits by limiting the validity of the root concepts for the cognition of objects analysed by transcendental philosophy. I consider how and where these limits are established. I claim, first, that Kant does not follow a univocal strategy in establishing these limits and, second, that he presents arguments for establishing these limits in the Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic. I focus on the arguments in the Aesthetic and the Dialectic in particular.

Chapter 6 is dedicated to reconstructing how Kant sets limits to the validity of the categories. In my reading, the argument that establishes these limits belongs to the negative part of the critique of pure reason. I first find confirmation that it is correct to distinguish between a positive and a negative argument concerning the validity of the categories, the former belonging to transcendental philosophy and the latter to the critique of pure reason, in three different texts by Kant: the transcendental deduction of the categories, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy. However, since these texts provide different pictures concerning how the two arguments are related to one another, I analyze in which sense the negative argument depends on the positive one by reconstructing relevant passages in the B-deduction.

An arbitration agreement expresses the consent of the parties to a legal relationship to submit the settlement of their disputes to an arbitral tribunal. As such, it is a unique type of contractual arrangement. While it has a contractual origin, it also confers the arbitral tribunal a jurisdictional power to settle legal disputes which would otherwise be submitted to State courts, hence bearing jurisdictional effects. This dual nature is further demonstrated by the variety of rules governing arbitration agreements, mainly contracts and procedural law, to such extent that it is a commonplace to assert nowadays that arbitration is dual or sui generis. These two aspects further need to be assessed by taking into account the unique legal framework enacted over the years to safeguard or limit the legal effects of arbitration agreements. This Chapter further dives into the sui generis nature of arbitration agreements and the dialectical tension between the contractual and jurisdictional aspects of arbitration as a dispute settlement mechanism. While the validity and applicability of arbitration agreements, mostly inspired by contracts law and the principle of party autonomy, determine the arbitrators’ jurisdiction, the legal mechanisms triggered by arbitration agreements are mainly focused on safeguarding the arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction.

Provides fraction versions of Hardy inequalities.

Introduces fractional Sobolev spaces, gives their most important properties and explains their connection with interpolation theory.

This chapter addresses what Heidegger considers one of the basic problems of philosophy, that is, the alleged incompatibility between the notion of Being, our thinking, and logic. To begin with, it discusses how Heideggerians have dealt with this incompatibility by discussing what Casati calls an irrationalist and rationalist interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy. Then, the chapter argues that both of these interpretations face exegetical and philosophical problems. To conclude, it defends an alternative way of addressing the incompatibility between our thinking, logic, and the notion of Being. In this connection Casati notes Heidegger’s suggestion, in some of his late works, that the real problem lies in the philosophical illusion that we can actually assess the limits of our thinking and, thereby, our logic. Heidegger’s philosophy aims, the chapter submits, at freeing us from such a philosophical illusion by delivering an experience that reminds us that we can never look at our thinking, as it were, from “on high,” i.e., from a standpoint that would enable us to grasp its limits or determine that it has no limits whatsoever.

In Chapter 2, we build on resilience theory to provide a framework of analysis to understand how the intensity of nature adversity generated by climate change affects and limits business adaptation. Adaptation responses can span a broad range of strategies beginning with unawareness to deliberately ignoring nature adversity conditions. Next, protective adaptation –seeking to preserve the status quo of core business features- including substitution of nature’s resources and services, buffering from negative conditions, government lobbying, and engaging in alliances or mergers and acquisitions. And then, at the highest levels of nature adversity: adopting diversification strategies (e.g., in terms of products/services, industry participation, and geographic location) or even abandoning businesses altogether.