Appearing at the tail end of this volume, I begin with a brief meditation on the coda. A (musical) ending, the vulgar form of cauda (tail or privy member), figure of our fallen state, the coda may also be a whip or goad to inspiration or even exaltation. Attempting to turn my posterior position to good ends, I have, in the place of an ending, used the chapters here as provocations and inspirations. Recognizing in them a more expansive account of legal performance than my own, I point to how they unbind law and performance from the rigid definitional strictures on which I have relied, how they challenge the boundaries between text and performance, performance and law, law and world, world and fiction (the veritas falsa of theatre and the falsitas verus of law), how they show the methodological Über-Ich (with its rules and dogmas) to be unseated by an ontological Id that scoffs at its laws. That force – like the comedic cauda in the courtroom – answers legal solemnities with impudent laughter and other “minor jurisprudences of refusal,” creating heterotopias, wild zones, rehearsals for alternative futures.

This introduction establishes a foundation for the chapters that follow by providing an overview of Vasari’s work at Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo and the state of the research on the topic. It also maps out the structure of the book, identifies the methodologies and primary and secondary source material upon which it is based, and establishes its contribution to the literature on Vasari and the history of Italian Renaissance art.

This chapter introduces the book’s central argument about the parallel development of ideas about context in anthropology and Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It situates both within broader ‘cultures of context’ in twentieth-century thought, while establishing key themes about form and formlessness. The introduction argues that anthropology’s current antiformalist stance represents not progress but a particular historical development that deserves examination. It outlines how the book will trace shifts from logic to language to life as models of context in both Wittgenstein and anthropology.

Transitions research has gained traction in sustainability studies for its systemic approach to environmental challenges. A central tenet is that the persistence of these challenges can be attributed to ‘system failures’, and that system innovation is needed, i.e. a multitude of innovations that co-evolve into system-wide transformations. However, many contrasting views of ‘systems’ and ‘systemic frameworks’ are seemingly always clamouring for attention, whilst it is not always clear what they’re referring to. Taking a reflexive methodology approach, this chapter addresses recurring questions: Transforming ‘systems’: Which? How? Whose? Why? Whither? Whence? For instance, is transitioning the ‘mobility system’ a matter of electrification or of unlearning car dependency? In transitioning the ‘energy system’, is importation of rare minerals a central part or an externality? The chapter presents a methodological overview of systems analysis in transitions research. It brings out how transitions research has developed a fine sense of Critical Systems Thinking. On the other hand, it also shows the need for further methodological reflection on the study of transitioning ‘systems’.

This chapter argues that reflexivity - an introspective process in which researchers turn their engagement into an object of research - is essential to sustainability transitions research (STR). Reflexivity in STR encompasses not only the non-neutrality of its normative categories, such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘radical’, but also its descriptive categories, including ‘regime’ and ‘system’. This inherent social embeddedness, or ‘engagedness’, positions transition researchers with both an inescapable responsibility and a unique opportunity to shape their engagement reflexively. Reflexivity, which is relevant at every stage of STR, is illustrated in terms of research orientation, role and positionality. It highlights that much of reflexivity lies in the question of how - and with what kind of awareness - you are personally doing what you are doing. As a transition researcher, you are in a comparatively powerful societal position. Your choices matter and make a difference in the world.

Chapter 1 surveys the Platonism of Marburg neo-Kantian philosophers to set out the context out of and against which Heidegger’s Destruktion of Plato emerged. I do not argue that Heidegger’s Plato is a direct response to the Plato of Cohen, Natorp, and Cassirer. I contend instead that what Heidegger identifies as unprecedented and extremely influential mistakes in Plato’s philosophy are sometimes found in slightly different and sometimes strikingly similar forms in their laudatory interpretations of Plato. The clearest and most evident case in this regard is their interpretation of Forms as laws governing thinking, particularly logical and propositional thinking. I argue that if Strauss, Gadamer, and Krüger propose new reactivations of Platonism to respond to Heidegger, these reactivations cannot follow the Platonism of Marburg Neo-Kantianism to their ultimate conclusions. At the same time, it is also clear that there are important traces of a neo-Kantian heritage in the ways Strauss, Gadamer, and Krüger understood Plato, most notably the Marburg Neo-Kantian refusal to understand Platonic Forms as beings, things, or substances.

This chapter considers Buzan’s approach to ethics and normative theory and theorising in his big picture approach. It critiques his argument that normative theorising remains an essential component of thinking about the big picture but is the work of specialists. This chapter suggests this is problematic for two reasons and that normative theory is an essential counterpoint to Buzan’s empirical focus rather than being a separate, specialist, activity. First, I set out that normativity is embedded in methodological choices about what to look for and how to look for it in the big picture. A contrapuntal approach reveals unacknowledged normative choices substantively shaping analyses of how international society forms and functions, and its fragility. Second, the chapter argues that an empirical big picture must make room for the normativity inherent in politics. Visions of a ‘better’ world may be almost limitless in their diversity, but this is the core language of advocating change and a key motivational factor in bringing people to enact change. Normative theoretical counterpoint to Buzan’s big picture approach reveals much about the political processes that make global society and why we unavoidably analyse it in normatively significant ways.

The Introduction examines the historiography of the idea of the state in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Machiavellian scholarship. It analyses the empirical and methodological problems associated with this specialist literature, before then outlining a new way of reconstructing Machiavelli’s theory of lo stato – and of interpreting it as the very crux of his political philosophy – by laying out a new intellectual basis upon which to reorient our present understanding of the foundations of Machiavelli’s conceptualization of the state from his earliest writings onwards. It draws new attention to the formative role in Renaissance political discourse of a sequence of theories – subsequently discussed in each chapter of Part I of the book – which were drawn from classical Roman political, moral, rhetorical, and aesthetic thought and which came to shape decisively Machiavelli’s own theory. And it forwards the contention, substantiated in detail in Part II, that his theory underwent two redactions, first in The Prince and then in the Discourses. The Introduction closes by broaching the crucial question of whether, in classifying Machiavelli as a singularly pioneering theorist of the state in the early modern period, we should also see him as a theorist of state personality.

This chapter formulates the research question and clarifies the critical methodological issues pertaining to the analysis. This is important because the book aims to bring together science and technology studies, sociological systems theory and jurisprudence The topic of the book is then introduced by giving an overview of all the chapters, making clear that a common thread runs throughout the book and that the argument addresses all of the theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the research question posed at the beginning.

This chapter considers the place of the four books of the Parts of Animals (PA) within Aristotle’s envisaged sequence of biological writings. It argues that PA I belongs integrally with II–IV (rather than being a self-standing theoretical essay) and that the entire project of PA I–IV presupposes key theoretical and factual discoveries made in the Historia Animalium (HA), contra the ‘Balme hypothesis’ according to which HA postdates the explanatory treatises and represents a more advanced stage of inquiry. Finally, it shows that the mantra “being is prior to coming-to-be” (which governs the PA–GA axis) has important implications for our understanding of the explanations in PA II–IV. It concludes with some remarks on the overall structure of Aristotle’s biological corpus.

This introduction presents the historical and social context of Argentina in the nineteenth century, as it relates to the local Afro-descendant population. It explains the building-nation conceived by the dominant groups toward the end of the century. The project sought to create a national imaginary founded on the notion of a culturally and racially homogeneous country of white European descent. This project necessarily entailed the disappearance of the population of African (and Indigenous) descent as part of the nation. The strategies used to achieve this project (census, cultural appropriation, official history) are mentioned. In this sense, it is proposed that the construction and recurrent use of visual stereotypes throughout the nineteenth century (concentrated in specific iconographic nuclei) was one of the strategies used in the process of invisibilization of the descendants of enslaved Africans in Argentina. It also explains the state of the art on the subject, the theoretical framework, and the methodology used in the research.

Hume clearly distinguishes between better and worse causal inferences, notably in his “Rules by which to judge of causes and effects” in Treatise 1.3.15. Although Hume describes these rules as “all the logic I think proper to employ” in his philosophy (Treatise 1.3.15.11), the literature has paid relatively little attention to it. This chapter will investigate these eight rules, as well as their basis in Hume’s discussion of general rules. The paper then examines two controversial causal inferences in light of these rules by which to judge of causes and effects: first, the postulation of the calm passions; second, the missing shade of blue. As Hume himself recognizes, the correct application of these rules can be an enigmatic affair. Nevertheless, I find that there is reason to think that while Hume abides by these rules in his postulation of the calm passions, the missing shade of blue constitutes a gross violation of these same rules.