This chapter examines Welsh-language Arthurian literature from c.1500 to the twentieth century, examining both prose and poetry and considering the fusion of the ‘native’ and the ‘non-native’ and questions of cultural continuity. References from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts are situated in a palimpsestic view of Britain, acknowledging the political realities of the present while also invoking a vision of the unconquered heroic ancestors of the Welsh. The shift from manuscript to print culture is followed, including a look at Arthurian literature in the burgeoning Welsh periodical press. It is suggested that twentieth-century reworkings of Arthurian traditions include romantic effusions as well as experimental modern explorations, all set within the context of textual articulations of Welsh national identity.

This chapter explores the three levels of material constitution presented in the Part of Animals: (a) elemental powers, (b) uniform and (c) nonuniform animate parts, in order to answer the question whether uniform materials that go into the constitution of animal bodies are produced for the sake of the organism. My answer is negative. At the bottom level, we encounter inanimate mixtures, not just elemental powers, that possess all the non-elemental material properties that may then be used by an animal nature. Aristotle’s chemistry (in the GC and Meteorology) exploits non-teleological processes that explain the dispositions of uniform material bodies. Such materials are then used by animal natures, through the teleological process of concoction, for the constitution of uniform and nonuniform parts of their bodies: the animal kind works within the confines set by the non-elemental material properties. This helps locate the difference between mixis and pepsis (concoction) and to understand why these conceptual tools are used in different contexts by Aristotle.

This chapter focuses on the Works of Love deliberation “Love Hides a Multitude of Sins” (and, where relevant, Kierkegaard’s 1843 discourses on that topic), exploring the figure of the “one who loves” [den Kjerlige]. Drawing on the deliberation’s discussion of silence, mitigation explanations, and forgiveness, and some arguments from my book Love’s Forgiveness about love’s way of seeing ambiguous evidence, I sketch the contours of a virtue manifested in den Kjerlige: generosity of spirit. I then ask: If we took seriously Kierkegaard’s portrait of den Kjerlige, what are the implications for contemporary moral and social discourse? How would such a person engage in moral criticism or social critique? What does this suggest about the controversial category of “microaggressions?” Through a consideration of “Love Hides,” some recent work on the ethics of “social punishment,” especially online public shaming, and contemporary debates about microaggressions, this exercise in “applied Kierkegaard” will argue that Kierkegaard’s deliberation offers an important counterweight to hyper-suspicion, judgmentalism, and self-righteousness in a polarized world.

This chapter focuses on the role that allusion plays in establishing a shared language of intimacy. It describes how Wollstonecraft and Godwin, in their letters to one another, trade literary allusions as a way of flirting. That practice cast doubt on the transparency of speech, however, since the difficulty of openly expressing feeling, versus the relative ease of slipping into a literary cliché, led to the sense of distrust that also features throughout their letters. The tension between transparency and trust is further explored in the pair’s novels. Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria presents a heroine who falls in love with a man based on the books he reads, in a manner which suggests either quixotic delusion or a defiant trust in the imagination. Godwin’s novels depict scenes of shared reading which rethink his earlier philosophical discussions of personal affection versus independence, and openness versus secrecy or reserve.

On the Parts of Animals (PA) is our main source for Aristotle’s explanations of animal character. This he locates in the qualities of an animal’s blood (or it’s analogue), whether it is hot, cold, thick, then, turbid, or pure (PA II.2, 651a16). This chapter sets out the main debate about character in Aristotle’s biological writings, whether it is formal or material, and argues that it is part of an animals’ material nature. While the materials existing in the blood vessels are not put there for the purpose of underlying character, they are often utilised for this end, displaying a complex coordination of material and formal natures. The chapter ends with a detailed analysis of which fluid elements in the body are responsible for underlying character and at which point they emerge in the digestive process. This further clarifies the relationship between animal bodies, nutritive processes, and the character potentials animals possess.

Commentators on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love have typically taken spiritual love to mean the same as neighborly love, an unconditional moral duty owed by all humans to all humans. Ostensibly, this contrasts with the preferential love typical of a friend or spouse. We, however, take spiritual love to refer to the Trinitarian love that, when emulated by human beings, is called Christian love. This type of love either transcends or engenders both neighborly and preferential love. First, we show how the economy of salvation expresses the Father’s love in both neighborly and preferential ways, corresponding to the Son’s mediation of the Father’s love through the Incarnation and the Spirit’s mediation of the Father’s love through Pentecost. Second, we use the Trinitarian approach to elucidate Kierkegaard’s claim that God is love’s “middle term.” Third, we use this approach to resolve the apparent conflict between self-interest and self-denial in Works of Love.

The core concept of rational choice is what each undergraduate of economics is introduced to in one of the first sessions of their economics course at university. So was I. My fellow students and I sat in one of those large lecture halls in Heidelberg, enthusiastic toward that which was about to come. The teacher enters, starts the class with telling us about consumer demand, a theory grounded in the idea that people’s choices can be modeled via indifference curves. After studying the properties of those curves for several weeks, we concluded that thinking about behavior in this way had up until then been the most puzzling thing we had ever heard of. In German high school, the subject of economics is usually absent. When I began my degree program in economics at the university, I was excited to hopefully be able to critically engage one day in the public and political discourse about economics and the economy by making use of tools provided by the field. My idealistic self was convinced (and potentially still is) that one could only change the system from within, ideally using the language that a system and its proponents use themselves. Yet, I quickly felt that I might fail with economics. The technical language to model behavior in terms of consistent choices, rational preferences, and indifference curves was counterintuitive and so different from everyday discourse that I had a hard time translating. During my first semesters, I did not see any way to connect the two and almost gave up on the subject entirely. Understanding the basics in my first microeconomics class as an undergraduate has been a concern of mine ever since. This book is the result of finding one way to take this puzzlement as a starting point for making a serious attempt to better understand what economists are up to.

This chapter discusses the renewed interest in the Arthurian matter in Europe in the nineteenth century with a focus on Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Tracing its reception from the Romantic period through to the emergence of modernism, we explore how the content,  values and aesthetic of Arthurian literature infused the cultural landscape. The form of reception ranges from the use of actual Arthurian material and chronotypes to the secondary influence exerted by the contemporary reception of Arthurian legend through Scott, Tennyson and later Wagner. The pattern of reception echoes that of earlier periods in its transnational character and, as the century progresses, it possible to see waves of interest with a ripple effect spreading out across Europe from Britain and the German-speaking lands as the material is incrementally absorbed into the contemporary cultural matrix of the Continent.

An opening example in which the attempt to share a book backfires reveals the meanings attached to that activity. Scenes of shared reading reflect on both the nature of reading and the nature of sharing. In the Romantic period, shifts in solitary and social reading habits had produced new ideas about how far reading was a private or shared experience. Questions about the nature of sharing, and how another person’s thoughts and feelings could be known, had also been raised by eighteenth-century theories of fellow feeling and sympathy. The peculiar intimacy involved in sharing a book affords special insight into these debates. Moreover, the embedded representation of reading – the odd self-reflexiveness produced by writers writing about reading – means that these scenes comment on literature’s unique capacity to enable shared ways of thinking and feeling. These scenes also uncover a literary quality intrinsic to sympathy itself.

This manifesto advocates for granting voting rights to children, emphasising that voting is a right of citizenship, not a privilege of competence, and should be extended to all, regardless of age. It asserts that excluding children from the democratic process is unjust and impractical. It challenges common arguments against child enfranchisement, arguing that concerns about children’s competence, potential policy chaos and the sequencing of rights are flawed. It underscores the principle of political equality, highlighting that children, like adults, possess inherent moral value and unique perspectives deserving of respect and representation. Furthermore, it contends that enfranchising children would offer them much-needed political protection, ensuring their needs and concerns are considered in policy decisions.