In PA I.5, Aristotle encourages his audience to engage in a novel kind of philosophy: the scientific inquiry into animals and plants. What Aristotle is exhorting his readers to do, biology, is newly and originally conceived, but the literary technique employed – protreptic speech – is one of the oldest and most traditional kinds of philosophical discourse. In his earlier popular dialogue the Protrepticus, Aristotle had defended and promoted the Academic conception of philosophy and its preoccupation with theoretical and mathematical sciences such as astronomy by discussing the clarity of such sciences and the excellence of their objects. In the later protreptic to biology, he adapted these earlier arguments, arguing that biology also has excellent objects and offers a kind of clarity that may even surpass astronomy. These arguments turn out to be part of a general rhetorical strategy for comparing and rank-ordering sciences that was theorized in the Topics and Rhetoric.

The paradox Works of Love approaches is that love is commanded. Taking up the description of love as fulfilling the law, Kierkegaard presents an account of law that is never actualized except in the decision that is love, and an account of love that is continuously called or goaded into becoming by the law. The ambivalence of this temporal “sequence” is of the kind that Kafka would later portray in his story “Before the Law.” This chapter argues that Kierkegaard’s law cannot appear for us except through a political reading in which I ask in my specific historical context, “what is justice”? Works of Love thus opens a reading of the paradoxical Christian commandment which would allow philosophers like Levinas to articulate a radical ethics of response. To read Kierkegaard’s Works of Love faithfully is to be charged to love.

Describes the Economic Section’s role in implementing Labour government policies.

This manifesto explores the biological effects of toxic stress, triggered by strong, frequent or prolonged adversity, on childhood development and long-term health. It highlights how emotion coaching, a form of responsive relationship, can mitigate those effects, support the healthy development of children and improve outcomes for children, young people and families. Emotion coaching involves being present, validating the child’s feelings and helping them understand and manage their emotions. The manifesto advocates for integrating the science of stress and the practice of emotion coaching into educational systems and communities, including strengthening skills and capabilities in the core life skills of adult caregivers. In this way, educators and communities can help children thrive.

Middle Dutch Arthurian romances often are translated from French sources, yet Flemish and Dutch poets also created their own Arthurian tales. What do these ‘Dutch originals’ contribute to European Arthuriana? They may, with a modern term, be seen as ‘speculative fiction’, exploring new and unexpected narrative possibilities. The source issue of the Torec romance and its meaning for the French tradition is discussed first, followed by an explanation of what speculative fiction entails. Three examples then demonstrate the ‘What if…?’ nature of the Middle Dutch Arthurian tales: (1) the threefold, rather than single, quest in the Roman van Walewein, (2) the appearance of, and reactions to, a black-skinned knight in the Arthurian setting (Moriaen), and (3) the experiment of creating a cyclic narrative from different kinds of romances (originating in prose and verse), with special attention to the development of the (emotional) self of main characters like Lancelot and Gawain in the consecutive stories of the cycle.

This chapter builds on the call for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’ due to the inadequacies of South Africa’s transformative constitutionalism in achieving economic and social justice by examining how South Africa’s legal system can realise the necessary shift towards a truly common law. It therefore outlines the technical steps required to amalgamate ‘common’, ‘customary’ and ‘vernacular’ law, proposing a framework where vernacular law – reflecting the lived experiences and cultural norms of the majority population – underpins the whole legal system rather than being confined to isolated ‘cultural’ domains. Drawing on centuries-long debates among scholars of indigenous law, yet recognising that there are foundational similarities between vernacular and state law that can be leveraged, it stresses the care necessary in blending Western and Indigenous knowledges. It highlights that, for this integration to succeed, courts need to adopt a flexible, context-sensitive approach that respects vernacular law’s process-centred-based nature. The chapter thus advocates for preserving vernacular legal processes (because their consultation-based, adaptive structure is key to the law’s legitimacy), as well as vernacular law’s core content (especially around needs-based claims, multigenerational provision and protecting relational structures), as the primary means by which South Africa can achieve a genuinely transformative and common legal order.

This manifesto argues that education is crucial to equipping people with the knowledge and skills, confidence and optimism to navigate the challenges of the twenty-first century. Human-induced environmental change - including climate breakdown; species extinction; pollution of the air, soil, freshwater and oceans; and resource depletion - is destroying the very systems that humans need for life. When these effects are coupled with a set of global economic constraints that prioritise unsustainable consumption, and interact with underlying social inequalities, the challenges we face are severe. The manifesto stresses the importance of fostering values-based education that promotes active citizenship, creativity, resilience, knowledge, compassion, systems thinking and local action with global impact.

At the start of Hume’s Dialogues Philo feigns to agree with Demea that he believes that God exists, and both Philo and Demea claim that we cannot come to have knowledge of the nature of God. In §1, however, I turn to Cleanthes’ ‘Newtonian Theism’ in which science is seen as serving theology, with a central role played by the argument from design. We can infer ‘that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man’ (D 2.5). §2 turns to the various critiques of this argument put forward by Philo and we find that his alliance with Demea is a ruse. Philo rejects the theism of both Cleanthes and Demea. §3 focuses on part 12 of the Dialogues where Philo appears to take a more conciliatory line towards belief in God. Various interpreters take Philo to be committed to a thin form of deism or theism. I reject such interpretations and argue that part 12 does not diverge from the atheistic message of the Dialogues.

This chapter presents a theoretical model of the conditions under which natural resource-wealthy, autocratic and hybrid regimes pursue or eschew the liberalization of domestic economic regulations in the twenty-first century. I term this the rent-conditional reform theory. This model focuses on three salient groups: political elites who devise and implement policy, economic elites who enjoy non-competitive privileges, and the non-elite citizenry who may or may not participate in private entrepreneurship. This model illustrates the demands and constraints both economic elites and the citizenry impose upon political elites amid the pursuit of economic liberalization.