The monist construction of the child-rights identity serves an important purpose of shielding the child from the harmful and abusive social and traditional practices that is part of the everyday life of so many children. However, its downside is that it does not allow children to exercise self-determination in the shaping of their own identity. The power to shape your identity sits at the heart of modern democracy and ideas of inclusion and equality. Complex intersectionality will allow the child to both maintain the protection that comes with its monist construction while also allowing for self-determination that takes the social context of the concrete child into consideration. This together with a deliberate practice of self-critique to challenge false hegemonic consciousness of the image of the child it thinks it serves. This might prepare child rights to serve a forceful and relevant theory for advocates to lean on when we are entering the full effects of the climate crisis, and this will be the most significant stress test of our democratic system we as a world community have experienced to this day.

This chapter critically reviews dualism, as developed by Heinrich Triepel, and monism, mainly formulated by Hans Kelsen. It argues that these theories can no longer comprehensively explain the relationship between international and EU or EU and national law and that, due to their emergence almost a century ago, these theories must be understood in their historical context. Historically, dualism was progress as the separation of international and national law helped international law become independent. Thus, dualism liberated international law from being understood as “external State law,” and was even referred to as a “cleansing thunderstorm” by the monist Alfred Verdross. The main characteristic of monism is the assumption of a single unified legal system. Kelsenian monism must face the criticism of having a highly fictitious understanding of the world: nothing less than the “unity of the legal world order” is proclaimed. To depict the most important assumptions of Kelsenian monism, this chapter looks into the Kelsenian adherence to neo-Kantian epistemology, and shows that this understanding refers to a very specific philosophical position, which has been rightly criticized by many philosophers.

This chapter holds that the CJEU follows two diametrically diverging doctrines regarding the relationship between international and EU, as well as EU and Member State law. From a theoretical perspective this is inconceivable. One and the same organization cannot follow two different approaches. However, from a pragmatic perspective, this chapter acknowledges that this Janus face of the CJEU is quite understandable. Autonomy understood as monism, on the one hand, is an expression of legal unity, which is absolutely necessary for the EU to safeguard its integration process. On the other hand, autonomy expressed as dualism helps to secure the stability of this integration process by separating the EU legal order from far-reaching international influences. However, at the same time, autonomy cannot provide for an adequate replacement of monism and dualism.

Kuhn’s notion of normal science seemingly advocated doctrinaire science education. This chapter documents this in Kuhn’s writings, and considers the argument from Popper, Feyerabend, and others that Kuhnian normal science would encourage dogmatism and stifle innovation. The chapter argues that it is possible to ameliorate the dogmatism in science education while respecting the necessities of professional training. Modern science can afford to maintain multiple paradigms within a field, producing the benefits of toleration while maintaining the advantages of Kuhnian normal science within each paradigm. Moreover, it is possible to educate each scientist in a pluralist way, fostering innovative thinking. The chapter argues that such pluralism is already present in physics education to a surprising extent and that it can plausibly be extended further.

Histories of monism have generally ended with the First World War and placed it within the context of the technocratic fantasies of liberal supporters of antipolitical Kultur in late Wilhelmine Germany. This article argues instead that monism achieved its widest practical dispersal during the Weimar Republic in the socialist milieu. It follows the path of liberal intellectuals from opposition to war and monarchy into the socialist movements, where they took leading positions in local government, union educational institutions, and the expanding universe of socialist cultural associations. There they sought to revise Marxism to bring it in line with their theories of biological and sociological evolution. The article follows key four areas of the socialist workers’ culture movement and examines how monism shaped the theories and practices of sex reform, free body culture, festival culture and educational innovation. It thereby demonstrates for the first time the central role of secularist dissent and monist worldview in some of the iconic utopian projects of interwar socialism.

This chapter maps secularism as a culture, using the example of Berlin. It takes the reader through all of the venues that provided materialist monism and establishes their relationship to the socialist milieu. It begins in Free Religion, and then analyzes the city’s chief popular scientific institutions. It looks in detail at the offerings of each to illuminate how monism was communicated. This chapter argues that despite political polarization among the secularist organizations, there was nonetheless a great deal of ideological and personnel coherence across the secularist spectrum

This chapter discusses the complicated relationship between international alw and domestic law, focusing on international law is received by domestic legal orders

The primary goal of Chapter 3 is to introduce some of the important themes that have come up when philosophers think about the (human) mind, where it comes from and how it relates to the body and to the surrounding world. To this end, we visit a division of philosophy called the philosophy of mind, which will involve a review of a variety of “-isms” (such as rationalism, empiricism, mind–body dualism, monism, materialism, idealism, behaviorism, physicalism, associationism, and so on). We also meet a number of important philosophers who have developed various and often opposing views on the nature–nurture issue. We conclude with a discussion of what philosophers of mind call “the hard problem,” how to explain the notion of consciousness.

Interpreters have long recognized that there is a problem about determining what kind of activity Aristotle thinks happiness is. Some of his remarks appear to favor a single best kind of activity, intellectual contemplation. Other evidence suggests that it is an overarching activity that has various virtuous activities, ethical and intellectual, as parts. Interpreters typically view these as incompatible theses and try to show that one or the other apparent thesis is merely apparent. The problem of determining which of two incompatible theses Aristotle believes is the Dilemmatic Problem of Happiness. But the arguments that rival interpretations amass exert pressure to think that Aristotle really is committed to both of the allegedly incompatible claims. The problem of showing how he can coherently endorse both is the Conjunctive Problem of Happiness. Any dialectically satisfactory interpretation of Aristotles theory of happiness must solve it. None has done so. It cannot be solved while laboring under the weight of three common assumptions. Chapters 2–4 argue for the falsity of those assumptions and provide materials for constructing a solution to the Conjunctive Problem.

The Australian legal system is not an island, and Australian law has felt the influence of law and legal ideas from other jurisdictions, particularly other common law countries. Australian law has also been shaped by public international law both directly and indirectly and this interaction has become increasingly important as the scope and content of international law have grown. The relationship between Australian law and international law is mediated by Australia’s constitutional framework in which the separation of powers between the executive, legislature and the courts holds central place. Unlike the constitutions in many other legal systems, the Australian Constitution does not address the relationship between international and domestic law, and most of the relevant legal principles are to be found in the common law. This chapter examines how each arm of government in Australia has engaged with international law, identifying areas where the relationship is well settled (as it is in relation to treaties) and areas where there remains some uncertainty (as in relation to customary international law).

This chapter examines how parties to treaties give effect to them in their domestic (internal) law. Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties and must be performed in good faith (pacta sunt servanda). A party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty. A state should therefore adopt any domestic legislation necessary to give effect to the treaty before it consents to be bound. There are two broad approaches to implementation of treaties, depending on a state’s constitutional provisions: monism and dualism. The essence of monism is that a treaty may, without legislation, become part of domestic law once it has been concluded and has entered into force for that state. The practice of France, Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, Poland and Switzerland is examined. Under the dualist approach, the rights and obligations created by treaties have no effect in domestic law unless legislation is in force to give effect to them. UK constitutional practice is examined, together with the interpretation and application of treaties by UK courts. US practice is similarly analysed.

“Figuring: Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Imagining and Worlding,” undertakes a case study of Cavendish’s foray into a favored intellectual strategy of modernity: to imagine a world (and therefore a politics) that follows the laws of the natural world as discovered by science. The worldview of liberalism is grounded in ideas of diversity and tolerance, the possibility of an ever-expanding, cosmopolitan world.i This is the proto-liberal view that Cavendish’s proto-conservatism, vitalism, and theory of the literary imagination finds untenable. Cavendish’s conservatism is manifested explicitly in the representations of sovereign violence that seem necessary to protect worlds and implicitly in the significance of a method of “figuration” that Cavendish theorizes—and practices—as the foundation of form in the natural world, the social world, and the literary imagination. Such figuration cannot escape the violent reality of secular nationalism inherent in the notion of “worlds.”

What is international law, and how is it different from domestic (national) law?  This chapter provides an answer to those questions and introduces other foundational concepts in international law such as opinio juris, sovereignty, and the state. We trace the development of international law from Western/European perspectives and discuss how international law was often experienced as oppression and violence in the non-Western world. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the classic sources of international law: customs, treaties, general principles of law, judicial decisions, and scholarly writings, each of which is presented in some detail.

In GC II 5, Aristotle proceeds through a long and complicated argument against the view that there is a single primary body, concluding that a single simple body cannot function as the matter or origin of the other simple bodies. In doing so, he responds to a possible objection to his own account, defended in GC II 4, and confirms that each of the simple bodies is an origin for each of the others. This essay brings attention to the role of contrarieties in Aristotle’s refutation of theories that maintain a single primary body, either as the matter or the material origin of other simple bodies: given the role of contrarieties in explaining simple bodies, Aristotle finds that a single primary body is incompatible with the existence of change. By highlighting the role of contrarieties in explaining change, Aristotle leaves room for the primary contraries to function as a kind of matter, although the details of his account are not explored in GC II 5.

This chapter discusses how customary international law enters the sphere of EU law and to what extent it determines the relationship between the EU institutions, its member states and individual persons. Against this background, it is examined how customary international law is integrated into the EU legal order, what status it enjoys within that legal order, how it can be applied by EU institutions and whether it can serve as a benchmark for judicial review. Assuming that EU law is an autonomous domestic legal system, these questions are discussed from the perspective of EU constitutional law. Here it is argued that the Court of Justice of the European Union, in evaluating these issues, focusses too much on the idea of the autonomy of EU law. In order to provide provisions of customary international law with practical effect the validity of EU law must also be able to be reviewed on the basis of international law standards.

The UK’s Constitution is not insulated from external influences. In considering the sources of constitutional law, we cannot ignore the influence of public international law and international legal orders to which the UK belongs. This chapter therefore examines the relationship between the UK’s legal systems, public international law in general, and introduces specific treaties which are significant for the UK’s legal systems, such as the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

This chapter outlines Bayle’s mature vision of the best worldview that could be produced by a perfectly rational human mind, as advanced especially in some of the most famous articles in the Dictionnaire and in the Continuation des Pensées Diverses. It is shown that Bayle owed a huge debt to the Gassendi and his successors on this score, taking the most rational philosophy available to a pagan to be an atheistic monism in which the first principle was immanent in the world. Bayle’s sources were exactly those identified in I.3 as following Gassendi on this matter (Thomasius, Bernier, Parker), as well as the anti-Jesuit accounts of Chinese and Japanese religion. But for Bayle the philolosophico-theological payoff of this genealogical vision was not recourse to Gassendi’s own philosophy, but rather to Malebranche’s occasionalism, which for Bayle was the only possible ‘Christian philosophy’. This elaborate historicisation therefore allowed Bayle to make a natural-theological argument, which was deployed against Spinoza among others. But at the same time, Bayle also acknowledged the explanatory limits of Cartesian occasionalism, above all when it came to issues stemming from the incomprehensibility of mind-body interaction: the ‘place’ of immaterial substances and animal rationality. This position was neither scepticism nor fideism, but an argument about the practical limits of philosophy.