Deliberation, Unjust Exclusion, and the Rhetorical Turn

Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimizing forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art (technē) that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated

Static and dynamic chain structures in the mean-field theory

We give a brief overview of recent work examining the presence of α-clusters in light nuclei within the Skyrme-force Hartree-Fock model. Of special signif cance are investigations into α-chain structures in carbon isotopes and 16O. Their stability and possible role in fusion reactions are examined in static and time-dependent Hartree-Fock calculations. We f nd a new type of shape transition in collisions and a centrifugal stabilization of the 4α chain state in a limited range of angular momenta. No stabilization is found for the 3α chain

You Can't Go Home Again: On the Conceptualization of Disasters in Ancient Greek Tragedy

The ancient Greek tragedy represents one of the earliest and most dramatic ways of dealing with the phenomenon of disaster in literature. This ancient literary form will be used as a kind of template in the search for recurrent forms of moral attitudes and behaviour that seem to follow almost universally in the wake of war and armed conflicts. First, the focus will be on war veterans’ experiences and narratives of going home again, i.e. of returning from combat back to a life called ‘normal’. These are experiences that render both the victorious and the defeated representatives of such conflicts extremely vulnerable and susceptible to harm, as dramatically displayed in Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax. Second, Euripides’ plays Andromache, Hecuba and The Trojan women will be made use of. In these plays, unvarnished versions of the horrors women and children are subjected to as a consequence of war are dramatically displayed. To demonstrate the moral timelessness and didactic potentials of these ancient representations, the fate of war veterans, women and children in the wake of modern wars and armed conflicts will then be displayed through Bryan Doerries’ narrative, Theater of war, of exposing US war veterans to Sophocles play Ajax, and through the narratives of 50 Syrian women, all refugees living in Aman, Jordan because of the civil war in Syria, of staging Euripides’ play The Trojan women