What if I cannot make a difference (and know it)

When several agents together produce suboptimal outcomes, yet no individual could have made a difference for the better, act consequentialism counterintuitively judges that all involved agents act rightly. I address this problem by supplementing act consequentialism with a requirement of modal robustness: Agents not only ought to produce best consequences in the actual world, but they also ought to be such that they would act optimally in certain counterfactual scenarios. I interpret this modally robust act consequentialism as cct consequentialism plus a requirement of moral virtue, namely, to reliably act rightly and to act rightly for the right reasons

After the flood

PodcastAnna Pinkert is The Missouri Review 2011 Audio Contest winner in the professionally-recorded documentary category

Public Memory Underground Photographs of Protest in Uwe Johnson’s “The Third Book About Achim” (1967)

This paper offers a preliminary investigation of the interrelation between literature, photography, and public memory under the conditions of authoritarian and neoliberal state control. Focusing on a fictionalized photograph of the 1953 workers’ uprising in East Germany in Uwe Johnson’s novel The Third Book about Achim (1967), I explore the performative capacity of photo-literary spaces to open up, and disrupt, institutionalized productions of public memory. Whereas official memorial technologies tend to close down alternative interpretations of history, this essay shows how small-scale, clandestine, or itinerant photographs embedded in literary archives animate historical impasses and possibilities, which persist to be responded to by future readers. More specifically, drawing on affect theory and political philosophy, I aim to rehabilitate photography’s indexicality as a performative register that enables human proximities across the boundaries of time and space

What we together can (be required to) do

In moral and political philosophy, collective obligations are promising “gap-stoppers” when we find that we need to assert some obligation, but can not plausibly ascribe this obligation to individual agents. Most notably, Bill Wringe and Jesse Tomalty discuss whether the obligations that correspond to socio-economic human rights are held by states or even by humankind at large. The present paper aims to provide a missing piece for these discussions, namely an account of the conditions under which obligations can apply to loose collections of agents that do not qualify as collective agents in their own right. I first explain the notion of joint obligations of loose collections of agents (henceforth “collections”) as opposed to collective obligations of collections of agents that are collective agents in their own right (section 1), and argue that the conditions under which agents can jointly have obligations are the conditions under which they are jointly able to do what is required (section 2). I then build on Virginia Held’s seminal work on the (backward-looking) moral responsibility of “random collections” to develop such conditions for joint ability (sections 3 to 7). My discussion shows that collections of individuals can more easily be subject to moral obligations than previously assumed. It also shows that putative joint obligations need to be carefully time-indexed, and that it is largely an empirical question whether a given collection can be subject to a moral obligation to perform a given joint action at a particular time (section 8)

Differenz und Identität, Krieger und Sänger : zur Rheinsymbolik bei Heine und in der deutschen Lyrik des 19. Jahrhunderts

Die Rheinthematik und -symbolik als ein Aspekt des "Kollektivbewußtseins" hat in Deutschland wie in Frankreich die Diskurse geprägt - z.T. in sehr gegensätzlicher Weise. Da die Symbolik im Rahmen des jeweiligen "Kollektivbewußtseins" dazu verwendet wurde, die nationale Differenz im Verhältnis zum Nachbarn jenseits des Rheins und zugleich auch die eigene nationale Identität zu unterstreichen, gehört zu dem "Vielen", was im 19. Jh. "zusammenkam", leider auch, daß Deutsche und Franzosen nicht "zusammenkamen", und daß sie am Rhein (und weitgehend auch in der politischen Rheinlyrik) nicht aufeinander zu, sondern aufeinander los gingen

Un estudio comparado sobre el reembolso de gastos extraprocesales de asistencia letrada

»Reimbursement of Extrajudicial Attorneys’ Fees in Spanish Law. A Systematization of Procedural and Substantive Claims« (PhD-thesis published in German language, Duncker & Humblot, 2021, Schriften zum Internationalen Recht (SIR), Volume 229.) David Cuenca Pinkert examines the recoverability of extrajudicial attorneys’ fees in cross-border civil law cases under Spanish law and thereby demonstrates structural parallels to other European legal systems and universal principles of cost recovery. This approach systematizes procedural and substanti ve claims, which the author sees as a key to a better understanding of reimbursability.“El rembolso de gastos extraprocesales de asistencia letrada en derecho español. Una sistematización en base al derecho procesal y sustantivo” (Tesis doctoral publicada en idioma alemán, Editorial Duncker & Humblot, 2021, Schriften zum Internationalen Recht (SIR), Volumen 229.) David Cuenca Pinkert analiza cómo se reembolsan honorarios extraprocesales de asistencia letrada en litigios civiles transfronterizos según el derecho español, demonstrando así estructuras paralelas con otros ordenamientos jurídicos europeos y principios universales de la compensación de gastos. El estudio está enfocado en sistematizar las posibles acciones resarcitorias procesales y sustantivas, lo cual el autor considera como elemento clave a la hora de examinar correctamente las distintas vías de reembolso

Ventral Abdominal Hernia with Corynebacterium Pyogenes Infection

A 6 year old Brown Swiss cow was admitted to Stange Memorial Clinic Dec. 29, 1947, with a history of being injured in the left flank while attempting to jump a fence. The left flank was extended anteriorly, laterally, and elevated dorsally. The enlarged flank indicated a herniation of abdominal viscera or an accumulation of exudate in the subcutaneous tissues. It was impossible to make a positive diagnosis so the cow was taken off feed for 2 days to facilitate a more accurate examination, and to prepare the patient for surgery if necessary. Examination was completed and the diagnosis of ventral abdominal hernia was made. Reduction by surgical methods was selected as the course of treatment