This chapter focuses on Haiti’s twentieth-century periodicals, and more specifically on the literary magazine. By bringing to light the complex stories of literary revue culture during key historical moments I show how these specific forms of publications, which played a major role in Caribbean countries, have influenced Haiti’s sociopolitical and intellectual life. At its core, this chapter addresses the tension between the aesthetics and politics of several literary revues by highlighting, first, literary and/or socially engaged magazines predominantly concerned with the development of Haiti’s literature and culture, and, second, those with a clear political agenda, some of which were infused with an explicit objective: the forging of a Haitian national voice.

This chapter discusses the first level of contemplation, namely, psychic contemplation. The point of departure is Plotinus’ view of perception as a multi-level activity and his claim that we perceive external things by virtue of internal images. In the realm of affective experience, we also co-create our emotions rather than receive them passively. The fall is a distortion of the states of knowing (perceptions) and the states of loving (affects) as well as of the sense of the body, the world, and the self. In the first phases of contemplative ascent, virtues purify our experience of the self, and we begin to overcome the sense of the world as external and our emotional enslavement to it. The result is peace and freedom. The analysis of perception and affective experience shows that for Plotinus contemplation is a natural state of our soul. It is not adding something which is not there but recovering our awareness of what is already going on when we perceive experience affects or relate to our body.

In this chapter, we are interested in how AI may enhance our well-being – or do the opposite. A defintion of well-being and promotion of core vlaues will be discussed. It will then survey AI technologies and assess whether they enhance or diminish human well-being, using the different meanings of well-being

This chapter is about Greek culture, but there is a political aspect too: Hannibal promised freedom to Italian Greeks, but not all welcomed him, nor were his promises kept. Scipio at Syracuse enjoyed Greek lifestyle, including attending the gymnasium, an institution suspect among Romans for perceived immorality; but it had a paramilitary function, especially in Sicily. Scipio’s promotion of south Italian Greeks is illustrated by the career of Sextus Digitius from Paestum. Hannibal’s command of Greek is discussed (also in Appendix 13.1, on Greek ‘letters’, taught him by Spartan Sosylus). After enduring an Athenian philosopher lecturing at Ephesus on generalship he expressed impatience in frank if inelegant Greek. Religious and cultural hellenism at Rome and Carthage is explored, with special attention to Livius Andronicus’ invention of a Latin literature, and the Carthaginian philosopher Hasdrubal, self-reinvented as ‘Clitomachus’. Barcid Iberian city foundations are assessed, Hannibal’s in Asia Minor postponed to Chapter 17.

The fight for gay and lesbian rights has become one of the most conspicuous social justice movements in American history. Although numerous scholars and popular writers have detailed the history of the marriage equality movement, the struggle for marriage equality was only one small part of a more than half century-long movement for queer family rights. Decades before the United States became embroiled in debates over same-sex marriage, advocates were working to support and promote the rights of queer couples and their children. Family Matters uncovers this hidden history of gay and lesbian rights advocacy. Instead of focusing on marriage rights, it highlights the legal reforms that predated the marriage equality movement. The introduction sets out the book’s arguments and methodology. As it explains, the transformation of gay and lesbian rights in America depended on advocacy at the state and local levels, as well as the work of nonlegal actors.

In Satire 1.6, Horace depicts himself as a private citizen free to move around as he wishes in opposition to another character who does not enjoy such freedom of movement, owing to the fact that he is a politician. Seneca, in De clementia (perhaps recalling Horace), extols the freedom of movement he enjoys in the urban space thanks to the emperor, who, on the contrary, complains about the limitations imposed on him by his role. In Xenophon, Hiero, who was a private citizen before becoming a tyrant, is questioned by Simonides about the joys and woes of the two conditions: private citizens can go anywhere, while for tyrants everywhere they go is like travelling in enemy territory. In Horace’s sermo, the concrete space of the city refers to a potentially open political space: the figures we see moving around the streets of Rome are free to choose between political abstention and participation on the basis of their own personal inclinations. But the political and social situation was uncertain and unstable. Situations and characters tend in fact to transcend their immediate concreteness, referring to something else as well: something suited to satisfying the search for a principle of authority.

The nature of power, both social and psychological, and the implications of power imbalances in modern societies.

The chapter discusses the history of the Berlin housing system, the Kantian roots of the German Constitution (Grundgesetz) and the events leading to the emergence of Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen (DWE). It explains the origins of the liberal notion of property and how corporate property is premised on ‘blasting the atom of property open’, that is, destroying the links between person and a thing that constitute classical liberal understanding of property.

The Cambridge Platonists’ philosophy of religion might be summed up as a tension between their commitment to the fixed nature of reason and goodness on the one hand and a commitment to freedom and distaste for all forms of tyranny and imposition on the other. This last chapter contends that the Cambridge Platonists not only acknowledge this tension, but embrace it, revelling in the paradoxical way that absolute fixedness and absolute freedom come together at the highest levels of being. This is made possible by what Stephen Darwall (writing specifically of Cudworth) has identified as an early theory of ‘practical reason’. This Platonic theory of practical reason draws together all the elements of the Cambridge Platonists’ outlook considered in earlier chapters – moral realism, divine communicative intent, and participatory epistemology, illustrating the extent to which this Platonic outlook binds together not only the thought of Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith but also runs through each of their views on different philosophical topics such as obligation, freedom and pedagogy.

Chapter 1 sets out the main questions and contentions in the book. It explores the concept of freedom and identifies it as a central concept in Athenian democratic ideology in both the private and public spheres. Scholarly debates on the concept of freedom are outlined, with an especial emphasis on Isaiah Berlin’s notion of positive and negative freedom and its application to Athens in subsequent scholarship. Distinguishing democratic freedom from negative and republican versions, I argue that Athenians understood freedom as the ability to do “whatever one wished,” which I classify as a modified version of positive freedom. The focus on citizen agency in accomplishing his will differentiates Athenian democracy from other constitution types and affects its institutional features. The chapter closes with a brief overview of the rest of the chapters.

Chapter 2 surveys phrases with the verb boulomai that describe the ability to do “whatever one wishes” or to live “however one wishes” as freedom in order to demonstrate that democratic freedom was understood as the ability to bring one’s will to fruition. These phrases are found in a wide range of genres, including history, philosophy, oratory, drama, and epigraphy. By defining themselves as free in contrast to slaves, Athenians perceived their actions and decisions as emanating from themselves rather than a master. Freedom was thus defined as not simply a prerequisite status for citizenship, in contrast to birth or wealth, but a personal capacity for action. This positive freedom was a central aspect of citizen identity, rendering scholarly accounts focused on negative freedom incomplete. The distinctive feature of democratic freedom was the insistence on the self as master of action; as a citizen, one did what one wished. Positive freedom gave rise to procedural components in Athenian administration and law, notably voluntarism and accountability, as well as served as a distinctive core marker of identity in contrast with other states, such as Sparta and Persia.

Chapter 3 analyzes freedom as doing “whatever one wishes” in fourth-century oratory. As several scholars have noted, doing “whatever one wishes” appears ambivalent in forensic speeches. They argue that, since Athens was not an anarchic state, extreme freedom could be glossed as a threat to sociopolitical stability. In contrast to prevailing scholarship, however, I argue that the most dominant principle, even in these texts, is the preservation of positive freedom as justification for the litigant’s position. While acting “however one wishes” may be presented as objectionable, the rhetoric of that assessment emphasizes who is doing “whatever they wish” and whom they affect by doing so. Bad characters, whether a criminals, oligarchs, or metics, can be rebuked as undeserving of positive freedom and abusing the power that attends it. The limitation of another citizen’s ability to do what he wishes can also condemn the action. Doing “what one wishes” is not a byword for antidemocratic action, but can have such a connotation because of the particular actors or victims of the actions. It is the misuse of the natural qualities of a citizen that leads to censure.