This chapter introduces the book and its context. It argues that the philosophical Pragmatist’s commitment to experimentalism and learning, and the social and political theory emerging from that, is well placed to address global security, climate and health challenges. To recognize that, International Relations and ‘new constructivism’ has to bring Pragmatism in from the margins. The chapter summarizes IR’s current relationship to Pragmatism focusing on the methodologies of analytical eclecticism, the historical accounts of the progressive foreign policy agenda that classical Pragmatism informed and the attempts to use Pragmatism as a tool of analytical and normative analysis. The chapter sets three questions, which structure the rest of the book: (1) what can classical Pragmatism bring to debates in IR, including those centred on the perennial question of how norms, practices and interests interact to influence international society and its practitioners? (2) How, if at all, should international practices and practitioners adapt in the face of pressing global security, climate and health challenges? (3) Given the Pragmatist answer to these first two questions, what normative conclusions can we come to about actual practice in contemporary international society? A summary of how each chapter contributes to answering these questions is provided.

A calculated use of language for deliberate stylistic effects, intended to distinguish epic diction from contemporary speech, characterised formal Latin poetry from the very beginning. This review of early epic language aims to explore the main sources, mechanisms and effects of these first experiments in the creation of a Latin epic style. It is a fact that the epic poets’ record of achievement is obscured by its survival in merely fragmentary form, by the close congruence of epic and tragic styles, and by our own uncertainty about the relative popularity of those two genres and their contemporary influence. Consequently, this study deals less with specifics of epic language than with the process that generated it, as poets experimented with archaisms, calques and neologisms, built upon the practice of their Greek models, and responded to the example of their Latin compatriots. In striving to develop a style worthy of epic, they brought to the task the same confident, competitive spirit that typified all their endeavours, building consciously on the achievement of their predecessors, and in the process leaving something of great value to a wide range of successors.

This chapter discusses the work of Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze. Both were founding members of Ash Ra Tempel, a psychedelic rock band active in 1970–75. Their self-titled debut album, released in 1971, is recognised as one of the classic recordings of Krautrock. Later, Ash Ra Tempel would have a deep influence on space rock, electronic music, and ambient music. The chapter provides an overview of the evolution of Ash Ra Tempel, its successor Ashra, and traces the solo careers of Göttsching and Schulze, with a focus on Göttsching. His career spans from the era of Krautrock through the heyday of the electronic Berlin School in the mid-1970s and the birth of electronic dance music in the 1980s. Since 1972, Klaus Schulze has also produced an imaginative and unique body of musical work as a solo artist. Besides several collaborations, he created many pioneering electronic solo albums in the 1970s, and his active career has endured five decades until the present day.

In terms of musical style, the sizeable catalogue of music that falls under the label of Krautrock is as diverse as it is experimental. The difficulty in pinning down a specific ‘sound‘ for this diverse body of music can be traced to its roots in the period of cultural revival in the 1950s and 1960s. The chapter discusses how the desire to create a new German identity, distanced from the crimes of the Nazi present and freer from the influence of American culture, was reflected in this music: Krautrock musicians began to abandon the characteristics of both Anglo-American popular musics such as beat and rock ‘n’ roll, and the prevailing German style of the time, Schlager, endeavouring to create something entirely original. The chapter demonstrates how Krautrock was initially better defined by what it was not, rather than what it specifically was. However, these radically different approaches to newness shared certain characteristics. As the chapter argues, Krautrock musicians embraced innovative approaches to instrumentation, timbre, the voice, texture, and form, generating a new musical vocabulary that they could call their own.

The status of the knowledge of early modern craft practitioners and artisans has long been a point of contention among scholars, and several historians recently have argued that artisanal knowledge was central to the emergence of early modern science. This chapter follows attitudes towards craft practitioners and artisans, beginning in antiquity, when many philosophers argued that practical knowledge (techne) was of lesser value than theoretical knowledge (episteme). Following the elevation of the mechanical arts in the Middle Ages and the proliferation of practical how-to manuals in the Renaissance, a growing appreciation for artisanal work grew among philosophers. Renaissance humanists elevated the intellectual status of artistic practice, and iconoclasts like Paracelsus railed against knowledge gained without direct experience, praising instead the knowledge of miners and alchemists. Architects, engineers, and artisans came to embody the Renaissance ideal of the “polymath,” and practical knowledge became a central component of the philosophy of Francis Bacon, as well as the experimental science that was institutionalized by groups such as the Royal Society of London. Following postcolonial critiques of Eurocentrism, some have suggested the history of science should embrace a broader ambit that includes practitioners’ knowledge.

This final, concluding chapter summarizes the book’s key findings and concludes that the ICC’s interventions and complementarity are better understood as axes around which advocacy for a global accountability norm has turned. Rather than a catalyst in itself, it is the court’s mediated relationship with non-state actors that has had the greatest ‘catalytic effect’ on domestic accountability efforts. In this sense, civil society organizations are both object and subject of this effect: They seek to expand complementarity’s normative influence, while having themselves been transformed by it. The chapter also offers a number of recommendations for future inquiry and practice: It urges a critical rethinking of the ICC’s politics, greater use of the Rome Statute’s cooperation and dialogue regimes (rather than admissibility) as an approach to encouraging domestic accountability, greater experimentalism, and a reorientation towards international criminal justice as a project of global legal pluralism.