Human oversight has become a key mechanism for the governance of artificial intelligence (“AI”). Human overseers are supposed to increase the accuracy and safety of AI systems, uphold human values, and build trust in the technology. Empirical research suggests, however, that humans are not reliable in fulfilling their oversight tasks. They may be lacking in competence or be harmfully incentivised. This creates a challenge for human oversight to be effective. In addressing this challenge, this article aims to make three contributions. (...) First, it surveys the emerging laws of oversight, most importantly the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (“AIA”). It will be shown that while the AIA is concerned with the competence of human overseers, it does not provide much guidance on how to achieve effective oversight and leaves oversight obligations for AI developers underdefined. Second, this article presents a novel taxonomy of human oversight roles, differentiated along whether human intervention is constitutive to, or corrective of a decision made or supported by an AI. The taxonomy allows to propose suggestions for improving effectiveness tailored to the type of oversight in question. Third, drawing on scholarship within democratic theory, this article formulates six normative principles which institutionalise distrust in human oversight of AI. The institutionalisation of distrust has historically been practised in democratic governance. Applied for the first time to AI governance, the principles anticipate the fallibility of human overseers and seek to mitigate them at the level of institutional design. They aim to directly increase the trustworthiness of human oversight and to indirectly inspire well-placed trust in AI governance. (shrink)

In a recent contribution to legal ontology, Kenneth Ehrenberg identifies a puzzle concerning _the basic validity rule_ of legal systems: If formal institutions require a codified foundational constitutive rule, then legal systems cannot be formal institutions, since their foundational constitutive rule is necessarily an uncodified basic validity rule. To solve this puzzle, Ehrenberg suggests taking this rule as ‘a foundational and self-identifying institutional fact’. Here, I challenge his solution and the very existence of this puzzle. By arguing, contra Ehrenberg, that (...) the basic validity rule is not the foundational constitutive rule of a legal system, but only the foundational constitutive rule of legal validity; that its codification in fact contributes towards the institutionalisation of a legal system; and that the true foundational constitutive rule of a legal system is the formal group structure of the higher-constitutional organisations, I submit an alternative account of the institutional nature of legal systems. (shrink)

Following its economic impact and rising popularity, ‘e-sports’ has become a theme within the academic debate on sports. The current discussion revolves around the definitions of sports provided by the philosophy and sociology of sports and how in turn, this can be adapted to e-sports. The premise of this article is the analysis of ‘institutionalisation’, which is claimed to be an element of modern sport. The governance and production aspects of e-sports will be the main focus where the nature (...) of video games with their fractured production process, the lack of a monopolistic international organisation and its relative novelty will be emphasised. Furthermore, the shaky ground on which the term ‘institutionalisation’ stands will be touched on. It will conclude that the current debate on the recognition of e-sports as a sport may experience certain pitfalls if it does not solve the fundamental problems regarding institutionalisation and ignores the production process of video games and e-sports. (shrink)

Schelling (1960) and Frank (1988) famously offered commitment as an explanation of the stability of human cooperation in the face of incentives to cheat. Reputationally-enforced commitments were part of the explanation for human cooperation for much of our history (Khan, 2024, 2025). In this article, I consider the origins and effects of institutionalised commitments. These are commitments which are contractually enforced by third parties, rather than only reputationally enforced. I discuss how these commitment offer advantages for securing cooperation over and (...) above our previous forms of commitment. I then offer an account of their potential origins. I suggest that a change in our cooperative landscape and organisational structure occurring in the Neolithic -- in particular, the rise of agricultural economies and hierarchical society -- opened the door to a new means of enforcement for commitments, affecting the success of our cooperative practices. (shrink)

This article discusses outcomes of a dialogue conference on ‘The road ahead for ELSA in Norway: Issues of quality, influence and network cooperation’ held in Oslo in December 2012. Norwegian researchers in the field of ethical, legal and social aspects of technologies were invited to discuss conceptual and strategic issues, as well as the setup of a researcher network. In the article I take an institutionalist approach and discuss challenges in institutionalising an ELSA network at a time when a designated (...) ELSA funding programme is coming to an end. The research question is how the Norwegian ELSA network can succeed as a persistent network in times of greater uncertainties. The article claims that the network needs to gain legitimacy, outlines different dimensions of legitimacy and interprets the conference discussions in light of these dimensions. Central challenges and success factors facing the ELSA network are discussed and the article concludes with reflections on the potential future of ELSA in Norway. Although the article has a Norwegian context, the discussions in the article are likely to be relevant for researchers all across Europe, as similar developments are taking place also elsewhere in the European research funding context. (shrink)

The article sets out to explore the international legal dimension in Jürgen Habermas' latest publications on philosophy of law. It is our view that Habermas deals with the examination of just relations beyond the nation-state first and foremost from a legal perspective, and that the key to a Habermasian reading of international justice is not through an application of discourse-theoretical models of communicative or moral action as such, but primarily through proper legal institutionalisation of the rule of law. In (...) asserting this view, we will look closer at the Kantian influence in Habermas' legal construct at the international level, and show why this institutional approach is to be sharply distinguished from and preferred to any exclusively non-institutional approach to international justice. (shrink)

Despite Charles Darwin's theoretical and empirical works on adaptation, and despite the adaptationist research program that began in the 19th century, its consolidation took place only in the 1960s. The general issue guiding this paper concerns which elements held back the consolidation of the adaptationist program and which needed to be triggered to trigger this consolidation. The hypothesis we present departs from i) the historical orientation given by Caponi (2011) and ii) the philosophical concept of scientific disciplines by Lenoi (2003), (...) that is, that adaptationism was only consolidated when it obtained its institutionalisation as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

The following contribution is an overview of the gradual and systematic establishment of the institutional foundations of Slovak Slavistics. It looks at how the research focus and programme were developed and its coordination centre set up, beginning in 1988.Following that, the Slovak Committee of Slavists was established and its were statutes drawn up. Preparations then began for the 11th International Congress of Slavists in 1993. The Department of Slavistics at the Slovak Academy of Sciences was also established, becoming the Ján (...) Stanislav Institute of Slavistics in 2005. The article describes in detail the initial beginnings of the programmatic focus of research in Slovak Slavistics, highlighting the difficulties encountered and the various twists and turns that complicated the process of establishing the research programme and institutionalising Slovak Slavistics. It also stresses the results produced thus far and its future prospects. (shrink)

Aujourd’hui en France, les pratiques d’accompagnement par les pairs se développent et s’institutionnalisent dans les secteurs d’activité de la santé (et notamment de la santé mentale), du social et du médico-social. Malgré une unité de valeurs prégnante, une origine historique commune, la revendication unanime de savoirs expérientiels fondant leur expertise, une diversification des pratiques s’observe. Dans un contexte où les politiques publiques sanitaires et sociales impulsent et favorisent le développement de ce rôle social de pair-accompagnant, où des financements sont ouverts (...) pour quelques postes salariés, d’autres optent pour une pratique bénévole ou même informelle. Cet article vise à comprendre les développements différenciés d’un même rôle social à travers une analyse de son processus d’institutionnalisation. Pour ce faire, le matériau de deux enquêtes sera analysé: l’une portant sur les pairémulateurs constitués en association loi 1901 et l’autre sur les pairs-aidants du programme expérimental d’intervention des politiques publiques “Un Chez soi d’abord.” Se dégagent de l’analyse deux processus d’institutionnalisation du rôle de pairaccompagnant: l’un priorisant le développement d’un rôle social, l’autre le déploiement de politiques publiques. Tous deux sont insuffisamment aboutis aujourd’hui pour assurer la pérennité des pratiques, en raison d’un processus de légitimation lacunaire ou de la faiblesse des typifications réciproques. Cet état de fait a pour conséquence de freiner une possible professionnalisation du rôle de pair-accompagnant. Se pose également deux questions: celle de l’articulations des savoirs expérientiels et des savoirs professionnels, celle des effets d’une rencontre entre pairs-accompagnants jusqu’alors cloisonnés dans leurs champs respectifs (santé, santé mentale, handicap, exclusion, addictions, etc.) et à l’intérieur de leurs causes. (shrink)

We address what is still a scarcity of general mathematical foundations for ontology-based semantic integration underlying current knowledge engineering methodologies in decentralised and distribut...

Partnerships between businesses and nonprofit organisations are an increasingly prominent element of corporate social responsibility implementation. The paper is based on two in-depth partnership case studies (Earthwatch-Rio Tinto and Prince's Trust-Royal Bank of Scotland) that move beyond a simple stage model to reveal the deeper-level micro-processes in the selection, design and institutionalisation of business-NGO partnerships. The suggested practice-tested model is followed by a discussion that highlights management issues within partnership implementation and a practical Partnership Test to assist managers in (...) testing both the accountability and level of institutionalisation of the relationship to address any possible skill gaps. Understanding how CSR partnerships are implemented in practice contributes to the broader CSR and partnership literatures a contextspecific level of detail in a systematic way that allows for transferable learning in both theory and practice. (shrink)

In this paper, the author suggest that the historical and institutional conditions of existence of the concepts which animate legal argumentation – like the historical and institutional conditions of existence of certain forms of law – are of interest not only in their own right, but also because they raise methodological issues for jurisprudence. These include questions about the relationship between concepts and the social phenomena which they purport to categorise; about the relationship between philosophical and other forms of legal (...) theory; and about how a jurisprudence largely dominated by philosophical methods may be brought into productive dialogue with other forms of theoretical analysis. Only by broadening both its horizons and its methods, the author argues, will jurisprudence be capable of illuminating not only doctrinal analysis within particular jurisdictions at particular times, but also comparative and historical scholarship. (shrink)

We study companies that do not produce a sustainability report in contexts where institutionalisation is assumed. Based on a careful analysis of interaction patterns between non-reporting companies, sustainability interest groups, and peer organisations, we find patterns of discursive and material isomorphism that suggest sustainability reporting is confined to an issues-based field, rather than spreading as an institutionalised practice across the business community. We argue that the issues-based field exerts only weak pressure for sustainability reporting, and that encouraging more firms (...) to report rests on understanding what influences companies to interact more widely to become part of this field. (shrink)

There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a co...

From the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth century sanatoria loomed large in the popular consciousness as the space for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). A review of the historiography of sanatoria at the beginning of this paper shows that the nursing contribution to the care of TB patients is at best ignored and at worst attracts negative comment. Added to this TB nursing was not viewed as prestigious by contemporaries, leading to problems attracting recruits. Using a case study approach based (...) on surviving archival material, this paper sets out to provide a glimpse of the work of TB nurses in a rural sanatorium at Westwood, Queensland, Australia. For the nurses geographical isolation was compounded by professional stagnation, which created a working environment influenced by friction and discord among the staff. It reveals how despite this, nurses coped with working in hostile conditions, to make the long stay of their patients, separated from their families and familiar life style more bearable. (shrink)

At least ten useful little reasons why we should reject efforts to introduce voluntary euthanasia. An alternative version of the case in the New Law Journal against voluntary euthanasia, but this version contains some user-friendly links.

Starting from definitions of corruption and integrity, the first part of the article criticizes several misconceptions with regards to integrity. Focusing on the concepts of ‘institution’ and ‘collective secondary actor’ the second part articulates the relation between individual action and structural aspects of corruption which are theologically interpreted as ‘structural sin’. The third part articulates the different degrees of responsibility in corruption. The article concludes with a reflection on developing a “counter discipline” against corruption via spirituality as precondition for ethical (...) behaviour. (shrink)

There have been many efforts aimed at how organisations have been addressing sustainability; however, there have been few studies on how organisations have incorporated and how they have been institutionalised. Incorporation refers to the initiation of change and may be driven internally. When change is adopted and put into practice for long enough, and increasingly, by different members of the organisation, until widespread implementation and stabilisation is achieved, it is institutionalised. There are two main hierarchy approaches when dealing with sustainability (...) change top-down and bottom-up. Top-down approaches can lead to faster incorporation of sustainability, whilst bottom-up approaches might take longer but would better facilitate its institutionalisation. Without bottom-up support, institutionalization might take longer, or not take place. Bottom-up without the support of the top levels slows down, or even blocks sustainability incorporation. Ultimately, both approaches need to be complementary. Empirical research in the contexts of Higher Education Institutions, football clubs, and the results from a survey are presented in this chapter. (shrink)

. One of the most powerful accounts of the necessary connection between law and morality grounded on the openness of communication is provided by Robert Alexy, who builds a discourse theory of law on the basis of Habermas’ theory of general practical discourse. In this article I argue that the thesis based on the openness of legal discourse is problematic in that it does not provide a convincing account of the differentiation of legal discourse from other practical discourses. I offer (...) an understanding of the institutionalisation of legal discourse as the tacit commitment of the participants to their shared normative experience and in particular in: 1) the possibility of containing normative force in space, 2) the possibility of transforming word into deed, 3) the possibility of grasping and controlling time and 4) the possibility of transforming deed into word. That commitment of participants in legal discourse is revealed as a set of fundamental assumptions embedded in all legal utterances, which provide the necessary bedrock that makes communication possible. It also provides a basis for the institution of legal discourse, to the effect that their problematisation signifies a departure from the latter. (shrink)

We extend the monotonic and regular modal logics to the multi-modal cue, and give semantical characterization w.r.t. a semantics of minimal frames. For this we introduce a calculus over neighbourhoods and we obtain simpler conditions than those from the literature.

Drawing from Habermas’ distinction between the system and life-world, the article explores and analyses how advertising operates within both domains, influencing not only the institutional structure but also everyday social interactions, thus providing the framework for the institutionalisation of advertising as a social actor and force in contemporary society. Using Super Bowl commercials to explain the way that they reflect and shape dominant cultural values, and based on George Ritzer’s McDonaldisation, Shoshana Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism, Manuel Castells’ social capital and (...) power dynamics, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic capital and habitus, the article examines how advertising has evolved beyond its commercial role to become a central institution that shapes behaviours, identities and cultural norms. It highlights the role of advertising in reinforcing social power and cultural capital, which can be identified by the data driven personalisation, narrative control and standardisation that brands use to leverage their power through their commercial narratives. It also addresses critiques of the institutionalisation of advertising which provides an understanding on how advertising functions as a powerful institution that reflects and shapes social realities in the digital and mass consumption era. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the role of institutions in Jacques Derrida’s political engagement. In spite of Derrida’s significant involvement with political causes throughout his life, his engagements have received little sustained attention, and this is particularly true of his work with institutions. I turn to two such cases, the Collège international de philosophie and the Parlement international des écrivains and argue that these represent an alternative mode of institutionalisation. These institutions seek to destabilise other institutions as well as (...) themselves.Looking closely at the institutions that Derrida founded, we see three common characteristics emerge. These institutions are anti-hegemonic,self-reflexive and international. I then connect these to Derrida’s thought, offering a reading of the undecidable, which brings forth the importance of conventions in the decision. Finally, I demonstrate that the three shared characteristics of Derrida’s institutions form part of an effort to open up space for the possibility of alterity. Through this, and beyond a distinction between theory/practice, we come to see Derrida’s institutional engagements as an active form of critique, both of other institutions and themselves. (shrink)

Progress in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has proved to be a decisive step in many institutions, following the guidelines and encouragement of the European Union and academic proposals. One of the dimensions recent studies have considered central for making progress in the practical development of theoretical proposals for RRI is the institutionalisation of reflexivity at the core of the organisations that develop RRI. This is particularly the case with the promotion of processes that facilitate the establishment of ethical (...) standards throughout the research and innovation cycle. This study attempts to deal with discourses about the institutional reflexivity formulated in the past 15 years based on RRI from a critical-ethical point of view. It does so using the business ethics theory of discourse. This analysis shows that, for this institutional reflexivity to be possible, it is necessary to base the RRI model on a critical-ethical horizon and design an ethical governance system that allows its practical development. (shrink)

In their book Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Matteo Bonotti and Anne Barnhill defend a conception of public reason centred on the notion of accessibility and advance an ethical toolkit public health policy makers can use to ensure they are reasoning publicly when designing healthy eating policies. Finally, they propose to institutionalise the process of public reasoning informed by their ethics framework by designing certain procedures of consultation and deliberation. This article focuses on their (...) class='Hi'>institutionalisation and raises some doubts and concerns by arguing that the procedures designed by Bonotti and Barnhill may be counterproductive to some of their aims, in particular with respect to citizens’ control, epistemic injustice, and the conception of citizens as free and equal. (shrink)

The ethical controversies of firms in the sharing economy (SE) have recently drawn attention and caused debates. Ridesharing firms violate laws in many countries, but how they become legitimised remains underexplored. We apply the co-evolutionary perspective to examine how ethical controversies, legitimation and institutionalisation co-evolve in the ridesharing segment in the dynamic and changing institutional environment of China. We conducted a case study on Didi using firm-institution dual-level analysis based on stakeholder salience theory (SST) and the Orders of Worth (...) framework. Our findings uncover ethical controversies among stakeholders with different levels of salience. We also reveal a dynamic interplay between the legitimacy work of Didi and the institutional-level market regulations on ridesharing firms. We develop a process model demonstrating the co-evolution among the changes in ethical controversies, new market category emergence and legitimation of ridesharing firms. These findings shed light on the application of the co-evolutionary perspective in analysing ethical controversies among multiple stakeholders’ evolving interests in the SE context. (shrink)

Today, some contemporaries are tempted to understand and express freedom as if it exists outside of institutions. Then education has failed in its mediation of the institutional bonding between participants in a democracy and between generations. This chapter discusses the grounding of teaching as an act mediating mutual responsibility in society. Thus, teaching opens a space for the student to become a free individual with knowledge who supports the living in a sustainable society respecting freedom and obligation.The mediation of freedom (...) and institution is expressed through the reflexivity of teaching. This reflexivity of teaching is expressed through a teacher’s judgements of what is good or bad, permitted or forbidden. Through her mediation of these judgements the teacher “… institute the social bond and the modes of identity attached to it” (Ricoeur, 2005, p. 137). This is how the mediation of teaching affects the social groups of students in school through the teaching of knowledge of society. We argue that teaching must enact democracy as an institution giving and securing human rights and an obligation toward the representation of this democracy. Teaching must then represent a knowledge that is sustainable over time for all students. (shrink)

As universities are increasingly called by their national governments for a more entrepreneurial management of public research results, they started to develop internal structures and policies to take a proactive role in the commercialisation of university research. For the first time, this paper presents a detailed chronicle of how country-level reforms on Intellectual Property Rights were translated into organisation-level mechanisms to regulate university-patenting activity. The analysis is based on the complete list of patent policies issued between 1993 and 2009 by (...) the population of Italian universities. Our evidence suggests that universities first dealt with legislative changes on IPRs by enacting isomorphic behaviours, then by creating a community of practices, and finally by leveraging on such community to influence government reforms on IP-related matters. We discuss our results in the light of institutional theory and public policy. (shrink)

Several tendencies in the process of political decision-making in Belgium tend to put under strain the official model of representative democracy. One of these evolutions is the set up of many advisory councils, and especially the dynamism of some of these advisory councils to move up to participation in the decision-making itself.The process starts at the functional basis of the advisory councils: an information function, an advice function, a function to make proposals, an investigation function and a selection function. It (...) is possible to get to the care of the decision for reason of a liability to advice, the quality as regards content of the advice, the composition of the councils and the appeal to the public opinion. The dysfunctions are the obstacles that need to be advoided: the alibi function, a basis for non-decision, the delay and concealing of the decision-making itself, a certain obliqueness in the composition and the undermining of the representative function of parliament. (shrink)

How climate models came to gain and exercise epistemic authority has been a key concern of recent climate change historiography. Using newly released archival materials and recently conducted interviews with key actors, we reconstruct negotiations between UK climate scientists and policymakers which led to the opening of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in 1990. We historicize earlier arguments about the unique institutional culture of the Hadley Centre, and link this culture to broader characteristics of UK regulatory practice (...) and environmental politics. A product of a particular time and place, the Hadley Centre was shaped not just by scientific ambition, but by a Conservative governmental preference for ‘sound science’ and high evidential standards in environmental policymaking. Civil servants sought a prediction programme which would appeal to such sensibilities, with transient and regional climate simulation techniques seemingly offering both scientific prestige and persuasive power. Beyond the national level, we also offer new insights into the early role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an evolving international political context in the shaping of scientific practices and institutions. (shrink)

This article explores the activities of the Adult Shelter of the National Committee of the City of Zagreb since its foundation, from 1953 to 1978. The focus is on the consideration of the policy of taking care of vulnerable groups in social welfare institutions in the city of Zagreb, including persons with mental disorders. It seeks to illuminate the beginnings of the long-term care of the latter population in the homes for mentally ill adults, today known as homes for adults. (...) In connection to this, their social stigmatisation and tendency of placement into spatially segregated objects are discussed. The research showed that the strategies of social protection and mental health protection, despite the then-advocated idea of equality between social categories, were at the time oriented towards the protection of the majority of community from persons with mental disorders. (shrink)

Since Ackerman in Corporate social responsiveness, the modern dilemma (1973), pleaded for the institutionalisation of corporate social performance (CSP) in business processes, researchers have focused on the role of strategy in CSP. This article demonstrates that CSP is institutionalised within the governance structure. We will attempt to make this clear by means of a description of the Dutch system of corporate governance. Under certain circumstances Dutch companies are already bound to CSP due to prevailing legislation. A governance perspective shows (...) that CSP is institutionalised within a company’s governance structure. “Processes of responsiveness”, since long regarded as a starting point of CSP-analysis, appear to be decision-making processes. Within these processes the expectations of the stakeholders can be institutionalised, trust can be built and interests can be incorporated. This makes CSP context-dependent. However, it is possible to analyse companies by comparing the companies’ individual governance structures. The article concludes that CSP-analysis can fruitfully extend into analysing in the role of the stakeholders in the influence-pathways that are incorporated within the governance structure. (shrink)

This book is the fourth volume of the CEval Evaluation GLOBE book project. It investigates the institutionalisation of evaluation in Africa, using a comparative research methodology and drawing on modernisation theories and a social science perspective of institutions and organisations.Each country study is guided by a standardised analytical framework that examines three interconnected subsystems: the national political system, the social system and systems of professions.The national political system, as the central authority for decision-making, is examined with regard to legal (...) frameworks, institutional structures, and the actual practice and use of evaluation within governance. Civil society, as a key actor in supporting and holding political systems accountable, is analysed in terms of its participation in evaluations, its use of and demand for evaluation findings, and the extent of public access to and discourse around evaluation results. The professional system, responsible for developing and disseminating evaluation expertise, focuses on the availability of academic programmes, research infrastructure, and voluntary professional organisations that contribute to the advancement and quality of evaluation practice.The introductory chapter describes this theoretical and methodological framework as well as some relevant specifics of Africa in some detail. (shrink)

This article has already been published in, and is available in open access from Time and Society, 0, 2017, pp. 1-29. We thank Stanley Blue for his permission to republish it here.: The practice turn in social theory has renewed interest in conceptualising the temporal organisation of social life as a way of explaining contemporary patterns of living and consuming. As a result, the interest to develop analyses of time in both practice theories and practice theory-based - Sur le concept (...) de rythme. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, Francophone Africa has made significant progress in the institutionalisation of evaluation, driven by local dynamics and international initiatives. This chapter examines the role of the Center for Learning on Evaluation and Results for Francophone Africa (CLEAR FA). The CLEAR-FA approach is characterised by two main phases, which reflect the evolution of the evaluation capacity and culture, as well as the needs of the context in Francophone Africa. CLEAR FA’s approach has evolved in two main (...) phases: from its inception until 2020, the center focused on strengthening individual and organisational capacities through short-term training and professionalisation efforts. CLEAR-FA pioneered the development of short-term training products in Francophone Africa. Since 2020, its strategy has shifted towards a more systemic, government-centred approach to building inclusive, sustainable national evaluation systems. Key contributions include support for policy and legal frameworks, promoting peer learning between countries, and the development of a strong community of skilled evaluators, including emerging professionals. CLEAR-FA also promotes collaboration within national evaluation ecosystems, supports universities in delivering training, and fosters continuing education by blending local and international expertise. Anchored in a local university and connected to global networks through CLEAR and the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI), the center effectively bridges local realities and international knowledge to support evaluation institutionalisation. (shrink)

This paper describes the different dimensions of the relation between moral reflection and legislative processes. It discusses some examples of the institutionalisation of moral reflection. It is argued that the relation between ethics and law is still an actual and relevant question. Ethics also has to reflect on its own role in political life. The paper defends the relevance of a theological perspective on the relation between law and ethics. In the last part it is argued that the modality (...) of relation between ethics and law depends on the specific character of social domain. (shrink)

This study is about Carl Stumpf's achievements during his stay in Prague (1879-1884). It can be considered a piece of sociology of knowledge that is meant to uncover the institutional mechanisms used by Brentano from Vienna in order to implement his philosophical program in Prague. I claim that Stumpf and Marty have been instrumental in Brentano's plans and strategies to consolidate his hold on philosophy and its institutions in Austria. There are also several aspects of Stumpf's and Marty's scientific activities (...) in Prague, which I will also examine in this paper, including their scientific collaborations and exchanges with Ernst Mach, Ewald Hering, Gottlob Frege, and William James during Stumpf's stay in Prague (1879-1884). The last part of this study pertains to the circumstances surrounding Stumpf's departure from Prague and Brentano's reaction to Stumpf's arguments. (shrink)