This article provides an original reappraisal of the notion of Minnemystik in the work of the 13th-century Flemish beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp, with specific reference to its Trinitarian and Christological orientations. After an introduction to the nature and origins of Hadewijch’s work, relating to the discovery of four extant manuscripts in Belgium in 1838, followed by an elucidation of the experience-driven epistemology of the Victorians Richard of St Victor and Hugo of St Victor as her key early scholastic influences, (...) Hadewijch’s Minnemystik is distinguished from Wesenmystik, as encountered in the mystical work of her French contemporary and beguine counterpart, Marguerite Porete. From this discursive basis, Hadewijch’s Minnemystik is reassessed and represented as pertinently Trinitarian and Christological in orientation, and therefore as a theological presentation from the 13th century. (shrink)

In this assessment of the intersection of trade, picturing collections and knowledge?making in Early Modern Antwerp, the focus is on the role of luxury glass, mirror and lens technology and the science of optics. Emphasizing the social ties that facilitated these intersections, it is argued that newly invented luxury goods such as the pictures of collections and the art cabinets allowed Antwerp craftsmen, artists and art dealers to export the message that the material objects in which they traded (...) were objects of knowledge: not to everyone, however, but to those who desired membership of a select community. (shrink)

In this paper I present a picture of the social status of the Antwerp arithmetic teachers. This requires first a closer look at the Antwerp schoolmaster in general. Because no fewer than two-thirds of them were also reckoning masters most of the conclusions about teachers are also valid for reckoning masters. The consequences of the sack of Antwerp in 1585 provides us with a wealth of information about the social position of its inhabitants. The material about reckoning (...) teachers is presented. Especially important, in this period of religious turmoil and civil war, is the information concerning the religious convictions of reckoning masters. Finally, a closer look is given to the contents of the arithmetic books and the introduction of arabic numerals. (shrink)

The Vlaams Blok has been among the more successful of Europe’s far-right parties. But there is still a good deal of statistical analysis which might be done to help identify the factors in their success.This study looks at the best available data from electoral returns in the nine districts of Antwerp, which has been the locus of the Vlaams Blok’s support.A statistical comparison is made between various social and economic factors, and the level of support for Vlaams Blok in (...) an attempt to identify significant correlations. (shrink)

This article concerns a silver beaker (now at the Residenzmuseum, Munich) decorated with scenes which seem to be related to the Spanish conquest of Mexico. On the basis of stylistic, iconographic and archival evidence the silversmith is here tentatively identified with an Italian-born artist, Stefano Capello, who is thought to have added a decoration to a pre-existing beaker on the eve of the treaty of Cambrai (3 August 1529). Margaret of Austria, aunt of the emperor Charles V, might have given (...) the beaker as a gift to Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I, king of France. The article argues, relying upon Warburg’s notion of Pathosformeln (formulas of emotion), that in the early 16th century the New World was perceived and made familiar through an Old World idiom, based on visual formulas taken from classical antiquity and mediated by the Italian Renaissance. (shrink)

This paper explores and highlights the value given to craftsmanship or technê in the community of liefhebbers and artists associated with the pictures of collections genre. Taking as its case study a group of gallery interiors by the probable inventor and leading light of the genre, Frans II Francken, it places pictures of collections within the reform of attitudes towards manual dexterity and the mechanical arts that took place in the Early Modern period. Antwerp gallery interiors exemplify the intellectual (...) metamorphosis of the hand, urging us to see in them an appeal both to the senses and to the intellect, which are fused together by the skilled artist?s technical facility. (shrink)

100 × Congo: A Century of Congolese Art in Antwerp museum aan de stroom, antwerp. 3 october 2020–12 september 2021.

Dordrecht usw.: Springer 2013. XV, 258 S., € 107,09. ISBN 978‐94‐007‐5720‐2.

Merchants in late medieval Antwerp worked with a number of different representatives: They appointed proxies to trade on their behalf, to collect debts in their name or to represent them in court. If a merchant wanted to authorize another person to act on his behalf, he went to a notary who issued a letter of procuration. The article discusses the role of Roman law in these procurations. It contrasts the procurations issued by the notaries with other models for procurations (...) found in a form book for notaries in Antwerp. The analysis comes to the conclusion that the basic idea of installing a proxy did not rely on Roman law. However, knowledge of Roman law was crucial if someone wanted to be represented in a Roman law court. Furthermore, concepts derived from Roman law were applied when complicated problems or phenomena had to be shortened to a few words. In sum, the practice of including phrases and concepts of Roman law wherever they proved useful can be regarded as a part of the lex mercatoria, the customary law of merchants. (shrink)

Conversations on Consciousness is just that - a series of twenty lively and challenging conversations between Sue Blackmore and some of the world's leading philosophers and scientists. Written in a colloquial and engaging style the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona or Antwerp, or in their labs or homes in Oxford or San Diego. The conversations bring out their very different personalities and styles and reveal a wealth of (...) fascinating detail about their theories and beliefs. Why is consciousness such a special and difficult issue for twenty-first century science? Sue, herself a researcher into this controversial and difficult topic, begins by asking each of her colleagues this simple question and is immediately plunged into the depths of the debate: How do the subjective experiences we call consciousness arise from the physical brain? Is this even the right question to ask? Can zombies - people who behave outwardly just like others but have no inner mental life - exist? What can dreams tell us about consciousness? Should we all be learning to meditate? Do we have free will, and if not is it possible to live without it? With an introduction setting out the broad structure of the debate on consciousness, and an extensive glossary, this book provides an engaging and accessible account of the most challenging problem of all, through the words of some of the leading figures involved in seeking to solve it. (shrink)

Philosophy of perception has recently become one of the most important and most central sub-fields of philosophical research. The aim of this volume is to give a representative sample of the new approaches in philosophy of perception that are responsible for this explosion of philosophical interest. Perceiving the World contains eleven original essays, written specially for this book by some of the leading contemporary philosophers of perception: Jonathan Cohen, JTr(me Dokic, Fred Dretske, Andy Egan, Benj Hellie, Sean D. Kelly, M.G.F. (...) Martin, Mohan Matthen, Adam Pautz, Jesse J. Prinz, and Susanna Siegel." "Bence Nanay is BOF Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp and Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. He received his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. He has published articles in various journals on philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, and aesthetics."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

The technological advances in medicine, including prolongation of life, have constituted several dilemmas at the end of life. In the context of the Belgian debates on end-of-life care, the views of Muslim women remain understudied. The aim of this article is fourfold. First, we seek to describe the beliefs and attitudes of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. Second, we aim to identify whether differences are observable among middle-aged and elderly women’s attitudes toward withholding (...) and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. Third, we aim to explore the role of religion in their attitudes. Fourth, we seek to document how our results are related to normative Islamic literature. Qualitative empirical research was conducted with a sample of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women living in Antwerp and with experts in the field. We found an unconditional belief in God’s sovereign power over the domain of life and death and in God’s almightiness. However, we also found a tolerant attitude, mainly among our middle-aged participants, toward withholding and withdrawing based on theological, eschatological, financial and quality of life arguments. Our study reveals that religious beliefs and worldviews have a great impact on the ethical attitudes toward end-of-life issues. We found divergent positions toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments, reflecting the lines of reasoning found in normative Islamic literature. In our interviews, theological and eschatological notions emerged as well as financial and quality of life arguments. (shrink)

Este trabajo trata sobre el pensamiento político del humanista español Benito Arias Montano . Consta de dos partes: en la primera se estudia la actuación política de Arias Montano como consejero del rey Felipe II en Flandes; en la segunda se comenta elDavid , obra publicada por Arias Montano en colaboración con el artista holandés Philippe Galle en Amberes, donde se puede apreciar su alegoría sacro política.PALABRAS CLAVE: Arias Montano, Philippe Galle, Felipe II, política, República Cristiana Católica, metafórica teocrática, humanismo (...) bíblico, historia sagrada, historia profana, tacitismo, Campos Sánchez-Bordona, Sánchez Lora This paper examines the Spanish humanist Benito Arias Montano’s political thought, divided into two parts. Firstly, a study of the Arias Montano’s activity as advisor to King Philip II in Flanders. Secondly, the comment on his work David , published in collaboration with the Dutch artist Philip Galle in Antwerp, and in which its possible appreciate his sacred political allegory.KEYWORDS: Arias Montano, Philip Galle, Philip II, Christian Catholic Republic, biblical humanism, sacred history, profane history, tacitism, Campos Sánchez-Bordona, Sánchez Lora. (shrink)

We are happy to present the proceedings of the international symposium on Rationality and Religious Trust which were held at the University of Antwerp in this volume of Bijdragen. Rationality and religious trust is of course a topic that falls within the scope of the epistemology of religion. Contemporary epistemology of religion has been the scene of a vigorous debate about the nature of religious belief, or more precisely about the role of rationality and rational argument with respect to (...) religious belief. What is at stake in the debate, is the very way the concept of belief applies to the religious life. More specifically, the issue is about the place to be reserved for belief within the religious life at large, and again, about the role played especially by rational arguments in holding or not holding those beliefs. (shrink)

This essay survey the attempts by art historians to discover the meaning of the peasant paintings and other works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and to determine whether his oeuvre reflects any underlying philosophy. It examines some of the recent literature on Bruegel dealing with the question of his political allegiance, his supposed affiliation with the circle of distinguished intellectuals in Antwerp that included the printer-publisher Christophe Plantin and the geographer Abraham Ortelius, the possible influence of Stoic ideas in (...) his depiction of landscape, and his social ideals and attitude toward his peasant subjects. The essay suggests that there are obscurities in Bruegel's works that may never be resolved. (shrink)

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio‐economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti‐traditional attitude, which had an anti‐rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there (...) was no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used.Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well‐known book: The right use of‐world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments. (shrink)

Contributors: -/- John Beatty (British Columbia); Kelly James Clark (Ibn Haldun, Istanbul); Angela Coventry (Portland State); Thomas Holden (UC Santa Barbara); Willem Lemmens (Antwerp); Robin Le Poidevin (Leeds); Jennifer Marusic (Edinburgh); Kevin Meeker (South Alabama); Amyas Merivale (Oxford); Peter Millican (Oxford); Dan O’Brien (Oxford Brookes); Graham Oppy (Monash); Paul Russell (Lund); Andre C. Willis (Brown).

This account of poverty and deviance during recent times in the city of Antwerp compares situations of the 1930's with present times. Undoubtedly social security prevented, since the end of the war, that many people feit into poverty. Still in the presence of massive unemployment, public relieve organisations, such as the 0.C.M.W. are more and more confronted with what is called precarity.About 25% of the Antwerp population is estimated to be living in a precair situation. After glancing on (...) the near future and warningfor a number of social challenges, the article insists very much on preventional politics and coordinated total development projects in the depressed areas. (shrink)

Anthony van Dyck’s period of service to the Stuart court stretches from 1632, when he was appointed “principalle Paynter in ordinary to their Majesties” and knighted, to his death at the end of 1641. After an earlier visit of a few months, beginning in December 160, van Dyck had gone to Italy to improve himself; there he had defected from the service of James I. On his return to England this was forgiven, and in the early years he was mainly (...) employed in making portraits of the royal family and household. Later he was again absent from England, spending an entire year beginning in July 1634 back in Antwerp. During the last six years van Dyck spent in England, his clientele widened further; it is chiefly the portraits of this latter period that I will consider here.These portraits have been approached and evaluated in two basic ways. First of all, they have been taken to demonstrate the adaptation of van Dyck’s preexisting skills, especially his command of the “grand style,” to the requirements of a court and aristocracy which prized grace and elegance as hallmarks of breeding and quality, and which at the same time welcomed the trappings of grandeur and the subtleties of variation, in costume, post, and gesture, that the artist could build into his presentation for their predilection.1 Second, where critical considerations have come up, these paintings have been evaluated in terms of whether the adoption of mannered and decorative traits now betokens a decline from the artist’s previous work, or whether it represents rather a different kind of achievement which gave rise, at its best, to equally outstanding successes in conveying refined and subtly enhanced distinction.2But both these approaches agree in finding no intellectual content in the works in question, either of van Dyck’s own devising or based on interests and concerns in which his subjects partook. This absence of implication to the portraits is seem as fitting with thea rtist’s tendency to make creative decisions on an ad hoc basis, as evidenced by his preference for rapidly made drawings from the life over the use of oil sketches and by the pentimenti that his finished works reveal.3 It is also seen as fitting with the whole pattern—cultural as well as social and economic—of his relationship to the Stuart aristocrazy, for which these images were fashioned. 1. See esp. Ellis Water house, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790 , pp. 49-50 ; and cf. more recently Christopher Brown, Van Dyck .2. See, for example, Erik Larsen, intro. to L’opera completa di Van Dyck 1626-1641 , p. 8 and Oliver Millar, intro. to exhibition catalog Van Dyck in England , p. 27 and esp. p. 31 .3. See Millar, Van Dyck in England, p. 31, citing the miniaturist Richard Gibson on the “Sketches made from the life,” mainly lost, and cat. no. 12, on the pentimenti found in the 1633 Charles I on Horseback. Mark Roskill is professor of the history of modern art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His most recent book is The Interpretation of Cubism . Previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “On the Recognition and Identification of Objects in Paintings” and “A Reply to John Reichert and Stanley Fish”. (shrink)

language="EN"> The eighth annual meeting of the ASSC took place between June 25th and 28th in Antwerp, an extremely beautiful Belgian city, a major European port and the home of the Peter Paul Rubens, 'the prince of painters and painter of princes'. The meeting was held in a University building at the edge of the old town. This part of the city is remarkable both for the elegance of its architecture and for its innumerable short, interlocking, streets with oddly (...) indistinguishable names. The demands on spatial memory were high and some delegates may still be hunting for the conference dinner which took place, magnificently but improbably, in a hotel - the Elzenveld - inside a hospital. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rudolf A. Makkreel 1936-2021Jack Zupko, Former Editor, Journal of the History of PhilosophyRudi Makkreel, longtime editor (1983–98) of the Journal of the History of Philosophy and President of its Board of Directors (1998–2018), died October 2021 in Atlanta, GA, of complications from ALS.Rudi was one of the foremost Kant scholars of his generation, helping to bring the Critique of Judgment into the broader currency it enjoys among philosophers today. (...) He also made important contributions to the fields of aesthetics, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of history. His Dilthey, Philosopher of the Human Studies (Princeton, 1975; 2nd edition, 1992), nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, introduced the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey to the anglophone world, explaining the significance of Dilthey’s work on the social and cultural dimensions of human experience as well as its influence on early analytic philosophers such as Carnap. With Frithjof Rodi, he completed the six-volume Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works (Princeton, 1985–2019), an enduring legacy for students and historians of German philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Rudi was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1939. He immigrated to the United States in 1951 and completed his graduate studies in philosophy at Columbia University in 1966. He taught at the University of California, San Diego until 1973, after which he joined the faculty at Emory University, his academic home as Charles Howard Candler Professor of Philosophy for almost half a century. He was a native Dutch speaker, but equally at home in both English and German, always exemplifying for his students the importance of knowing the original languages of the philosophers one is researching.Rudi was not just a scholar’s scholar but a perceptive critic and outstanding teacher, as his many students in academic positions around the world can attest. As a colleague he was unfailingly supportive, in his gentle and softly spoken way, quietly putting opportunities in the path of younger historians of philosophy. He was committed to ensuring the Emory philosophy program remained solidly grounded in the history of philosophy, with faculty expertise in all of its canonical areas. He was dedicated to his students and to serving the profession through the JHP, guiding the work of its Board of Directors and providing invaluable advice (though only when asked) to later Editors.Rudi took over editorship of the JHP at a tumultuous time in its history; he brought stability to its operations and ensured that the JHP remained a “big tent” in the field, publishing research on all figures, movements, and periods in the history of western philosophy, by scholars with a variety of philosophical styles and research methods. This meant making room for original papers on understudied figures and topics, despite the pressure to publish the best work on better-known figures and more traditional or popular topics, with which he could have easily filled each issue.He leaves behind his wife, Frances, a daughter, Karen, and a grandchild, as well as many former students and colleagues, who miss his gentle demeanor, wry sense of humor, and penetrating intellect.Jack Zupko, Former Editor, Journal of the History of PhilosophyUniversity of AlbertaCopyright © 2023 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

This article addresses the question of women's agency in traditionalist religion, through a study of self-narratives by women in the Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium. Women who study or work outside the boundaries of their community were interviewed about their experiences in negotiating gender ideologies by moving in and between the `secular' and `religious' spaces of higher education, work and home. Various subject positions emerged in terms of either rejecting, separating or reconciling dominant community norms regarding women's proper (...) role with personal trajectories of self-realization and individual autonomy. On the one hand, the results confirm the possibility of women's agency within religious-traditionalist settings and in that sense subscribe to some recent feminist theoretical challenges to secularism. However, it is argued that the younger generation faces more restrictions in negotiating religious and secular gender-role expectations in the Antwerp context. Their prospects depend on the dynamic between global fundamentalist tendencies and local liberal state policies of multicultural accommodation. (shrink)

Summary The contribution of the Antwerp mathematician and instrument maker Michiel Coignet to the development of the sector is investigated. It will be shown that he invented a rule, the reigle platte, which he later used in conjunction with Mordente's reduction compass, thus in effect performing the same operations as with a sector. Later Coignet transferred the scales to the legs of the compass thereby making his first sector, which bore a resemblance to the reduction compass.

Organized only two years after the previous genera! elections, the 1987 poll, characterized by a great stability of the electorale, wilt probably have a deep political impact on the country's future.If the rate of external mobility suitably gauges the extent of the citizens' shifts in votes, the 1987 elections will have ranged among the four most stable general elections out of the twenty-two that have taken place since universal suffrage has been introduced. And yet, because of the decline of the (...) outgoing coalition, on the one hand, which is mainly due to the loss suffered by the CVP, and because of the change of majority within the Walloon Regional Council and the French-speaking Community Council, on the other, the political situation appears very different after the 13th December 1987 elections. The observer can only be struck by the asymmetrical behaviour of the voters in the northern and southern parts of the country. In Flanders, the main party is on the decline white all other parties are winning votes.However, everything seems to show that the motivation of the voters who did not vote twice for the same party in 1985 and 1987, but who, as we said, are not very numerous, was an economic and social motivationrather than a language or community-related one. The gains of Agalev, the PVV and the SP in the face of the Volksunie's status quo cannot be explained otherwise. The gains of the Vlaams Blok, notably in Antwerp, are probably due to social rather than community-linked motivations too. In the W alloon Region, on the contrary, the main party is registering an obvious gain, white the other parties are declining or stagnating. In this case, the motivations seem to be numerous : they have a social and economic background on the part of voters who trusted the main opposition party, but they are also community linked and inspired by considerations that have to do with the relationships between the Walloon and Flemish people in the Belgian State under transformation.The political prospects then appear uncertain. This is even more true that two other elections are to take place in the next eighteen months.These concern the opposite levels of the elected Assemblies: the municipal Council and the European Parliament. (shrink)

Esprit or ?ingenuity? was one of the principle qualities sought by the connoisseurs who populate seventeenth?century Flemish pictures of collections. This essay scrutinizes the ways in which the flourishing discipline of connoisseurship was depicted, explored and fashioned in Antwerp gallery interiors. Placing these images within the context of Early Modern writings on discernment, Gage explores the ways in which the directed gazes, postures and gestures of cognoscenti reflect the growth of trained artistic judgement within the period?s elite, concluding that (...) such images exemplify a major social and epistemological shift in which one can make apparent one?s universal understanding and keen judgement, and to rightly claim membership in a nobility, no longer defined solely by lineage, but also by learning. (shrink)

The year 2016 has seen a spate of Utopia-themed events triggered by the quincentenary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. Suddenly, this little book, published in Latin in 1516, seems to have a new and wide following. In the United Kingdom, Somerset House has a year-long series on Utopia with a mainly artistic focus; the literary festival of the London School of Economics celebrated Utopia; the Coleridge Lectures in Bristol took Utopia as their title; and there have been events (...) at Kings Place, in Antwerp, and in Lisbon. There is an irony here. While Utopia matters a great deal, Utopia does not. Hitherto More’s text has been read almost solely by scholars and students, as indeed he would have wished. Having... (shrink)

The ?pictures of collections? genre was a special type of cabinet painting, and was invented, refined and popularized within the artistic community of early seventeenth?century Antwerp. Depicting a sumptuous array of luxury goods, natural curiosities, connoisseurs and nobles in elegant interiors, the paintings that make up this genre were purposefully seductive, designed to parade the consummate skill of the Southern Netherlands? finest artists at a time when the market for works of art was growing and highly competitive. Yet there (...) is a heavy lacing of symbolism and allegory apparent in many of the images, and they were also intended to speak to the intellectual preoccupations of the age, from the cultivation of personal virtue to the honing of the critical faculties necessary for philosophy. The genre is explored by tracing stages in its evolution in the seventeenth century, and four types of collection making up the genre are distinguished. Finally, the historiography of the genre is investigated. (shrink)

This article deals with a set of images which were probably the first in history to be reproduced on four continents: the Jesuit Jerome Nadal's Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, first published in Antwerp in 1593. It begins with a brief discussion of what we know about Nadal's life and the production history of his book, as well as its relationship to his Adnotationes et Meditationes in Evangelia quae in sacrosanto missae sacrificio toto anno leguntur, which acts as a commentary to (...) the Imagines. Then follows a description of the structure of the two books, and how they narrate and expound the significance of the Gospels. The remaining sections discuss the adaptations of Nadal's imagery. While his work has received much attention from scholars around the world in recent decades, the aim of the present article is to bring together research on the use and re-use of these images in Europe, the Americas, India, China, Japan, Iran and Ethiopia, and to make clear their global impact in a way that has not been attempted before. (shrink)

With growing complexity in society, designers are entering the fields of organizational studies and social change with high levels of responsibility and, sometimes, little background knowledge of theories and recent evolution. Specifically in the fields of strategy, change, and transformation, the turn toward complexity science is gaining acceptance in both academia and practice. This article presents Imagineering as a complexity-inspired design approach to effectuate transformational objectives. It illustrates the method with an application on the city of Antwerp. The author (...) concludes by reflecting on the implications and perspectives of the method for transformational design and for design thinking in management. (shrink)

Together with the city council elections, the citizens of Antwerp elected on 8 October 2000 nine district councils. This new decentralised political level is primarily initiated to restore the confidence of the citizens in the city government. By analysing the results of the city and the district elections we try to find indications whether citizens feel closer to their new district governments or not. Apparently district elections resulted neither in a higher voter turn-out, nor in less blank votes. Nevertheless, (...) there is a significant correlation of voter turn-out and blank votes with population of the districts. And although the differences between the electoral results of the city elections and the district elections are not huge, a different political landscape comes more or less into existence in the several districts. Quite surprisingly the number of list votes is higher on the district elections than on the city elections, while we would have expected a higher number of preferential votes. Correctingfor incumbents and famous candidates on the lists, our initial expectations hold much better. Generally spoken, we can conclude that the district elections do not give much proof of a closer connection between the citizens and the city government. Nevertheless we find some important differences between the districts. (shrink)

The question of 'the end of metaphysics' is generally considered as a central issue concerning the nature and significance of philosophy as such, and, accordingly, as belonging to the realm of 'pure' or 'fundamental' philosophy. By contrast, this book investigates to what extent the end of metaphysics might be related to specific influences from outside philosophy. Focusing on the period between 1830 and 1848, it argues that metaphysics was not so much challenged by internal philosophical argument, but rather by a (...) transformation of Western culture in its entirety. Metaphysics was overtaken by the modern spirit of the age. In consequence, this book approaches 'the end of metaphysics' as a problem of the philosophy of culture. Three historians of culture provide an overview and analysis of the 'Age of Revolution' by focusing upon the political revolution in France, the industrial revolution in England and the intellectual revolution in Germany respectively. The proclamations of the end of metaphysics by Auguste Comte, Friedrich Engels and Otto Friedrich Gruppe are shown to mirror this threefold cultural transformation. Against this backdrop, the idea of the end of metaphysics is brought into relief as a historical reality during the years 1830 to 1848. The editors are members of the Centre for Metaphysics and Culture at the University of Antwerp. (shrink)

A political science program at the licenciate level is currently offered by the Department of the Political and the Social Sciences at the Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen. It was able to do so with the cooperation of staff-members of other departments and other institutes of the University of Antwerp. The prÓgram is mainly focused on international polities and more specifically on European integration, North-South and East-West relations, as seen from the perspective of Belgian and West-European policy-makers. lts methodology is multidisciplinary (...) and encompasses politological and juridical as well as historical and economical perspectives. In the wake of the first encouraging from the student population, the Department has decided to strenghten further this Political Science branch of its program. It intends to invest more in full-time academie personnel and to add some more theoretical background courses to the present courses which emphasize mainly practical knowledge. Last but not least, it has initiated what it hopes shall be a new tradition of empirical research into the political culture and behaviour of international and supranational policy makers. (shrink)

The centenary of E.F. Schumacher's birth (1911-1977) offered an urgent opportunity to revisit his work and life. Against the background of the crisis at the beginning of this century, reconsidering Schumacher's Small is Beautiful or frugality paradigm makes clear that advances in responsible economics continue to be a priority. This book contains the proceedings of the 2001 Annual Conference of the European SPES Forum on "Responsibility in Economics and Business: The Legacy of E.F. Schumacher", which was organised in September 2011 (...) by the Centre for Ethics of the University of Antwerp. (shrink)