With recent developments in political globalization, self-identifying “cosmopolitans” have overwhelmed the scholarly discourse. This article examines the moral claims behind the theory of cosmopolitanism—in its political universal form—while being especially cautious of claims of such true universalism, and its likely dangerous applications. This entails a brief analysis into certain justified universalist legal traditions; an example of such is found in the International Criminal Court (ICC). In examining the theory and application of western-originated cosmopolitanism, we not only see how theoretical claims (...) of moral superiority are wrong, but that they are alive and well in western theories. In application, it follows that even (slightly) milder legal traditions, like the ICC, imply this unjustified moral superiority. (shrink)

Discerning the decisionmaking of Kim Jong-Un and the North Korean regime on issues of peaceful engagement and warlike actions endures as a mighty challenge for U.S. intelligence analysts and policymakers. In this report, we seek to inform analysis of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) leadership decisionmaking. To do so, we use three discussion papers that were written to facilitate discussion of an interagency working group. The three papers are assembled here in a single report. The first discussion paper describes (...) decisionmaking among different authoritarian regimes, including North Korea, and the opening up of those economies to outside engagement. The second paper outlines two different scenarios that might occur when conventional deterrence on the Korean Peninsula breaks down and the resulting decisions that North Korea’s leadership could face. The third paper assesses DPRK decisionmaking about nuclear weapon use. The report concludes with some observations, drawn from the issues covered in these three discussion papers, about DPRK decisionmaking and stability on the Korean Peninsula. (shrink)

The article endeavours to compare the reflections on the Shoah of two of the most celebrated intellectuals of Jewish origin of the 20th century, namely the German philosopher Hans Jonas and the Soviet writer Vasily Grossman. Both Jonas’ essay on The Concept of God after Auschwitz and Grossman’s novels and reports, such as The Hell of Treblinka, Life and Fate, and The Sistine Madonna, are characterised by a thorough enquiry into the ambivalence of the human condition, that tries (...) to shed some light on the disturbing abyss of Auschwitz and the Shoah. Although neither Jonas nor Grossman considered themselves as religious believers, thanks to the Shoah they recollected their Jewish roots and developed peculiar and innovative thoughts on the meaning and vulnerability of life, human freedom, immortality, and God. The article endeavours to highlight the main similarities and differences between these two authors, who tackled the issue of thinking after Auschwitz. (shrink)

In his early works, Giorgio Agamben argues that some Auschwitz inmates practised a ‘silent form of resistance’ by shutting themselves off from the world until nothing could harm them. I argue that this conception of ‘bare life’ is both too abstract and too individualistic. Agamben’s idea of bare life’s resistance first neglects the socio-historical context that has produced particular instances of it, effectively barring the investigation into how to avoid future occurrences of sovereign violence. Agamben, second, emphasizes the potential for (...) resistance present in individual bodies shut off from the world without providing guidelines for how these bodies should form a substantive community. I consequently employ Vasily Grossman’s writings on the Shoah to provide an alternative conception of bare life’s resistance in the camps. According to Grossman, resistance lies not in closing oneself off from the world, but in cultivating ineradicable nodes of ‘senseless kindness’ in concrete human interactions. (shrink)

Researchers have conducted many studies to directly explore factors that can enhance these cognitions. As a result, low ego is discovered as one of such factors. The experiment of Kross and Grossman found that ego-decentering thinking could enhance wise reasoning (dialecticism and intellectual humility), attitudes (cooperation-related attitude assimilation), and behaviors (willingness to join a bipartisan group). Ego-decentering thinking is the reasoning process using an observer perspective rather than the ego-centric perspective. The enhancing impacts of ego-decentering thinking on wisdom were (...) later confirmed to be generalized across younger and older adults. This insightful “tip” is helpful not only for us in our daily life but also for the collective human as a whole. Many global issues that we are facing right now need smart thinking to be solved, like climate change and biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is time for us to rethink our human-centric mindset and adopt new core values that consider humans just a part of natural systems. (shrink)

Con base en los varios papeles, 1989-2002, mediante los textos originales, se presenta la crítica, de los matemático-físicos A. Logunov y M. Mestvirishvil, de la “general relatividad” de A. Einstein, paso previo para la elaboración de la teoría relativista de la gravitación de estos autores. Se demuestra concluyentemente que desde las ecuaciones de Einstein-Grossman-Hilbert la gravedad es absurdamente un campo métrico carente de realidad física.

Based on the various documents, 1989-2002, through the original texts, in addition to the author's contributions, this paper presents the refutation of the mathematicians and physicists A. Logunov and M. Mestvirishvil of A. Einstein's "general relativity", from the relativistic theory of gravitation of these authors, who applying the fundamental principle of the science of physics of the conservation of the energy-momentum and using absolute differential calculus they rigorously perform their mathematical tests. It is conclusively shown that, from the Einstein-Grossman-Hilbert (...) equations, gravity is absurdly a metric field devoid of physical reality unlike all other fields in nature that are material fields, interrupting the chain of transformations between the different existing fields. Also, in Einstein's theory the proved "inertial mass" equal to gravitational mass has no physical meaning. Therefore, "general relativity" does not obey the correspondence principle with Newton's gravity. (shrink)