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Trade is at the centre of Europe’s model of economic prosperity and competitiveness. As stated in the new Trade Policy Strategy set out by the European Commission (2021), the trade policy has a key role to play in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, this role was emphasised even better by the effects derived from the war in Ukraine. As the pandemic hit in 2020, the growth drivers of the EU’s economy relented, among which the external trade, putting million jobs at risk and leading to rise in unemployment and to depression of economic activity, while many companies had to close down. Competitiveness is a term which increased in significance in the last few decades. Trade competitiveness and, especially, export competitiveness is one of the most valuable variables a country must improve in order to increase its overall competitive position among nations and also the welfare of its citizens. The export statistics of many EU’s economies changed since the COVID-19 crisis and later, the war stroke. The research questions this paper addresses are: what is the extent of these changes in which sectors? Have they come to an end or the process of recovery has already started within the EU? What effects has the war in Ukraine onto the EU exports competitiveness? Are there any chances for the EU to maintain its exports competitiveness after these crises? What is to be one and what measures to be taken to recover? After introductory theoretical remarks and a brief literature review followed by a survey of various techniques to measure export competitiveness, the paper shifts its focus on statistical data and analyse how much damage has the pandemic and nowadays, the war caused to the EU’s export competitiveness, and which EU Member States were the most affected, based on statistical data analysis and other various indicators.

People have been moving from one area to another since ancient times in order to exchange products from one nation with those from another in order to obtain what was lacking in the nation where they resided. These were the first product-to-product trades, and the latter was placed into circulation on money as a product-to-product trade. These early types of commerce have evolved significantly, and they continue to do so now as capital flows from one country to another. This phenomenon, which has influenced worldwide economic growth and improved living standards, saw significant expansion in the twenty-first century in the form of loans used to fund economic development in many nations, as well as ownership of financial assets. In the present era, domestic capital is insufficient for countries to thrive and remain competitive in global markets. For emerging economies, foreign investments that enter the host country as debt or money are crucial financial resources. In this paper, we will discuss the data on the development of exports and FDI of 22 countries from around the world and analysed the evolution of FDI, GDP and exports over a period of 40 years to see trends and patterns of FDI and Exports and their contribution to the economic growth of countries. Broken up in groups, the paper will compare and assess certain countries/regions, grouping and pairing them with economies or countries of similar growth/stance. Corroborating this statistics with recent global events and based on the previous statistics, this paper will try to predict the future trends of FDI around the world.

Language is made up of five basic components: morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Morphology in linguistics represents the study of the words, how they are formed and their relationship with other words in the same language; phonology involves the rules regarding the structure of the speech sounds and their sequence; syntax is the study of morphemes and how they form larger units; pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective communication; semantics deals with vocabulary and the way concepts are expressed through words. Thus, vocabulary is one of the constituent elements of the language. Words carry meaning and have their own energy representing the building blocks of communication. According to the context they are used in, their meaning differs, therefore, vocabulary acquisition is crucial when talking about English for Specific Purposes, in our situation, Business English. But how is vocabulary acquisition in second language done? Vocabulary building often occurs through reading, however, it is unlikely for the students in foreign language to acquire the basic specific vocabulary through reading. The present paper deals with the strategies a Business English teacher approaches in order to assist students to learn vocabulary as well as to equip them with methods to turn perceptive vocabulary into context vocabulary. How can vocabulary be taught efficiently? How can teacher provide learners the needed input in order to shift vocabulary from input to output? How can teachers introduce vocabulary in order for optimal retention to be ensured? These are some the questions the present paper addresses.

Bibliometric research has recently gained much interest from academics seeking to investigate a particular topic. This study aims to explore the interest of marketing specialists in investigating marketing-related topics using bibliometric analysis. The paper includes the following sections: general information about bibliometric analysis, research methodology and how the database of articles was designed, data analysis results, conclusions and other insights. In this study, we considered the Scopus database for selecting the set of scientific papers. The applications used in the data analysis process are VOSviewer and QDA Miner. To achieve the purpose of the research, we analysed the productivity and impact of countries, journals and papers on the topic of bibliometric analysis in marketing. We also tried to identify the marketing-related concepts that generated the most interest from the specialists in their bibliometric analysis. The study aims to highlight the favorite topics related to marketing that specialists are interested in exploring through bibliometric research.

E-leadership research has evolved significantly in recent times, influencing the development of the education system, which has been affected by the effects of the pandemic. In order to keep up with the changes, teachers have had to adapt to the ever-changing requirements and opportunities. The topic of the paper refers to the perspective of Romanian pre-university teachers regarding the connection between e-leadership and motivation. The reason I chose to do this research is because e-leadership is a current topic. On the other hand, I am a teacher in the pre-university education system and I started my teaching activity in the middle of the pandemic and I can say that it was a real challenge for me to integrate remotely into a new team. Therefore, I found it opportune to study this subject, the paper being based on the identification of the main advantages and barriers of e-leadership in motivating employees. For this, I will look for the answer to the research question “What is the perception of pre-university teachers regarding e-leadership?”, by sending a questionnaire among teachers. To answer this question, I carried out a quantitative research of a structured survey type, based on a questionnaire with 16 items, addressed to pre-university teachers, regarding the link between e-leadership and employee motivation. This survey was conducted online, in 1st-4th November 2022, through Google Forms, and I processed and interpreted the obtained data, using Microsoft Excel and SPSS statistical software. I hope this paper will be useful to all those interested in this topic, especially PhD students and leaders who want to deepen this topic.

The choice of an adequate risk measure in portfolio optimization depends to a large extent on the characteristics and dynamics of the underlying assets. For investors and asset managers, a range of potential market risks provides much- needed insights into the optimization of their portfolio of assets. Since this paper focuses on multiple risk measures, it presents the investors with a better insight into the potential magnitude of the risk they are faced with. Since the risk-reward optimization target can be adjusted for a broad choice of risk measures in this paper we will test the performance of the classical risk measure i.e. standard deviation versus a tail risk measure such as expected tail loss (ETL). Our goal is to find which of the two offers the better performance for a portfolio of cryptocurrencies and if the differences are statistically significant. The setup for our analysis is testing two optimization targets (MinVar and MinETL) on 10 portfolios of cryptocurrencies randomly chosen from a sample of 70 cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization.

The paper is concerned with some aspects of politeness in the request act by the pragmatic connotations of syntactic structures in Hindi and Persian. Considering the role of politeness as an explanation for the deviation from the Grice’s cooperative principle, the main question of the paper is whether Leech’s maxims of politeness operate on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations and whether there is any hierarchy in their manner of application. To answer the abovementioned question the main hypothesis of the research posits that Leech’s maxims of politeness have a structure of hierarchy in both Persian and Hindi. Considering the Pandharipandes' (1979) hierarchy of the degree of politeness proposed for Hindi, this paper aims to develop a similar hierarchy of the degree of politeness for Persian and to analyze the Leech’s maxims operating in the respective hierarchies of politeness. The general theoretical framework adopted for the present study is based on Lakoff (1972), and Leech (1980). Whereas the findings of this research indicate a hierarchy in Hindi and Persian at the syntagmatic planewith regard to their respective Leech’s maxims,no such hierarchyis detectable for paradigmatic relationwhichholds good for all types of social situations.

After the Second World War, Europe faced the question of what kind of political future to choose. Exactly five years after the end of the war, Robert Schuman proposed a declaration that opened the way for European integration: the European Community, later renamed the European Union, was created. This paper presents the circumstances of the creation of the Schuman Declaration and the vision that led him and other founding fathers to the realization of a completely new way of connecting European states. Three of the founding fathers of the European Community, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi, were devout Christians. In the paper, we show their understanding of the relationship between democracy, European integration and Christianity. According to Schuman, European institutions need a spirit, Europe needs a soul. What does this mean and how is it that only a few of the later European political leaders paid attention to this aspect? The last part of the article regards the efforts of Pope Francis to make Europe a place of peace and economic development, and furthermore, to strengthen the essence of its identity, encourage creativity and recognize its responsibility to its own nations and citizens, as well as responsibility to others in a globally connected world. The series of speeches by Pope Francis on Europe, including in the European Parliament, shows his closeness to the vision of Schuman and the founding fathers of the European Union on the one hand, and on the other hand, he directs attention to the present and the future.

The aim of this paper is to address the issues dealing with politics and religion in the Middle East, focusing on secularism vs. Islamism; the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and the Shia and Sunni split, as key themes for the purpose. Via analysis of the complexity of the Middle East, the Secular-Islamist Conflict, the Arab Spring and its outcomes, the article explains how the Arab Spring hardened the traditionally fluid relationship between the politics and Islam. It argues that Islam has never actually left the political realm, as there is still political contestation about the role of Islam in public life. The paper then deals with the complexity of the Shia and Sunni relationship and the split between the two, giving the explanation for such occurrences on the three levels – doctrine, legitimacy, and power.

The paper introduces the concept of Velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) as actual political system in Iran. The Farsi concept transfers the authority, political and religious, to the Shia clergy called ruling faqih (ruling jurist). It means that the religious leader (Vali-e faqih) is in fact the supreme leader in Iran. He gets his authority from God and he has already been appointed by the Hidden Imam and he would just be discovered by Maraj-e taghlid. Shia Islam knows a particular meaning of the concept Velayat-e faqih, started by Islamic Revolution in 1979. The paper presents the interpretation of the doctrine formulated by the dissident Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The presentation is based on his book Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist. The paper compares different views of Velayat-e faqih and it describes the relation of the actual Iranian understanding of Velayat-e faqih with traditional Shia custom and practice. This paper is written in English but it is based on the Farsi bibliography and is supported by the life experience of the political system.

The debate on the political role of Ratzel's thinking during the first half of the 20th century usually focuses on Nazi Germany and the concept of Lebensraum, but provides little information about its reception in other linguistic contexts. In order to fill this gap, the paper explores the re-elaboration of Ratzel's political geography in Italy from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the fascist period, when the term of “spazio vitale” (living space) became a key element of the Italian projects for the postwar “new order”. The paper argues that the Italian understanding of Ratzel oscillated between irredentist and imperialist interpretations, deeply influenced by the domestic and international situation. Moreover, it traces how the second interpretation emerged at the very beginning of the century – long before Rudolf Kjellén and Karl Haushofer – and gained momentum in the 1930s, as Italian intellectuals used the concept of living space to promote expansionism and the trilateral rapprochement with Germany and Japan.

The current study investigates how attitudes towards digital transformation and personal innovativeness affect the acceptance of emergency remote learning in the COVID-19 pandemic environment. The pandemic has affected all aspects of societies across the globe, including higher education that was also a significant push-up factor for the digital transformation of higher education. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the factors affecting emergency remote learning acceptance among the higher education students in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The results presented in this paper gained from a study carried out among higher education students in BiH cover the period of April – July 2020 via the open-source platform. The study focused on the students’ attitude towards a digital transformation is a significant factor in accepting emergency remote learning. Also, the personal innovativeness score has proven to be a crucial factor for adopting this new learning setting, i.e., more innovative students have a greater emergency remote learning acceptance than students with a lower personal innovativeness score. Hence, this study pinpoints the necessity of changing the attitudes towards technology applications in education. It would increase the usage of remote learning services and provide students with knowledge and skills for the new labour market.

This contribution seeks to explore the potential of museum audio description (AD) – a sub-genre of general screen AD – as an instance of intersemiotic translation for non-sighted and sighted alike by drawing on a systematic review of museum AD guidelines and on extensive bibliography from Museum Studies (MS), Translation Studies (TS) and, within the latter, Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and Media Accessibility (MA). The paper will first discuss the social mission of museums and the intrinsic diversity characterising their communication and translation practices, with a special focus on museum AD. It will then move on to the wider value of screen AD; although the latter is primarily intended as an access tool to help blind and visually impaired individuals construct a mental image of what they cannot partially or totally see, its recognised benefits for other groups (Perego 2017) will be addressed. Similarly, the paper will discuss the potential of museum AD for a wider audience by presenting insights from museum-specific AD guidelines. Museum AD may arguably be revisited as a form of museum translation for everybody, which could truly foster social inclusion.

This paper aims at systemising the observations on the constructions used for expressing Future tense in the three known Old Slavonic translations of Vita Antonii Magni by Athansius Alexandrinus. The text was first translated in the early Old Church Slavonic period, while two other (Middle Bulgarian) translations were written in ca. 14th century. This makes the text suitable for observing the different strategies for expressing Future tense, both regarding the translation technique and its dynamics on a synchronic level, i.e., vis-à-vis other translations from the period, and from a diachronic perspective, i.e., paying closer attention to the discrepancies between the three translations themselves. The paper focuses on the Future periphrastic constructions used in the three Slavonic translations of the Life of St Anthony the Great by Athanasius of Alexandria. The approach is based on the relation with the Greek Vorlage, thus analysing closely the situation attested in the Greek original. Observations are made regarding the usage of the periphrases in the Slavonic texts adducing comparative material for similar phenomena from other early (Preslavian) and Middle Bulgarian texts. Some examples provided, as well as those from other texts, might suggest that the Old Church Slavonic periphrases were used not only to express Future tense per se, but for every non-Indicative (or non-factual) Present.

While a broad debate on carceral geographies has been part of human geography and related disciplines in English-speaking academia, there are only scarce publications among German-speaking geographers. This special issue aims at bringing different researchers (Tobias Breuckmann, Julia Emprechtinger, Sarah Klosterkamp, Nadine Marquardt, Marco Nocente, Marina Richter and Anna Schliehe) and their rich and diverse research insights in the carceral field into a dialogue. What started with a session at the 2019 conference of German-speaking geography (Deutscher Kongress für Geographie), developed into a special issue that encompasses papers based on the contributions to the session as well as additional papers that round up the insights into current research in carceral geographies in German-speaking countries. The papers show the importance of applying a carceral geography perspective to research in German-speaking geography to focus on different institutions, places and spaces that share common carceral characteristics. In addition, the focus on German-speaking researchers also adds to the international debate on carceral geographies with specific insights from the national contexts.

The settlement of Belen has not been investigated since the brief notice made by J. Borchhardt in 1975 until last year, although there are significant archaeological remains and it is situated at an important geographical position between Myra and Limyra. Some new archaeological and epigraphic finds, one, a funerary inscription, the others, fragmentary inscriptions, were found in the settlement of Belen Tepesi during our survey concerning the research pertaining to the Stadiasmus Patarensis Project conducted by Akdeniz University. In this paper the set-tlement and its unknown ancient name, the road system, the extent of its territory and its eco-nomic structure are discussed together with the new finds and some new observations are made concerning the settlement and its surroundings. In consequence, this paper proposes Belen Tepesi was inhabited in the Classical period contrary to what had been previously as-sumed, that it was a Hellenistic–Roman settlement. Plenion is suggested for the name of the settlement at Belen, an important village mentioned in the Vita of Nicholas of Holy Sion. Based on the road system in the mountainous area of Bonda, it is proposed that the territory of Belen included a large area from the west slope of the hill to the Claudian road on Bonda. And finally this paper suggests the main economic resource, of those settled at Belen Tepesi would primarily have been shipping and trade, rather than the agricultural production.

This paper, in which we introduce new inscriptions found in various villages of Bilecik province, is a continuation of the paper we published in the previous issue of Gephyra (23, 2022). Most of the inscriptions are probably still standing in their find-spots where they were discovered, with an exception inscription number 40, today preserved in the Bilecik museum. We did not see most of the inscriptions in person, but we attempted to read them from the photographs and hand-copies that the museum staff had made and provided me (N. E. Akyürek Şahin) many years ago. At that time, I was asked to read and translate these inscriptions, and I had obtained the publication rights of these monuments. During my work at the Bilecik Museum, we had the opportunity to visit the find-spot of the inscription number 5 accompanied by the museum staff and recorded it. We have categorized the inscriptions according to their find-spots, i.e. the districts of Bilecik province. The inscriptions predominantly consist of funerary inscriptions of a similar type, while there are two epigrams (nos. 31-32) and a few Christian inscriptions dating from Late Antiquity (nos. 34-36 and 39). In general, the inscriptions mainly date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries A.D.

In a paper published in 1998, Ricardo Salles argues that the Stoic theory of action cannot account for practical knowledge, i.e., knowledge about what action is appropriate to be carried out in certain circumstances. The aim of this paper is to propose a solution to this problem. For this aim, I argue that the Stoics developed a perceptual theory of moral knowledge. According to this theory, the moral properties instantiated in objects, people, and actions are known through perception. After explaining this theory, I argue that it allows us to show that the Stoics deemed perception as a source of practical knowledge.

This paper analyses and edits two anonymous Latin letters that help to assess the political climate in the aftermath of the Great Schism: a Devil’s letter addressed to Clement VII and a literary polished invective against Urban VI. After a brief investigation of the events that led to the outbreak of the schism, the paper compares the two letters in light of the contemporary political framework, in order to demonstrate why they qualify as propagandistic documents that present each of the two popes as a threat for Christendom and to evaluate how they exploited their literary distinctiveness to increase the strength of their political accusations. In doing so the aim is to assess the outbreak of the Schism from a viewpoint based on some distinctive strategies of political communication employed after the double election.

This paper discusses those metadiscourse techniques that help develop learners’ communication skills in university courses of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Firstly, the theoretical framework of the concept of metadiscourse (Hyland 1998, Mauranen 1998&2000, Swales 2001, Thompson 2003) is revised and then applied to those language strategies for effective communication which are covered by current bibliographical references on academic listening and speaking in these courses. In the second part of the article, an empirical analysis illustrates how metadiscourse in EAP monologic speech is targeted to enhance both the cognitive (Wilson & Sperber 1998) and interpersonal aspects of language use (Ventola & Mauranen 1991, Johns 1997, Hyland 2000). The third part of the paper details experimental research concerning suitable pedagogical procedures for teaching/learning spoken metadiscourse through a genre-based approach (Ferguson 2002). The article concludes with a reflection on the need to approach tertiary education syllabuses from the perspective of a social theory of language and communication.

The 11Q5 scroll is the longest and best-preserved manuscript containing psalms. In col. XXVII, it includes a hitherto unknown work, bearing the title “David’s Compositions.” Beginning with the critical edition, through various works devoted to the analysis of the composition from col. XXVII (2–11), the text is considered the only instance of prose in 11Q5. The main aim of the paper is to analyse the text of David’s Compositions in order to determine its literary form and structure. The paper is divided into several sections. The first section presents the Hebrew text with an English translation and a few remarks focused on the physical description of the text of David’s Compositions. The next one is a brief analysis of the internal context of the end of the Great Psalms Scroll, where the analysed text of David’s Compositions can be found. Finally, and most importantly, the Compositions were divided into verses and their literary form and structure was determined.

This paper uses multimodality to study communication. Communication does not only depend on language but also includes other modes, such as image. This paper focuses on advertising as it commonly uses multimodality to help it convey messages better. It studies two Malaysian commercial bank brochures and their use of image and language in print media to inform about and promote banking products to consumers. This suggests that both modes contribute to the communicative purposes of advertising. Two modes could deliver similar meanings to consumers differently and improve or strengthen the meanings of another mode. This paper tries to see the cooperation between image and language to create coherent brochures that interest consumers. It discusses several aspects of the image and language used to expose the messages both seem to convey. It then discusses the possible relations image and language have with each other. This paper argued that both image and language induce consumer interest in the product.

In this paper the role that prosody plays in oral narratives will be analysed drawing on Wennerstrom (2001) framework on prosody in discourse analysis. For this paper, I will use the recording of several topic oriented qualitative interviews in which the speakers had to expose her ideas about their beliefs and attitudes towards Basque national identity. These interviews followed a protocol in which the subjects had to answer questions about different aspects of national identity, these questions were grouped around several thematic areas (question sets) following De Cillia et al. (2000) methodological approach. This analysis will show how the argumentation in “narratives of national identity” is not only organized lexicogramatically (as in De Cillia 2000 analisis of narratives of national identity) but also prosodically by the use of high pitch accents to “highlight” certain ideas, and low pitch accent to “background” others. I will also observe how deictical elements aligned with prosody serve to systematise the structure of discourse, and how evaluative language, e.g epistemic modality (Palmer1986, Simpson 1993) lined up with prosody serves to emphasise or diminish the point of view of the speaker’s. In this sense, evaluative lexical items align with high pitch accents the moment the speaker desires to highlight the truth value of the proposition. However, they can also be backgrounded when they are embedded in ideas that are peripheral to the main ideas or in parenthetical. Besides this the speaker employs prosody to emphasize loaded lexical items or words that contribute to the climactic essence of the narration. Therefore prosody helps in the expression of subjectivity and directly in the modalization of speech. In essence, this research can enlighten the study of intonation in discourse analysis.

The Jesuit mission in Ethiopia represented one of the most serious challenges of Ethiopian Christianity during the early modern times. The mission had two phases. In the first phase, from 1555 to 1603, the missionaries undertook to convert King Gälawdewos and his court in return for military support from Portugal but had to face opposition from his successor, Minas (r.1559–1563). The second period ran from 1603 to 1632 and marked the major success of the mission. The missionaries managed to convert King Susənyos (r.1607–1632) as well as important nobles and dignitaries. In the first phase of the mission, even though the Christian kingdom had been heavily weakened by the wars with Imām Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Ġazī, called ‘Grañ’ by Christians, the political and religious leaders resolutely opposed Jesuit proselytism. Their opposition took the form of theological debates, wherein local religious leaders, including the ruler, confronted the foreigners and their alien dogmas. In this paper, I will analyse a contemporary Ethiopian religious text popularly known as the Confession of King Gälawdewos. The piece was composed in 1555 under the order of Gälawdewos to face the Jesuit challenge. The paper will show that this important literary work was instrumental in defending the indigenous Orthodox religion and local customs.

The overarching aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive account of melancholic depression from the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology. More specifically, we propose that this condition should be interpreted as an alteration in the intentional arc that affects corporeality, temporality, and spatiality, rather than as a mood disorder. In fact, classifying melancholic depression as a mood disorder seems a particularly poor choice; the mood disorder is not a cause but a consequence of a primary disturbance in operative intentionality. Our paper comprises four sections: (1) We provide a methodological and conceptual framework for our theoretical work, adopting a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective on melancholic depression, and underlining the main differences between melancholia and depression. (2) We offer a detailed reconstruction of the different interpretations of melancholic depression and their relationships to the issue of temporality. (3) We analyze the disruption of intentionality in melancholic depression and how it affects corporeality and directionality. (4) We focus on the disruption of moods and affects in melancholic depression, observing how they shape subjective experience. The goal of this theoretical contribution is to underscore the role of operative intentionality and its disruptions in melancholic depression. We argue that taking elements such as intentionality, embodiment, and spatiality into consideration could help to direct therapies along more promising paths.

The sciences achieved consensus amongst their practitioners through emancipation from philosophy. In the first half of the 20th century, philosophers began to align themselves with science, and most contemporary philosophers call themselves naturalists. Epistemology was still largely considered a philosophical prerogative until Quine’s paper “Epistemology naturalized” (1969). Opinion is now divided. Ironically, the prodigious work that secured Jean Piaget’s reputation as a cognitive developmental psychologist was actually carried out largely in service of epistemology. Disillusioned with philosophical speculation and with a background in empirical science (Piaget trained as a biologist), Piaget conceived a method based on psychological and historical evidence to investigate epistemological questions scientifically. In this paper, I outline his genetic-epistemological method and locate it in the discourse on naturalism. I conclude by classifying genetic epistemology according to Goldman’s classification of naturalistic epistemologies and by assessing it in the light of criticism typically levelled at naturalistic epistemologies, before highlighting some salient points for a future scientific epistemology.

The Black Notebooks [Schwarze Hefte] are personal notebooks that Heidegger wrote from the beginning of the 1930s to the end of the war. The first notebook has been lost, but transcripts of the next fourteen, which originated in the decade 1931–1941, were published in 2014 in three consecutive volumes of the philosopher’s Gesamtausgabe (more recently, further notebooks up to 1970 have been published). Their publication triggered a new wave of public polemics about his Nazism and anti-Semitism. This paper evaluates Heidegger’s multistage and multilayered relationship to Judaism and National Socialism, and the most prominent modern interpretations of that relationship, especially in light of the Black Notebooks. Among such readings, some of the most profound and lucid are those of the editor of the German edition of the Notebooks, Peter Trawny, and the Spanish philosopher Jesus Adrian Escudero. Many early reactions to the first publication of the notebooks were characterized by a combative outrage that was not supported by serious study and understanding of the material in question. This paper studies the reasons why that initial, sensationalist reaction stimulated precisely the opposite effect from what might be expected: Instead of jeopardizing Heidegger’s well-established place in the Western philosophical canon, the controversies of 2014 triggered a kind of renaissance of interest in his life and work.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the geopolitical status of the Upper Tigris area in antiquity, with a special focus on the period between ca. 401 BCE and the 6th century CE. Despite the popular impression that this area had a distinctly Armenian character, a closer look at its history shows that it was rather a territory with many local geopolitical entities that many neighboring countries periodically fought to possess. This area was strategically significant as a transit region located on the crossroads of important long-distance communication lines. Likewise, its natural resources were undoubtedly crucial to the neighboring countries. Indeed, powerful neighbors around the Upper Tigris area, including Armenia, the Iranian kingdoms of the Parthians and Sasanians, and Rome, sought to control this area, which was often located on the fringes of their states and as such was inevitably doomed to be contested by these empires onmany occasions. This situation can be acutely seen in the conflict between Rome and the Iranian kingdoms of the Parthians and Sasanians, when northern Mesopotamia became a real battleground between the competing empires. In particular, the paper will sketch the development of the geopolitical status of several small geopolitical entities in this region—Sophene, Osrhoene, Gordyene, and Adiabene.

The aim of this paper is to consider the ways in which political exiles acted in their relations with other states during the first phase of Spartan hegemony and up to the stipulation of the Peace of Antalcidas. It analyses as a case study the actions of those Rhodians who became exiles during the revolts that shook the island in the first decade of the 4th century BC. After a brief introduction, the paper focuses on the contexts that led to the proliferation of exiles in the period under consideration dwelling on the special relationship of mutual support between the Spartan king Agesilaus and the exiles. Then it analyses the case of the Rhodian exiles as an example of the general activism of the political exiles. They presented themselves as groups opposed to the governments in power or to precise policies that these governments supported and resorted to the traditional means of political struggle. By so doing, they broadened the area of political action outside the polis, politicising their exile with strategies that recall, at least embryonically, forms of modern political transnationalism.

This paper provides an account of the evolution of the notion of comparatio in the main dialectical works of Valla, Agricola, and Vives. It highlights the elements of continuity and discontinuity and sheds light on the original contributions of Vives’s treatment. In Valla, Agricola and Vives, the notion of comparatio characterizes: a) the locus of the relation to another in the inventio method; b) the cognitive act through which one can grasp the relationships of similarity and difference between concepts; c) the epistemic method for weighing the degree of plausibility of probable arguments. The paper also shows how Vives enhances the role of comparatio within dialectical art. Firstly, he attributes a pre-eminent position to the locus of the comparatio by virtue of the transversality of its application to all the other loci. Secondly, he identifies the explanation of the key concept of syllogism in the act of compering two sentences with a third. Finally, he finds the essence of the disputatio in the method of comparing equally probable contradictory arguments. This can rightly be considered an innovative element of the Vivesian dialectical treatment with respect to the most advanced European humanist movement of the first decades of the sixteenth century.

This paper analyzes Paul of Venice’s theory of measurement of natural properties and changes. The main sections of the paper correspond to Paul’s analysis of the three types of accidental changes (local motion: section II; augmentation: section III; alteration and qualities: section IV), for which the Augustinian philosopher sought to provide rules of measurement. It appears that Paul achieved an original synthesis borrowing from both Parisian (Albert of Saxony in particular) and Oxfordian sources (especially Richard Swineshead). It is also argued that, on top of this theoretical synthesis, Paul managed to elaborate a quite original theory of intensive properties that marks him out not only from the nominalist framework of his Parisian sources but also from the usual realist treatments of the problem. Finally, it is shown that, to a certain extent, Paul undertook to apply the mathematical and logical tools inherited from the Calculatores tradition to empirical problems of natural philosophy, leading to reevaluate his role in the evolution of scientific thought in early 15th-century Italy (section V).

This paper provides a philosophical analysis and a new edition of an anonymous Epitome (Compendium) of John Dumbleton’s solution to the semantic paradoxes (insolubilia). The first part of this paper briefly presents Dumbleton’s cassationist solution to the semantic paradoxes, which the English philosopher proposes in his Summa Logicae, written in the 1330s–40s. The second part investigates the solution to various types of insolubles proposed by the anonymous author of the Epitome. The third part provides a new critical edition of the Latin text – a first edition was edited by Bottin in 1978 – and an English translation.

This paper deals with auxiliary verb constructions in Romance, in particular with those that exhibit two auxiliary verbs ‘have’ and ‘be’ which alternate, in many Italo-Romance varieties, within one and the same paradigm. It is argued that such an intra-paradigmatic distribution represents a special kind of grammaticalization, traditionally referred to as morphologization. Two aspects are discussed. First, a morphological approach to such ‘mixed paradigms’ is advocated, the main claim being that in order to explain the distribution of the two auxiliaries within the paradigm, one has to make essential reference to paradigmatic structure rather than to the intrinsic featural composition of the auxiliaries (along the lines of paradigmatic approaches reviewed in Blevins 2016). Second, it is shown that these mixed systems, although they often represent “delicate transitional stages” (Loporcaro 2014: 56, n. 8), also display interesting diachronic convergence typical of various stem alternation patterns, famously referred to as morphomes (cf. Maiden 2018). The paper draws on a dataset that is currently being put together in order to become, in the future, a large database of mixed perfective auxiliation systems. Some space is thus devoted to the description of the main parameters of this project, called ‘MIXPAR’.

The relative neglect of the immediate social environment is one of the best-known criticisms of the Spiral of Silence Theory (SoS). Due to massive changes in communication technology, especially the advent of social media, the immediate social environment has become even more relevant which has amplified this gap. This paper integrates the immediate social environment into the SoS. The immediate social environment is the aggregate of individual actors whom one interacts with – a mix of strong and weak ties. The immediate social environment is conceptualized as part of a larger ego-centric network of various sources or observers which also includes the mass media. Based on this concept, this paper examines the entire chain of effects – from monitoring the environment via different sources to the willingness to express one’s opinion in public in front of different observers. Particular attention is directed to the crosslinks between the immediate social environment and the larger realm of society and mass media. The integration of the immediate social environment serves the goal of further refining the conditions of a relevant social context under which people fear different types of social isolation from different groups and subsequently do or do not express their opinions.

This paper investigates the impact of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on the development of intra-industry trade (IIT) for eight Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEE) from 1997 to 2019. The aim of the paper is to compare and explain the possible heterogeneous impact of different RTAs on IIT across countries while controlling for differences in development levels between economic integration member states. Our analysis is based on country-product level data obtained from UN Comtrade. The main hypothesis of the paper is that the CEFTA and EU integration agreements have a highly positive effect on IIT in comparison with other RTAs. However, the scope of the impact varies across countries, primarily depending on the economic development asymmetries that are in this paper proxied by the GDP per capita. We developed and estimated an augmented structural gravity model using Pseudo-Poisson Maximum Likelihood Estimator. The main contribution of our paper is the inclusion of the FTA-economic development gap interaction term, which enabled us to enrich the empirical findings of the research. Our results show that the main hypothesis holds, but also that an increase in economic asymmetries between integration members negatively affects IIT, thus indicating potentially increasing trade adjustment costs for new member states of an integration. These results go in favor of EU pre-integration and post-integration policies that have the goal of diminishing the economic development gap between future and present integration members.

The notion of unconscious finds support in many experimental studies that use the dissociation method. This method allows us to distinguish between conscious and unconscious mental states when participants cannot explain why they performed as they did in an experiment. The paper will discuss the notion of unconscious by considering David R. Shanks’ criticisms of the application of the dissociation method: it will assess three studies Shanks proposes as reexaminations of three other relevant studies in the literature and show how Shanks’ work provides an examination of the methodological pitfalls of such studies. The paper will argue that, although Shanks’s results are relevant regarding theories about the structure of cognition, his theoretical positions are at best confused and at worst diminish the importance of his research outcomes. It will conclude by showing why Shanks’s results that legitimize the role of consciousness in cognition can be problematic for the physicalistic or materialistic framework endorsed by cognitive psychologists.

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to make a profound impact on all aspects of life around the world, from the perspective of medical education it is also an opportunity not only a threat, and can be integrated into the medical curriculum, including English for Medical Purposes classes. The aim of this paper is to share our experience regarding the integration of a research study on the willingness of young people to get the COVID-19 vaccine into an English for Medical Purposes class. Student interviews, presentations, Think-Pair-Share activities and disputes in class are special pedagogical and methodological tools that assist the teaching and the learning process. As a result, students are inspired and engaged, which facilitate the development of not only their 4+1 language skills, and medical English proficiency, but alsotheircollaboration, communication, andproblem-solving skills, as well as their creativityand critical-thinking. This paper seeks to inform and inspire English for Medical Purposesteachers to incorporate meaningful and intellectually stimulating research studies into their classes that allow students to not only learn medical English, butmore importantly, to understand complex perspectives, use numerousforms of media, and collaborate with others. Therefore, the authors suggest that teachers of English for Medical Purposescreate room in their classes for up-to-date research representation in order to engage and motivate students’ learning process. Furthermore, the authors believe that the latest research studies, presentations, Think-Pair-Share activities and disputes can be implemented in any content and language integrated classes, as well as languages for specific purposes classes, thus providing educators with effective tools to achieve broad educational goals.

The most interesting and extensive linguistics theory is the theory of speech acts. It emphasizes the character of the action of utterances and makes it clear that description of linguistic formulations is not possible without performing actions. The development of pragmatic competence is particularly difficult for learners, when the foreign language is learned in an environment, where it does not serve daily communication and learners do not receive sustainable input that enables them to apply their knowledge of pragmatic competence in practice. In addition, there is a lack of valid requirements regarding the communicative competencies of the Albanian learners of German: In foreign language teaching, there are few curricula that focus on communicative skills, and there is a significant need for effective ways of improving learners’ communication skills. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze the research of pragmatic competence and its components with foreign language students. In constructing the speech of the request, we refer to the contributions and investigations of Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1984), Economidou-Kogetsidis & Woodfield (2012), Olshtain & Cohen (1990), Wunderlich (1979), Searle (1975), and others. The data of this research that were gathered and analyzed, as well as the instruments and methods used, are presented in this paper, too.

The main part of the paper describes the deep connections between the concepts of vices, corruption, and misanthropy. I argue that the full significance of the concept of human vices or failings is only fully appreciated when it is connected to an account of the ways that our social practices and institutions are corrupting, in the sense of facilitating or encouraging the development and exercise of those failings. Moreover, reflection on failings and corruption can lead us to misanthropy, defined in a revisionary sense as a negative, critical verdict on the collective moral character and performance of humankind as it has come to be. At the end of the paper, I tentatively ask if there can be forms of Christian misanthropy.

The general understanding of mobility phenomena has increasingly taken on multiple and broad meanings in the various disciplines that question spatial practices and the relationship with the territory by individuals and social groups. The Italian legal system in the sector of urban mobility has recently evolved, introducing new urban planning tools and expanding the sphere of influence and the tasks of the figure of the Mobility Manager. In the promotion and implementation of mobility policies, the University acts as a privileged actor, bringing together very different generations and heterogeneous populations from a socio-economic and cultural point of view as well as in terms of origin and residential contexts; all these are elements which often imply different needs, skills and practices. Within this framework, the paper intends to explore the theme of inclusiveness and disability with special reference to university institutions as preferential places for the collective re-composition of individual beliefs that promote sustainability policies. After the analysis and comparison between international experiences and Italian case studies, the paper concludes with some considerations regarding the still evident critical issues (regulatory, managerial, financial,…) that hinder the implementation of truly effective policies.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the hybridization dynamics of the Third sector at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The progressive contamination between the State, market, family and Third sector spheres has long been subject of interest of the scholars. This paper aim at analysing these dynamics through the case study of Fondazione Banco Alimentare (Italian Food Bank Foundation). The case helps in investigating the impact of the pandemic on the role, logics and actors that make up the Third sector (both organizations and people) and its relation with the other subsystems. The empirical analysis shows that the pandemic and its consequences has enhanced the role of Fondazione Banco Alimentare, thanks to its relevance during the food emergency that also increased its visibility in the media. There are more institutional and non-institutional donors, more beneficiaries and help requests that resulted also in an accelerated professionalization and training of volunteers and employers. In conclusion, the Italian Food Bank and its network dealt with processes of digitalization, institutionalization and professionalization. These transformations resulted in a new positioning of the organization in the public sphere and redefined its relationship between local, national and European institutions.

The paper deals with a topic particularly relevant in the current international sociological debate such as the varieties of capitalisms and their evolutions. In particular, looking at the Italian experience, in a context of increasing uncertainty and inequalities, it focuses attention to the main socio-economic changes and their impact on economy and society, searching for a more equal, sustainable and inclusive model of capitalism. These changes induced the scholars to talk about a new “great transformation” by adopting the famous expression of Karl Polanyi, used to describe the birth of the market economy. Starting from the literature and available data, the paper suggests new possible paths as well as complementary or even alternative practices that keep together economy and society in order to start a new age of a more sustainable, social and inclusive capitalism. The central idea is that self-regulating markets do not perfectly work; their deficiencies, not only in their internal workings, but also in their consequences for less advantaged people, are so great that the state intervention becomes necessary and that the pace of change is of central importance in determining these consequences. We argue that a paradigm shift is urgently needed, but this will certainly take time and a new governance which requires the involvement of several key political, economic and social actors such as international organizations, national governments, economic organizations along with social movements and no-profit organisations embedded at national and local level.

Dean Zimmerman has made significant contributions to metaphysics, philosophy of time, and philosophy of religion. In this paper, I set my focus on Zimmerman’s approach to God, time, and creation. Zimmerman has defended a model of God called open theism on which God is essentially temporal. In this paper, I will first articulate open theism. Then I will explore a series of puzzles related to God’s perfect rationality and creation. These can be stated as the following three questions. Why didn’t God create sooner? Why did God create anything at all? Why did God create this universe in particular?

This paper focused on the first imperial Mausoleum of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam, Emperor Gia Long (reigned 1802-20), which is one of the components of the World Heritage property [Complex of Hué Monuments]. The paper discussed the relationship between the Gia Long Mausoleum (after this GLM) and its territory from the aspects of "Shan-Shui design", "water management system suitable to tropical monsoon climate" and "symbiosis with local com- munities". This study also revealed that the current protected area is only a tiny part of the area that Gia Long planned by deciphering an old drawing which expresses the ideal worldview of Gia Long and an old map which shows the forbidden area in that era. These research findings contribute to expanding and deepening the OUV of GLM, which was not fully taken into account when the site was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1993 and provide a basis for establishing the appropriate protected area of GLM.

This paper argues that the account of friendship (philia) present in Plato's dialogue the Lysis is rife with the disruptive and maddening force of eros. By its end it is no longer clear whether the familiar sorts of personal relationships that we typically count as friendships, and which Aristotle discusses with great sensitivity and appreciation in the Nicomachean Ethics, can be meaningfully sustained. To support this thesis, the paper analyzes each of the seven, relatively self-contained arguments Socrates offers. In addition, it shows how the dramatic context in which these arguments are embedded foreshadows the dialogue's principal objective: to blur the distinction between philia and eros by allowing the latter to infect the former.

Many scholars consider that Socrates in the Lysis holds that friendship and love are egoistic and utility-based. In this paper, I will argue against those readings of Plato’s Lysis. I will analyze how Socrates treats utility and egoism in the many different kinds of friendship he discusses in the dialogue, from parental love, like-to-like, and unlike-to-unlike relationships, to the accounts of friendship rooted in the human relation to the good and the ways in which we can belong with some other human beings. The upshot of my paper is twofold. I endeavor to prove that some of these relationships, as Plato’s Socrates discusses them, are not egoistic and that Plato represents and valorizes a particular type of friendship having to do with philosophy and philosophical way of life, which is for the sake of another.

This paper presents the Distributed Text Service (DTS) API Specification, a community-built effort to facilitate the publication and consumption of texts and their structures as Linked Data. DTS was designed to be as generic as possible, providing simple operations for navigating collections, navigating within a text, and retrieving textual content. While the DTS API uses JSON-LD as the serialization format for non-textual data (e.g., descriptive metadata), TEI XML was chosen as the minimum required format for textual data served by the API in order to guarantee the interoperability of data published by DTS-compliant repositories. This paper describes the DTS API specifications by means of real-world examples, discusses the key design choices that were made, and concludes by providing a list of existing repositories and libraries that support DTS.

This paper explores the relationship between analytic theology and science-engaged theology through a historical lens, connecting contemporary disagreements between analytic metaphysicians and philosophers of science to a disagreement about philosophical method between Carnap and Quine. After discussing philosophical issues of meaning and verification in early positivism, the paper goes on to suggest that the analytic-synthetic distinction underlying much work in analytic theology is difficult to maintain when engaging with empirical methods of knowledge production such as science. To move forward, then, analytic theologians who wish to pursue science-engaged theology need a constructive methodology that embraces a blurring of the analytic-synthetic distinction. A rough sketch of one such research program, analytic-synthetic science-engaged theology, is offered as a potential ASSET for systematic theologians who wish to engage with natural and human sciences.

This paper aims to draft an overview of what being a midwife in Byzantium meant, according to the literary sources. Midwife in Byzantium appears to be a rather complex and elusive figure to study. This is due to both the scarce references in the sources and the vague definition of midwifery itself in the ancient world. The main fields of activity of Byzantine midwives were three: medical, religious and care. As a first attempt of studying Byzantine midwife all-round, this paper ends by suggesting further research perspectives in order to get a clearer and more complete understanding of such figure.

Issue 9 of Interfaces brings together papers given at the Centre for Medieval Literature's symposium on 'Moving Forms: The Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature,' held in Athens in 2019. At the heart of the symposium was the exploration of the ways in which the movement of people and books across space and time were driving forces of medieval European literary and intellectual culture. Building on the practices of both comparative literature and entangled history, the symposium aimed to open up connections between literary cultures often considered to be separate. The articles published here cross the geographies and chronologies of medieval literature as they consider a range of forms, from romance to legal writing and from history-writing to animal fables, in examining texts from Georgia, Egypt, Bohemia, Scandinavia and Western Europe (with extensions across the Atlantic into the Americas). While each paper has something for the specialist, we hope that they collectively encourage reading across the full issue, inviting readers to enter into the expanded, comparative and connected, approach to medieval literatures that the symposium explored. Cover image: Pierpaolo Curti, Bridge, 2014, tecnica mista su tela, 120 x 80 cm – Collezione privata – www.pierpaolocurti.com