Journal Service - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
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Edith Wharton’s Ordinary Vices
No full textThis essay develops a framework for exploring interpersonal ethics in Edith Wharton’s writing. Using political philosopher Judith Shklar’s analysis of “ordinary vices”—the commonplace harms we inflict on one another—it identifies four central vices in Wharton’s moral imagination: hypocrisy, cruelty, intellectual incuriosity, and moral inattentiveness. After exploring the status of these vices in Wharton’s fiction and nonfiction, the essay proceeds to rank them, suggesting that moral inattentiveness—the thoughtless pain caused by self-absorption rather than malice—stands at the top of Wharton’s hierarchy of vices. Unlike Shklar’s “liberalism of fear,” which worries about the cruelty caused by social institutions and state violence, Wharton’s ranking of the vices flows from her “conservatism of fear”—a position organized around a concern with cultural disintegration. Her prioritizing of moral inattentiveness, the essay concludes by arguing, amounts to a privatization and depoliticization of morality, reflecting an ethic of personal responsibility rather than social change
Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights: Towards an Advanced International Binding Regulation?
No full textWith the rapid development of AI applications in the most important areas of economic, political and social life, the regime for the protection of fundamental rights has been significantly affected. This reality gives rise to initiatives for new legislation at international, supranational and national level. At the level of international law in particular, this legislation currently focuses on the formulation of general principles and guidelines. What is lacking is more specific regulation in situations where the introduction of AI causes uncertainty as to the protection of specific rights, particularly where conflicts arise between them. This article attempts to formulate proposals for such a more specific regulation, based on widely acknowledged principles of international law. Given that technological development and its impact on today’s societies know no national limitations, the adoption of this ‘next step’ in international law may well determine the smooth adaptation of AI to the values of democratic societies
Arbitral Jurisdiction in Crimea Investment Disputes: Connecting the Dots
No full textUnder normal circumstances, bilateral investment treaties (BIT) are designed to promote the mutual enhancement of investment climate and to guarantee that foreign investors are treated no worse than investors of host and third States. In many respects, maintaining such relations is believed to reflect economic globalization and the increasingly widespread acceptance of such legal standards as non-discrimination and of striking a balance between national and private foreign interests. Practice shows, however, that the equilibrium of an investment treaty regime can sometimes be disturbed by a chain of actions governed by a field of law with a purpose of a completely different nature, such as the law of armed conflict. Such an interaction can be observed in relations between Russia and certain Ukrainian investors. Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, a number of investors, some of whose assets were based in Crimea, commenced investment arbitration proceedings in an attempt to recover some of their rights and interests. This article examines the jurisdictional practice of these arbitral tribunals, along with a critical analysis of the relevant provisions of the Ukraine-Russia BIT, as well as other norms of international law operative in relations developed
NYRB and the Classics: In Conversation with Edwin Frank
No full textIn the fall of 2024, NYRB Classics celebrated its 25th anniversary. Since its launch on September 30, 1999, the series has published over 500 titles of world literature in modern and accessible translations, ranging from Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica to Oğuz Atay’s Waiting for the Fear, as well as all-time masterpieces like Balzac’s Human Comedy, Gogol’s Dead Souls, and Dante’s Inferno. But what exactly does an American publisher do to, and for, the “classics”? This past summer, I corresponded with Edwin Frank to learn more about his commitment to a more diverse canon and the processes that bring international literature to our domestic bookshelves. Frank defines a “classic” as a work that has some relation to history, a book with “recognizable authority, originality, individuality, and truth to experience, one that attests to the circumstances…out of which it arises, while also rising above them enough to suggest something else, beyond or within” (The Red Thread, xv). He is himself something of a living library, for many of the books included in the series are those he himself rediscovered at various points in his life. For instance, while freelancing for an outlet called Reader’s Catalog in the late ’90s, he found out that much of the great literature he admired was not in print
Reprinted Excerpt from Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art (2024): by Rochelle Gurstein, and an Interview with the Author
No full textRochelle Gurstein talks to the editors about her latest book, Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art (Yale University Press, 2024), part of which is reprinted here with her permission (Chapter 14: The Future of the Classic). In the book and the interview, the author reflects with astonishment on the many “instances of wildly fluctuating reputations” and “stunning rediscoveries of long forgotten or previously demeaned artists, lost classics, and unstable canons” which, as she writes, “put my original project of establishing the reality of a timeless classic in jeopardy, and forced me to reconsider what turned out to be a number of my own unexamined assumptions”—a book about the ephemeral classic.
Three Poems: Do not peel back a fermented leaf; The Days the Canals Froze; So, how do you know [...]?
No full textthree poems by Stephanie Taralso
