In recent years, hunting and agrarian communities have increasingly risen in opposition to nature conservation policy that is perceived to infringe on their traditional ways of life. They charge ‘conservationists’ with having a disproportionate influence on policy and maintain that the state system now disenfranchises their needs and interests. In this paper, we suggest this particular brand of resistance can be illuminated by neo-Marxist social movement framework (Cox and Nilsen, 2014) on the dialectic of movements-from-below and movements-from-above, competing for hegemony in the context of an organic crisis of the system. Our paper examines the role of Swedish hunters’ activation of a counter-hegemonic ‘good sense’ to oppose the hegemonic common sense established by wolf conservationists in the state system. The case of Swedish hunters rising in resistance toward the newfound hegemony of wolf conservation is hence resolved as the rise of a right-wing movement from below, mobilized on the basis of defensive, conservative and agrarian values. The novel contribution of this paper lies in its examination of the (often) self-professed limits of hunters’ distinctively agrarian good sense, in light of their own reluctance as an oppositional social movement from below. Not only do hunters exhibit considerable reluctance in regard to their own ‘movement’ identity and ambivalence in regard to hegemony. But we argue that from a conceptual perspective the empowerment of a counter-hegemonic good sense as in traditional resistance studies can, at best, result in a dialectical reversal of movement positions with conservationists, without appropriate mediation or compromise. This leads us to some brief recommendations from democratic theory to mediate between the below and above movements of hunters and conservationists.

This dissertation investigates rhetoric and prudence in Sophocles through close readings of Antigone, Ajax, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. Central to the project is a reconstruc-tion of a uniquely Sophoclean conception of prudence as “good sense”; good sense is distinguished from traditional conceptions of prudence as an inter-subjective capacity for good judgment that is born of experience and chance. The study finds that while good sense and persuasive rhetoric are occasionally paired, they are frequently divorced from one another. Thus, in place of heroic conflicts and tragic failings, these readings present an alternative tragic tension between the persuasive yet often solipsistic speech of heroes and protagonists and the good sense of marginalized characters. This project is situated within the “turn to rhetoric” in contemporary democratic theory; in this context, it presents Sophocles as a novel and under-theorized resource in three overarching ways. First, his dramas were performed in a democratic context and gave voice to perspectives otherwise marginalized within the polis; in this respect he offers more inclusive democratic resources than his Athenian contemporaries. Second, these plays offer sobering insight into the impact of contingency in shaping rhetorical contexts. They reveal that overconfidence in rhetorical technē underestimates the extent to which successful persuasion is often aligned with chance and social advantage. Third, he draws attention to pervasive structural inequalities that work against and silence good sense. In this final respect the plays themselves are considered as didactic resources that cultivate reflective judgments and good sense in the spectator and reader.

This dissertation investigates rhetoric and prudence in Sophocles through close readings of Antigone, Ajax, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. Central to the project is a reconstruc-tion of a uniquely Sophoclean conception of prudence as “good sense”; good sense is distinguished from traditional conceptions of prudence as an inter-subjective capacity for good judgment that is born of experience and chance. The study finds that while good sense and persuasive rhetoric are occasionally paired, they are frequently divorced from one another. Thus, in place of heroic conflicts and tragic failings, these readings present an alternative tragic tension between the persuasive yet often solipsistic speech of heroes and protagonists and the good sense of marginalized characters. This project is situated within the “turn to rhetoric” in contemporary democratic theory; in this context, it presents Sophocles as a novel and under-theorized resource in three overarching ways. First, his dramas were performed in a democratic context and gave voice to perspectives otherwise marginalized within the polis; in this respect he offers more inclusive democratic resources than his Athenian contemporaries. Second, these plays offer sobering insight into the impact of contingency in shaping rhetorical contexts. They reveal that overconfidence in rhetorical technē underestimates the extent to which successful persuasion is often aligned with chance and social advantage. Third, he draws attention to pervasive structural inequalities that work against and silence good sense. In this final respect the plays themselves are considered as didactic resources that cultivate reflective judgments and good sense in the spectator and reader.

The interpretation of unreason in Gilles Deleuze‘s philosophy Deleuze argues that all philosophy must originate itself from violence. The violence in thought is evoken by problems, which aren‘t given but constituted in mind. The fundamental problem of thought is incapacity to think itself, the malaise of mind, stupidity or madness. The dogmatical image of thought takes the common form of an 'Everybody knows . . .' , and in the following way disassociates itself from the problem - it merely dislodges madness from discourse of reason. Deleuze shows that the problem of madness should be included into image of thought, if transforming it simultaneously. The work points out, how Deleuze solves this properly transcendental qestion: how is unreason possibile? The thinker offers three perspectives, three points of view to reflect this problem. It can be seen from a point from highland or platonical tradicion, from a point of surface or virtual philosophy which Deleuze founds in the works of stoics, Leibniz, Nietzsche and Lewis Carrol and from a point of depths into which plunges Artaud. To each of these modes of mind thereby can be diagnosed distinct disease: maniac depresion or paranoia to idealism, active form of schizophrenia- to virtual philosophy and passive form of schizophrenia – to the thinking of depths. The research shows up how eventualy this triad turns to strict disjunction between traditional image of thought and the thought which is able to think of madness, becomings... [to full text]