Joseph Butler's moral thought and the ethical rationalism of Samuel Clarke, and his followers, John Balguy and Richard Price, are frequently distinguished, as a result of: (a) Butler’s empirical method (e.g., Kydd, Sturgeon); (b) Butler's emphasis upon self-love in the 'cool hour passage' (e.g., Prichard, McPherson); (c) Butlerian conscience, where, on a neo-Kantian reading, Butler surpassed the Clarkeans by conveying a sense of Kantian 'reflective endorsement' (e.g., Korsgaard, Darwall). The neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans in (c) are consistent with (d) Francis Hutcheson's and David Hume's criticisms of the Clarkeans; (e) modern criticisms of rational intuitionism that follow Hutcheson and Hume (e.g., Mackie, Warnock); and (f) the contention that the Clarkeans occupied an uneasy position within 'post-restoration natural law theory' (e.g., Beiser, Finnis). (d)-(e) thus underpin the distinction between Butler and the Clarkeans in (a)-(c), where the Clarkeans, unlike Butler, are criticised for representing moral truth as the passive, and self-evident, perception of potentially uninteresting facts. This study responds to (a)-(f), by arguing that Butlerian and Clarkean conscience possessed more than one referent; so that conscience meant an individual's experience of his own judgement and God’s judgement and the rational moral order. As a result of their shared theory of conscience, Butler and the Clarkeans held the same theory of moral development: moral agents mature as they move from obeying conscience according to only one of conscience's referents, to obeying conscience because to do so is to satisfy each of conscience's referents. In response to (a)-(b), this study demonstrates that the Clarkeans agreed with Butler’s method and 'cool hour': natural considerations of individual judgement and self-interest were necessary aspects of the progress towards moral maturity in both Butler and the Clarkeans. With respect to (c), it is argued that Butler and the Clarkeans shared the same understanding of practical moral reasoning as part of their shared understanding of conscience and moral development. This study places limits upon proto-Kantian readings of Butler, and neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans, while making it inconsistent to divide Butler and the Clarkeans on the basis of Butlerian conscience. In answer to (c)-(f), Clarkean conscience shows that the Clarkeans were neither complacent nor ‘externalists’. Clarkean conscience highlights how the Clarkeans positioned themselves within the tradition of Ciceronian right reason and Thomistic natural law. Consequently, in both Butler and the Clarkeans, the intuition of moral truth was not the passive perception of an 'independent realm' of normative fact, but the active encounter, in conscience, with reason qua the law of God’s nature, human nature, and the created universe.

A small proportion of people claim to live and consume in ways they consider more sustainable in social and environmental terms. As yet, we do not know how many exactly, but possibly no more than 5-10% of the population. The thesis intentionally focuses on this minority finding there are at least three reasons why it is interesting to do so. First because they are all but ignored in sociologies of practice in the context of sustainable consumption which considers this minority an insignificance and focuses almost exclusively on 'mainstream' majority which more closely maps onto the stereotype of 'consumer society'. Second because we think we can learn much from juxtapositioning this group empirically against the spectrum of theories of practice to devise more robust and appropriate theoretical explanation of how these subjects, in the context of everyday practice, negotiate the many interpretations and contradictions involved in trying to put 'sustainability' into practice. Third because by understanding them better we can reflect on theoretical, empirical and policy implications for nudging this minority of the population to a higher percentage. The thesis sits at one end of a spectrum of positions in theories of practice applied to consumption, and in particular with a normative interest in sustainable consumption. It aligns with those who seek to re-insert the reflexive agent into accounts of practice, with particular reference to the conceptual construct of the 'citizen-consumer' and the context of political consumption (Spaargaren & Oosterveer 2010). Referring to theories of consumption, the thesis adds perspectives on how people negotiate multiple domains of consumption simultaneously since everyday practice involves interactions across multiple domains (such as eating, mobility, householding); and yet typically in theories of practice these are artificially separated into single domains. The study therefore considers the implications which domains have on how particular practices are carried out, first separately (per domain) and then as they come together (in a cross-cutting domain perspective). The study then takes theories of practice as a springboard to develop a theoretical position and framework which better fits the narrated accounts of the 37 subjects who participated in this study. In iteratively co-developing a theoretical framework and multiple 'stages' of empirical research (using grounded theory methodology) the study seeks to explain theoretically how subjects justify their 'doings' (drawing on 'conventions' and 'orders of worth' (Boltanski & Thévenot 2006)); how they appear to muddle through as best they can (introducing 'bricolage' (Lévi-Strauss 1972)); and how subjects appear to devise decision short-cuts when approaching decisions characterised by the multiple contradictions of sustainable consumption and incomplete or 'too much' information (introducing heuristics (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier 2011)). In joining calls to re-insert the reflexive agent to account for how, when and why subjects enact changes towards trajectories which they consider 'more sustainable' in their own terms, the study takes inspiration from Margaret Archer's morphogenesis approach (1998) and explores her model of multiple modes of reflexivity, announcing certain modes as 'better fitting' conditions of late modernity. The study finally finds that contrary to a notion of the un-reflexive agent, the citizen-consumer is able to articulate visions of the 'good life'. In addition she is able to fold these visions back onto everyday practices performed in the past, present and future, laying out normative guidelines and positive accounts of how to achieve personal or societal well-being and happiness. The overarching positioning of the study is much inspired by Andrew Sayer's (2011; 2000) 'normative turn' calling upon social sciences to re-instate research into the things about which people care. The study is therefore guided by the overarching question of how people translate their environmental and/or social concerns into the ways in which they live and consume.

Martin Haloun Normality and Normativity Annotation: The thesis Normality and Normativity is concerned with the problems of the relation of normal and abnormal. The analysis of the expression 'normal' is the introduction of the topic followed by the demonstration that there are multiple meanings of the normal that do not always coincide. During the description of the aspects of norm and normal the fundamental relations between facts and prescriptions will have to be taken into account. The full meaning of the notion normal will be demonstrated on the basis of its relation to the pathological and healthy. A definition of health presented in this thesis, which takes into consideration the specifics of the normal, is based on the works of George Canguilhem and Kurt Goldstein. The crucial moment is the understanding of disease as a reaction of an organism to the limitation of the milieu. An important factor is the introduction of vital normativity that is intrinsic to the living being. This conception opposes the influential conception which identifies the state of health with certain physiological criteria - standards of health - advocated among others by Claude Bernard. At the end of the thesis we will shortly overview the norms as formative aspect in a society. The sociological view of norms that is...

Qu’elle soit le fait des artistes, des institutions muséales ou des acteurs économiques, désormais une nouvelle discursivité s’ajoute à la production critique traditionnelle des historiens, théoriciens et philosophes de l’art, et accompagne de manière quasi systématique les propositions plastiques des artistes contemporains. A cet accroissement discursif correspond aussi une démultiplication des fonctions du discours théorique qui se trouve parfois être utilisé comme le matériau plastique même des œuvres. Empreintes d’une plasticité toute singulière, les œuvres contemporaines étendent les possibles, au point de pouvoir se manifester sous n’importe quelle forme, voire de complètement disparaître. Cette extrême diversité résulte de l’adhésion à un nouveau principe artistique, le « second degré », ou l’auto-réflexivité de l’œuvre d’art, qui attribue à l'idée de l’œuvre une importance aussi grande qu'à la formulation matérielle de celle-ci. Ce qui est devenu indéterminé dans la forme plastique semble être compensé, en retour, par l'exigence d'une détermination conceptuelle accrue. Nous nous sommes attachés, dans notre recherche, à mettre en lumière l’origine du primat discursif dans la nouvelle situation paradigmatique des arts plastiques. Ne se limitant pas à la seule logique de médiation et de légitimation sociale des œuvres, la discursivité ouvre aussi un espace créatif et herméneutique nouveau impliquant le discours théorique comme geste créatif complémentaire à la forme plastique. / Whether by artists, museums or economic actors, now a new discursivity is added to the traditional critical production of historians, theoreticians and philosophers of art, and accompanies almost systematically the plastics works of contemporary artists. This discursive growth answers also to a proliferation of functions of the theoretical discourse, which is used, in some contemporary artistic practices, as the very plastic material of the work. Marked by a singular plasticity, contemporary art works extend the expressive possibilities to the point that the work can manifest itself in any form, and even completely disappear. This extreme diversity results from the adherence to a new artistic principle, the "second degree", or the self-reflexivity of the artwork, which attributes to the idea of the work, the same importance as its’ very material formulation. What became undetermined in the plastic form seems, in return, to be offset by the requirement for greater conceptual determination. We were committed, in our research, to highlight the origin of this discursive primacy in the new paradigmatic situation of visual arts. Not being limited only to the purpose of mediation and social legitimization of the art works, discursivity opens also a new creative and hermeneutic space, involving theoretical discourse as a creative act complementary to plastic form.

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The purpose of this essay is to discuss what kind of normativity can be considered acceptable in academic theology today in Sweden. This I do by critically and comparatively analyze two debates. The first debate is from Sweden and has its origin in the book Den okände Jesus written by Cecilia Wassén och Tobias Hägerland. The second debate is an international debate about Joseph Ratzingers or Benedict XVI book Jesus of Nazareth. For the purpose of comparison I am working with three analytical questions. I am asking the different texts whether the author express any ontological assumptions or if he or she argumenting at a epistemological level, what enables intersubjective verifiability according to the author and what kind of methods does the author see as acceptable to reach historical knowledge? This questions works as a methodological cluster and the answers indicate what the authors think about acceptable normativity in academic theology. After that I identify similarities and divergences and I ́m comparing different positions and arguments. Finally I evaluate the reasonability of these positions and argument. The reader will be lead to the conclusion that intersubjective verifiability in academic theology and exegetic doesn ́t demand naturalistic or empirical points of departure but rather transparency and cognitive understandable argument which includes theological normative arguments and research. An attitude I name as methodological reciprocity.

Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina I trace ontologies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their enactments among veterans of the 1992-1995 war. My aim is to problematize and rethink social constructionists' approaches in medical anthropology that discuss war trauma and PTSD in relation to naturalistic models and treat them as constructed realities not determined by the nature of things. I argue that such a standpoint produces a particular epistemological/ontological side-effect: it allows medical anthropologists to craft a purely social ontology of trauma and PTSD by claiming that the realness of these "constructs" is a result of psychiatric discourse, moral economy of contemporary societies or Western (intellectual, political, and medical) hegemony. Considering the ontology of PTSD as an empirical question I analyze the enactments of PTSD in four settings: the ethnographic genre itself, the organization of war veterans with PTSD in the city of Tuzla, the veterans' welfare system in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bosnian public arena. I argue that PTSD is practiced as a heterogeneous and multiple reality that cannot be situated solely either in the realm of human organism (and explained by naturalistic models) or society and culture (and...

Paare und Paarbeziehungen sind – in westlichen, paarnormativen Gesellschaften – eine hegemoniale Lebensform. (Heterosexuelle) Paare (re-)produzieren in ihren Interaktionen und Aushandlungen – ihrem doing couple und doing inequality – nicht nur Geschlecht (im Sinne von Gender), sondern wesentlich auch gesellschaftliche Ungleichheiten. Paarbeziehungen sind daher ein wichtiges Untersuchungsfeld der Geschlechterforschung; die Paarbeziehung wird hierbei als eigenständige Analyseeinheit betrachtet. Paare werden in der (soziologischen) Geschlechterforschung aber auch auf die Frage hin untersucht, ob sich mit dem Brüchigwerden des männlichen Ernährermodells im globalen Norden ein Wandel der Paar- und Liebesleitbilder abzeichnet und sich u.a. auch dadurch Ungleichheiten im Geschlechterverhältnis verändern, verringern oder neue entstehen.

Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina I trace ontologies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their enactments among veterans of the 1992-1995 war. My aim is to problematize and rethink social constructionists' approaches in medical anthropology that discuss war trauma and PTSD in relation to naturalistic models and treat them as constructed realities not determined by the nature of things. I argue that such a standpoint produces a particular epistemological/ontological side-effect: it allows medical anthropologists to craft a purely social ontology of trauma and PTSD by claiming that the realness of these "constructs" is a result of psychiatric discourse, moral economy of contemporary societies or Western (intellectual, political, and medical) hegemony. Considering the ontology of PTSD as an empirical question I analyze the enactments of PTSD in four settings: the ethnographic genre itself, the organization of war veterans with PTSD in the city of Tuzla, the veterans' welfare system in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bosnian public arena. I argue that PTSD is practiced as a heterogeneous and multiple reality that cannot be situated solely either in the realm of human organism (and explained by naturalistic models) or society and culture (and...

Cette recherche se propose de faire une analyse de la dissolution du lien matrimonial spécifique aux épouses musulmanes, le divorce désamour ou ẖul‘. Cette faculté de divorcer élaborée par la casuistique doctrinale islamique sunnite ou fiqh sera reprise par le Code algérien de la famille promulgué en 1984. Le mode de divorce imparti exclusivement aux femmes fera l’objet de critiques sur le plan théologique et sur le plan juridique. Dans la théologie du droit dans la tradition islamique, il s’agira d’interroger les fondements religieux du divorce désamour à travers les sources fondamentales du Qor’ān et de la Sunna en relation avec le fiqh. En reflet, l’examen de la positivisation de la norme islamique dans le Code algérien de la famille conduira à porter un regard sur l’articulation entre ce référent religieux d’origine scolastique et les normes juridiques de production étatique et d’inspiration positiviste caractéristique du Droit algérien, lequel se comprend comme un phénomène juridique spécifique circonscrit aux frontières du pays. L’intérêt porté à cette conjonction internormative, dénommée pour les fins de la présente étude comme une normativité axio-juridique, conduit à rendre compte de son effectivité et donc de son application par les personnes concernées par le divorce désamour qui se trouvent à l’extérieur d’un pays à majorité islamique. L’étude envisagée poursuit deux objectifs : l’un épistémologique et l’autre ethnographique. L’objectif épistémologique cherche à comprendre dans une visée heuristique l’intérêt d’un cadre théorique féministe, mais aussi islamique et décoloniale, concomitamment critique de l’interprétation par le fiqh de ce type de désunion, et du Droit algérien forgé dans un cadre colonial positif et dans des emprunts locaux (coutume, usages et fiqh sunnite de l’École malékite), pour l’étude de cette pratique spécifique en islam. Quant à l’objectif ethnographique, il tend à travers une recherche empirique à saisir la subjectivisation du rapport à la transcendance. L’analyse porte sur les actions d’un groupe de femmes musulmanes, croyantes et pratiquantes, d’ascendance algériennes exilées, au cours de la décennie 2000-2010 à Montréal. Des femmes qui ont pris la décision unilatérale d’introduire une procédure de divorce à Montréal plutôt qu’en Algérie. Par ce fait, leur démarche se trouve au croisement de normes juridiques (Code civil du Québec et Loi sur le divorce) sans égard à la normativité axio-juridique algérienne (Code algérien de la famille) qui régit, habituellement, le divorce des Musulman.e.s. La réflexion inspirée par ces objectifs formulés dans un contexte d’individualisation du croire et de la pratique, a conduit en premier, à la conclusion d’une inégalité juridique intrinsèque à la normativité axio-juridique inscrite dans le Code algérien de la famille et à sa conceptualisation. Et consécutivement, la lecture personnelle du Qor’ān indépendante de celle du fiqh sunnite, a induit une seconde conclusion : l’absence d’un fondement qor’āni du divorce désamour. L’introduction initiale du ẖul‘ dans le corpus religieux et subséquemment dans la législation algérienne contemporaine peut se comprendre comme l’expression d’un déni aux femmes, contrairement aux hommes, du droit de se défaire des liens matrimoniaux. Finalement, cette recherche a mis en lumière l’agencéité d’un groupe de femmes, musulmanes, croyantes et pratiquantes, d’ascendance algérienne, exilées à Montréal et qui ont fait le triple choix : initier le divorce, le faire selon les lois de la société d’arrivée et le faire en dehors des balises juridiques du fiqh sunni relatif au ẖul’. / This research analyses the dissolution of the matrimonial bond that is specific to Muslim spouses: the divorce out of love or ẖul ‘. This faculty of divorce posed by the Sunni Islamic doctrinal casuistry of fiqh and taken up by the Algerian Family Code. This notion will be criticized both theologically and legally. Theologically and with respect to traditional Islamic law, we will be questioning the religious foundations of disenchanted divorce through the fundamental sources of the Qor’ān and Sunna in relation to fiqh. In reflection, the examination of the positivisation of the Islamic norm in the Algerian Family Code will lead us to look at: the articulation between this religious referent of scholastic origin and the legal norms of state production of positivist inspiration; both characteristic of the Algerian Law and to be understood as a specific legal phenomenon circumscribed to the borders of the Algerian state. The interest in this internormative conjunction is denominated for the purposes of this study as an axio-legal normativity and will lead to an account of its effectiveness. Therefore, we focus on its application to those affected by the disenchanted divorce who are living outside of a predominantly Muslim country. This proposed study has two objectives: one that is epistemological and the other that would be ethnographic. Therein, the epistemological objective seeks to understand in a heuristic perspective the interest of a feminist theoretical framework, but also one that is inherently Islamic and decolonial. Concomitantly, we seek a critical interpretation of the fiqh that affects this type of disunity, the Algerian law forged in a colonial positive framework, and local borrowings (customs, uses and Sunni (Malekite) fiqh) for the study of this specific practice in Islam. As for the ethnographic objective, it tends, through empirical research, to grasp the subjectivization of the relationship to transcend the ancestry of Algerian Muslim wives who immigrated with their husbands, settled in Montreal, made the unilateral decision to divorce, and who by this fact, utilize a disparity in the repertoire of aligned strategic actions. The reflection inspired by these objectives, formulated in a context of individualization of beliefs and practices, led to the proposition of a conceptualization of the legal inequalities intrinsic to the axio-legal normativity inscribed in the Algerian family code. The reflection inspired by these objectives formulated in a contexte of individualization of belief, led first to the conclusion of a legal inequality intrinsic to the axio-legal normativity inscribed in the Family Algerian code and to its conceptualization. And consecutively the personal reading of Qor’ān, independent of the Sunni fiqh induced a second conclusion: the lack of a qor’ani basis of divorce. The initial introduction of ẖul‘ into the religious corpus and subsequently into contemporary legislation can be understood as the expression of a deny to women, unlike men, of the right to unilaterally break off marital ties. Finally, this research sheds light on the agency of a group of muslim, practicing and believing women of Algerian descent and exiled in Montreal, who have made the triple choice: to initiate the divorce, to do it according to laws of the society of happened and to do so outside the legal guidelines of the Sunni fiqh relating to ẖul’.