Blockchain as Res Publica: Towards a Political Genealogy of a Distributed Ledger

This paper focuses on the political genealogy of one of the most promising and influential IT technologies of our time: the blockchain (or distributed registry). We point at important commonalities between the principles of blockchain projects and models of republican governance. In contrast to techno-anarchist and democratic ideas, the republican genealogy of blockchain has so far failed to attract the attention of researchers. After examining the basic technical properties and ideological images of blockchain, we explore how the four main principles of classical republicanism (personal freedom and autonomy of the individual; civic virtues; common good; recognition of great causes) are realized in influential blockchain projects — Bitcoin (developed by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto) and Ethereum (developed by Vitalik Buterin). The functioning of blockchain nodes is supported by a community of miners, who are free, but at the same time agree to act for the development of a common thing. What the republic and the blockchain have in common is that it is impossible to have a community without cooperative action. At the same time, blockchain is a vivid illustration of Bruno Latour's argument on the role of non-humans in social relations: his code seeks to replace untrustworthy humans with rule-acting nodes, and to create a cryptographic society where untrustworthy human relations are replaced by computers' relations. This article is an invitation to begin a discussion of the political ideas that are embedded in new technologies and the models of governance that are mobilized through them, often without proper reflection on the nature of such ideas by their creators.

Science, Technology and Religion: The Exchange Between Enlightenment Europe and Imperial China

The European Enlightenment fostered a sense of progress through a delineation of universal human rights as well as through a reductionist mathematization of nature. Science, technology and religion became a form of cultural currency between Europe and Imperial China. The Jesuits bartered mathematics, geographic surveys and military technology to win religious permissions with Chinese emperors. Other Europeans were convinced ancient Chinese texts corresponded to the Old Testament. China sent to Europe a Confucian model of a social ethic that demonstrated non-Christian civic virtues. This article examines this exchange using the intercourse in science, technology and religion as the metric.

The Other Otto Dresel: Public and Private Musical Identities in a German-American ‘Forty-Eighter’ and his Family, c. 1860–1880

This essay explores the musical life of a German-American ‘Forty-Eighter’ and his family, with particular attention to their domestic musical preferences as reflected in five surviving sheet-music albums. Otto Dresel, easily confused with the far more prominent German musician of the same name who settled in Boston, was a gifted amateur whose public musical activities, both choral and instrumental, typified those of many German arrivals of that generation. This was a largely male realm of affirmative, expansive ideals; here the stress was on civic virtues, happy fraternal bonds, and the celebration of German musical culture as an elevating force in America. The family albums suggests that the music he shared with his wife and children at home in Columbus, Ohio, served quite different purposes. It was performed intimately, in an often melancholy and even mournful mode that reflected the need for personal consolation and was thus more in keeping with typical Victorian attitudes toward the domestic, womanly sphere. Evidence about the troubled course of Dresel's life helps us understand his growing need to take refuge in his home and family as well as in music that helped him and his loved ones deal – for a time, at least – with deepening feelings of regret, failure and loss. This marked contrast between the public and private sides of the Dresels’ musical lives points to a need for greater attention to the distinctive character and functions of intimate family music-making in nineteenth-century America, especially during the years of widespread disillusionment and cultural reorientation that followed the Civil War.

COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Shared Adjustment

By April 2021, the COVID-19 crisis in Europe had reached a magnitude that, in the eyes of some observers, either deepened lingering divides and threatened the EU’s very existence, or, conversely, forced the Union to address the fundamental flaws of its euro area and provided an opportunity to reboot. From the outset, the EU had to confront fundamental challenges that require coordination; however, decentralised coordination is best as it improves the quality of policy, economic efficiency and civic virtues. While some argue for a debt union to provide the answer to the EU’s call for shared adjustment, a solution should rather be sought in economic reform, accountability and enforcement of constitutional commitments.

How to Overcome the Crisis of Symbolism with the Help of ‘Populist Ideas’? V.F. Chodasevič’s Critical Essays of the Early 1910s and the Article Nadson

This paper analyses V.F. Chodasevič’s early 1910s critical essays and his article Nadson, read in 1912 in the Literary and Artistic Club. Although the article did not play an important role in the critic’s work, because it was only during the exile period that Chodasevič criticized Nadson’s poetry, yet it represents the first example of Chodasevič’s appeal to the aesthetic model proposed by the utilitarian critics and the ideas of patriotism and civic virtues (graždanstvennost’), which were important in his poetry and later critic works. Chodasevič delivered a speech at the Club’s anniversary meeting which conveys his views on how to possibly overcome the crisis of symbolism. According to the poet, literature should restore and fully embody the ideals of the early Aesthetic Movement. The aim of the present research is to analyse the concepts, aesthetic ideas, and quotations used by Chodasevič in Nadson, and ascertain which sources influenced the author and how they relate to the literary context of the time (early 1910s). I argue that Chodasevič’s text echoes, to some extent, symbolist aesthetics while also reflecting elements of radical critique of early Aestheticism. Chodasevič only reproduces politically radical intentions that were present in the texts written by symbolists after 1907. Chodasevič’s article and his social views correspond to the evolution of Blok’s thought during the so-called ‘synthesis’ period; he, in fact, employs Blok’s ideas and introduces indirect quotations from his essays. Chodasevič’s speech at the Literary and Artistic Club was received as advancing principles which were seen too eclectic and old-fashioned, and which, most importantly, did not fit into the established literary context. Notwithstanding Chodasevič’s strategy of turning to Belinskij’s and Pisarev’s literary views was unsuccessful, since his intentions were misunderstood by the audience, he followed a similar pattern in several essays from the early 1910s. Chodasevič used symbolist aesthetic ideas in a number of texts written at the end of the exile period, where it can be seen that his approach and social and political views changed.

The First Calvinist Encounters with New World Religions

European Calvinists first encountered Native Americans during three brief expeditions of French adventurers to Brazil and Florida during the mid-sixteenth century. Although short-lived and rarely noted, these expeditions produced a remarkable commentary by Huguenots on the Tupinamba people of Brazil and the Timucuan people of Florida. Informed by Calvinist understandings of human nature and humanist approaches to cultural observation, authors such as Jean de Léry produced narratives that posed European and Christian decadence against the sociability and honesty of Native Americans. They used their experiences in America to suggest that Huguenots in France, like indigenous people in America, ought to be tolerated for their civic virtues whatever their doctrinal allegiances. Huguenot travel writings indicate variations in Calvinist approaches to Native peoples from the mid-sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries.

‘E-TAP’ CURRICULUM FOR VIRTUE EDUCATION: A FIT ANALYSIS TO THE ‘SKOLA-2030’ CURRICULUM

The virtue education curriculum ‘e-TAP’ is one of the recent efforts for improving character and virtue education at school in Latvia from preschool till grade nine. The objective of this research was to provide evidence regarding whether this curriculum is appropriate (‘fits’) to the Latvian context, in particular in reference to the Skola-2030 curriculum. Based on fit and feasibility theory, this work addressed the research question: “How does the treatment of virtues of the e-TAP curriculum fit to the treatment of virtues of the new Skola-2030 curriculum?”. The analysis used statistical descriptive frequency analysis of the virtues of each programme and comparative analysis between the two document sets included in each of them, using Excel software. The results show that Skola-2030 programme stresses performance and civic virtues, while the e-TAP programme underlines moral and intellectual virtues. Performance virtues are the most important ones in Skola-2030 (38 %), but account only for 17 % in the e-TAP curriculum. In addition, in Skola-2030 curriculum civic virtues account for 23 %, while in e-TAP they are only 8 %. In the e-TAP curriculum, moral virtues account for half of all the mentions (50 %) and intellectual virtues for 25 %, whereas in Skola-2030 those virtue groups account for 22 % and 18 %, respectively. The high ‘complementarity fit’ of both programmes suggests that the e-TAP curriculum could considerably enrich the Skola-2030 educational offer. Suggestions for e-TAP programme improvement and further research are put forward.

Corruption: Epistemological Reflections and Contributions to the Public Sector

Corruption is a recurring phenomenon throughout history, so different conceptions seek to formulate a concept that defines it. This theoretical essay aims to introduce a perspective that broadens the understanding of corruption beyond the currents of thought that prevail in studies about Brazilian public administration. This study indicates that the epistemic reconstruction of the meaning of corruption should derive from the conception of public interest as a result of deliberative processes between citizens and the State. Such perspective contributes to the debate about the importance of participation of the civil society in controlling corruption and creating public interest itself. This study also highlights that more efficient control is not only restricted to legislation reforms but it also relies on the enhancement civic virtues.

Corrupção: Reflexões Epistemológicas e Contribuições para o Campo de Públicas

Corruption is a recurring phenomenon throughout history, so different conceptions seek to formulate a concept that defines it. This theoretical essay aims to introduce a perspective that broadens the understanding of corruption beyond the currents of thought that prevail in studies about Brazilian public administration. This study indicates that the epistemic reconstruction of the meaning of corruption should derive from the conception of public interest as a result of deliberative processes between citizens and the State. Such perspective contributes to the debate about the importance of participation of the civil society in controlling corruption and creating public interest itself. This study also highlights that more efficient control is not only restricted to legislation reforms but it also relies on the enhancement civic virtues.