Publications on these and related subjects will be presented here with abstracts, publication details and links to the full papers or research documents.
Abstract
Drawing on Norbert Elias’s theory of civilising processes, this paper examines how internalised norms shape the boundaries of legitimate political dissent. It explores how dissenting convictions can be treated as evidence of personal or social deficiency rather than assessed primarily on their content. The paper develops the concept of institutional self-confirmation: institutions are trusted because they are considered expert and legitimate, while their claims are accepted partly because they come from trusted institutions. This sociological form of pathologisation may stabilise political order without establishing that its classifications are correct or justified. It may also weaken society’s capacity for self-correction by disqualifying dissenters before their arguments are examined. Open contestation is therefore needed to test political claims and keep these classifications open to criticism and revision.
Abstract
Artificial intelligence appears to evoke two distinct forms of anxiety. The first concerns systems that escape human control and cause harm, including the fear that they might turn against us. The second arises when machines display capacities that we have long regarded as evidence of human exceptionalism. This essay focuses on that second anxiety and the challenge AI poses to familiar ideas about intelligence and humanity’s place in the world. Its central claim is that AI does not necessarily diminish human beings, but does undermine unsound arguments for human greatness. If machines can demonstrate abilities once considered uniquely human, those abilities can no longer, by themselves, sustain claims to an exceptional status. The resulting unease therefore concerns more than technological progress: it touches the assumptions through which people understand themselves and defend their uniqueness. The essay explores the distinction between questioning these assumptions and diminishing human worth. It invites a reconsideration of whether humanity’s significance must depend on possessing capacities that no machine can display, and whether our understanding of intelligence has been shaped by the desire to preserve a privileged image of ourselves. From this perspective, AI challenges the stories we tell about human greatness. For many, the possibility that these stories rest on inadequate arguments is itself a dangerous idea.
Abstract
The Art of Revolution presents the axioms and definitions underpinning a formal theory of social change. Its starting point is the analysis of social phenomena through civilisation elements: conceptions and assumptions about reality, norms and values, behavioural repertoires, and goals and ideals. The framework distinguishes personal civilisation from the shared elements operative within social circles and defines the processes through which ideas are transmitted, internalised and embedded in institutions. It differentiates power from influence and defines politics as the struggle between competing actors to achieve goals. Concepts of legitimacy, social reproduction, elites, the state and movements provide a basis for examining how social orders persist, acquire authority and undergo change. The framework requires its explanatory elements to be empirically ascertainable and gives no prior explanatory preference to class, economic interests, technology or the state. This publication contains four axioms and thirty-six definitions with explanatory commentary, establishing the conceptual basis for the theory’s subsequent propositions.
Abstract
This critical edition revisits Abraham Kuyper’s 1880 address on sphere sovereignty, delivered at the founding of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It presents the original Dutch text alongside a contemporary Dutch version, an interpretative introduction and explanatory notes that clarify its historical references and nineteenth-century debates. Kuyper’s central principle holds that distinct spheres of social life—including family, education, scholarship, art, economic life and religious communities—possess their own authority and should not be absorbed into a single governing power. The introduction reads this principle as a framework for reciprocal freedom and political pluralism: individuals and communities must be able to organise around their convictions while recognising the corresponding freedom of others. Particular attention is given to the independence of scholarship and to the state’s role in safeguarding rights and mediating conflicts without assuming control over other spheres. Although Kuyper grounded his argument in divine sovereignty, the edition considers its relevance for readers who do not share that foundation. It invites renewed debate about institutional authority, freedom of conviction and the limits of state intervention.