Projects
American maximalist fiction between global and local knowledge – Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, andthe novel of information. University of Antwerp
Contemporary American fiction between local and global knowledge - Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, and the novel of information. University of Antwerp
The inherent powers of courts KU Leuven
This research constructs a comprehensive legal theory of inherent judicial power which explains and predicts the non-enumerated powers of the Belgian and Dutch courts.
In a first part, the research describes the traditional theory of the powers of the courts - namely that the courts have no powers other than those formally attributed to them by the Constitution and by specific laws passed by virtue of the Constitution itself - and ...
Medieval Theories of the Powers of the Soul (ca. 1255–1315) KU Leuven
Philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth century generally acknowledged that we differ from non-living beings by virtue of being alive. So, there must be something, they reasoned, that we have that inanimate beings lack. They held that this was the soul. All living beings, plants, animals, and human beings, have souls, on their view. According to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers, a soul is a kind of structure that arranges the ...
Powers and Causes in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Thought: the Metaphysics of Causation from Thomas Aquinas to John Buridan. KU Leuven
Aristotle’s “powers” theory of causation is built up on the intuitive idea that when the cue ball knocks the eight ball into the pocket, the cue ball has a power to produce the sinking of the eight ball. On Aristotle’s theory, to cause means to exercise an active power. This project will investigate the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century scholastic tradition inspired by this Aristotelian account, aiming to provide a historical study of ...
The Metaphysics of Institutions. Powers, Contingency and Freedom KU Leuven
The aim of this research project is to shed light on the fundamental nature and mode of being of institutions. Starting from the work of John Searle, the goal is to develop an ontology of institutions that is both better metaphysically grounded than Searle's, and more developed towards applications in the social sciences and social and political philosophy. It relies on a metaphysics of powers and dispositions, as developed in the recent ...
The Tones of Stones: Public Inscriptions and the Rise of Regional Powers in Tang China (755-907) KU Leuven
This dissertation studies the role of public inscriptions in the mid-late Tang (755-907) political context. The Chinese Tang Empire suffered a continuing crisis after the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763). On the one hand, control from the central government based in the capitals over the whole empire weakened. On the other hand, the powers of provincial governors increased in reaction. The tension between the central and local governments was ...
Authority and auctoritas. Italian poems on contemporary wars as an interface of powers (1530-1630) KU Leuven
This thesis investigates the interaction between different kinds of authority in Italian, narrative heroic poems, written between 1530 and 1630, on contemporary Habsburg wars in Europe.
The analysed corpus consists of approximately forty poems, that concern the siege of Tunis (1535), the Guelders wars, (1542-3), the Smalcaldic conflict (1546-7), the war of Cyprus (1570-71), and the military campaign in the Low Countries commanded by ...