This paper distinguishes between "descriptive" and "normative" conceptions of Bayesian principles of rationality, both in the context of inference and in the context of decision (which of course are not unrelated). I emphasize an idea according to which, "You have to work with what you have to work with" - that is, that rationality is a relation among old beliefs, new information, and new beliefs (in the case of inference) and among beliefs, desires, preferences, and choices (in the case of decision). According to this conception of rationality, one's current beliefs and desires are not themselves subject to evaluation as to their rationality (except for some minimal, basically logical and "coherentist" constraints). From this perspective, rationality is about how we move from old beliefs (whatever they are) to new beliefs when confronted with evidence, and about how our preferences are structured given what we believe and what we want (whatever we currently happen to believe and want). I present some formal details of this perspective and discuss several criticisms of it.

What is the relationship between right-wing populism and contemporary fascism? How has fascism changed since the 1920s? And how do the answers to these questions concern a global shift that can be called the Great Unsettling—including a postmodern fracturing of prior modern ‘certainties’ about the nature of subjectivity, political practice and meaning, deconstructing the consequences of ‘truth’? This essay seeks to respond to these questions by first going back to foundational issues of defnition and elaborating the meaning of populism and fascism in relation to their structural ‘moving parts’. Using this alternative scaffolding, the essay argues that right-wing populism and an orientation to postmodern fascism represented by Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have converged. The context of this convergence is a globalizing shift that now challenges democratic politics.

This essay brings Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico’s thought to bear on the issue of contemporary populism. Contemporary populism can be refected in Vico’s cyclical philosophy of the three ages of civilisation: the divine, heroic and human ages (corso e ricorso). Contemporary populism represents a return to the barbarism of the heroic age through the descent into individualism and private interest, the return of divinely ordained rulers and the recourse to myth, violence and morality. Humankind’s reason has become corrupted by the complexity of highly developed society, releasing the destructive forces of contemporary populism and a descent into a ‘barbarism of refection’. Corsi e ricorsi illustrates how contemporary populism remains but a stage in the Vichian cycle, alluding to how it represents an essential form of political life throughout history.

Populism is discussed here in terms of the larger global systemic matrix in which it occurs. It is suggested that it is not, as has been claimed so often, recently, somehow related to what is labelled as right-wing extremism. It is an expression of an aspiration to sovereignty, control over one’s conditions of existence and its links to either left or right are based on that aspiration. And, of course, right and left are themselves terms that have shifted or even been inverted over the past 30 years. The core argument is that populism and cosmopolitanism form a complementary opposition that has emerged as a product of the hegemonic decline of the West.

This paper takes up the challenge posed in recent commentary concerning the nature or ontology of populism. I suggest that we need to take a sociological approach that seeks to locate populism within the wider processes and tendencies associated with late modernity in order to fully capture not only what populism is, but also why we are seeing a greater prevalence of populism around the world. I locate populism in relation to fve dominant tendencies: The decline of traditional authority structures; the rise of individualisation; the growth of bureaucracy and complexifcation; the intensifcation of globalisation and the emergence of a new media ecology. These processes together are creating enormous strains on representative democracy, lead­ing to “democratic grievance”. Those who are represented become uncoupled from their own representatives, leaving a vacuum which is increasingly flled by populist initiatives. Populism thus needs to be read as a symptom of an intensifying crisis of democracy, as much as a cause of it.

Can the rise of nationalist-authoritarian populism be explained in terms of neo­liberalism and its effects? The frst half of this paper is about conceptual under­labouring: in spite of signifcant overlap, there are relatively clear demarcation criteria for identifying neoliberalism and nationalist-authoritarian populism as distinct entities. Neoliberalism has succeeded in transforming social contexts through agency, practices and institutions, with far-reaching efects. The prevailing economic and social policies have also had various causal efects such as rising inequalities, progressively more insecure terms of employment, and recurring economic crises. I argue that these have led to discontent with globalization and various political responses, including those of nationalist and authoritarian populisms. Finally, by juxtaposing constitutive and causal explanations, and by stressing the history of national-authoritarian populism, I raise questions about geo-historical specifcity of diferent formations. The standard Karl Polanyian interpretation of Trump, Brexit and such like phenomena is misleading, yet a partial historical analogy especially to the interwar era populism is valid if understood in a subtle, processual, and suffciently contextual way. The Polanyi-inspired historical analogy can be explored further. While the 19th and 20th century working class movement emerged from a variety of socio-economic conditions, socialists who believed in its world-historical role actively made it. Since the 1970s the working class has been largely unmade both as a result of impersonal processes and deliberate attempts to undermine it. Only a learning process towards qualitatively higher levels of refexivity can help develop global transformative agency for the 21st century.

This contribution consists in an attempt to make sense of one central aspect of the present worldwide turbulence, one which might well be called the contemporary, perfect, global storm. A pivotal problem that will be interrogated is the issue of the circumstances that have produced this phenomenon in most parts of the world, although it should be emphasized that the term populism is, more often than not, applied to the Western world rather than the East or, for the most part, the global South. However, this reservation does not amount to a severe caveat, since all the contemporary signs are that what is here called populism is sweeping across the entire world as a whole, even though it is not necessarily given this name in non-Western regions. To this generalization it should be added that there are, rather obviously, parallels to what has become known as populism in the West. Examples of this are anarchism in nineteenth century Russia and the movement known as the Long March under the leadership of Mao Zedong in the years 1934 and 1935 particularly, as well as al Qaeda and its various offshoots.

The contemporary debate on 21st century populism centres on a term (“populism”) that can be flled with multiple meanings. It provides the social sciences with a “meta-concept” that offers coherence to disciplinary discourses. In the 21st century, globalization and cosmopolitanism are often viewed as an irresistible force by intellectuals, with advocacy of cosmopolitanism becoming commonplace. For the most part, the academic community has only belatedly and reluctantly decided to address the electoral success of political parties that reject the political consensus of the post-1989 “New World Order”. In sharp contrast to the intellectuals’ stance, the empirical evidence suggests that it is localism (and not cosmopolitanism) that has been on the rise in recent decades. Glocalization is connected to the formation of varied collective responses and representations, thereby giving rise to the mutually defined pair of cosmopolitanism and localism. The cosmopolitanism–localism binary relationship is a result (or outcome) of glocalization. However, the majority of social-scientifc perspectives do not give proper consideration to the notion of “local”. The notions of localization and de-globalization as part of post-Great Recession trends are discussed. The extent to which these can rectify shortcomings in current theorizing is explored.

This essay deals with the five origins of European populism. It touches upon a number of themes in the lexicon of re-globalization and the changing warp of populist globalization as a process. It carries a lively normative message, principally as to the required comportment of the European Union during a period of global change and dislocation, which prefigures, or may give rise to a post-populist era.

The paper tries first to show that P. Strawson’s and J. Searle’s proposal of explicating the illocutionary meaning of speech-acts (or corresponding explicit sentences) in terms of the conditions of fulfilment or satisfaction (with regard to the underlying intentional states of mind) is unsatisfactory. It provides no full understanding of the meaning of speech-acts, at least not of non-constative acts, as e.g. orders, requests, demands, confessions, promisses, etc.; for, through its quasi-verificationist horizon, it provides no unterstanding of the illocutionary force in terms of the conditions of accepting the validity-claims that are connected with the performance of the act. Thus far the paper complies with Habermas’ approach. There remains however an ambiguity with regard to the good reasons for accepting a speech-act, since on the level of life-world communication and interaction not only validity-claims and pertinent arguments but also threats and offers are functioning as socially binding illocutionary forces (thus e.g. not only in coercions like "hands up" but in all kinds of negotiations and bargainings). How is it possible to show by a cogent argument that openly strategical acts as offers and threats cannot fulfill the role of providing good reasons for accepting speech-acts in the sense of unrestricted Verständigung (i.e. communicative understanding and coming to agreement) but are parasitic upon non-strategical ways of consensual communication by understanding and accepting validity-claims?The paper argues that this suggestive contention cannot be proved, i.e. grounded by a descriptive analysis of the normal function of communicative actions in the life-world but only - indeed - by transcendental pragmatic reflection on the normative conditions of argumentative discourse which cannot be denied without committing a performative self-contradiction.

This paper takes up again Grice’s Basic Model (GBM) for analysing communicative acts. We draw attention to a ’new’ fault in GBM, i.e. a fault not yet noticed in the literature: Grice’s deflniens for CA (= communicative attempt) is not only too weak (as it is not satisfying the reflexivity-condition according to which any CA implies the speaker’s intention of CA’s being understood by the hearer); it is also too strong - and just for the same reason.

The domain of pragmatics is to arrange in the architectonic of competences. Competences are to discriminate on the base of distinction between rule-following behaviour and action-rules. This can be understood as a critic of L. Wittgensteins conception of following a rule. The Frankfurter version of speechacttheory has argued - following partial K Bühler - that three fundamental properties (functions) of language can be identified: the representation of state of affaires, the generation of interpersonal relationship and the expression of intentional make happen someone (Erlebnisse). Further dimensions and explications for concerning this properties shall be elaborated. Steps to constructive pragmatics can be gone.

How operates communication with pictures? S. Kjörup has elaborated - follow up the analysis of pictorial symbolization in N. Goodman’s "languages of art" - a speechacttheory of picturing The problem of this approach is that Kjörup has no answer of pictorial fiction.

The relationship between reflection and language has become of main interest, not only in the area of philosophy. How is reflection by means of language on language possible?Firstly I want to discuss the possibility of linguistic reflexivity within the late philosophy of L. Wittgenstein.The next step will be a critical analysis of G. Frey's "linguistic theory of reflection". This will be followed by an outline of the importance of reflection in context of the speechacttheory (J.L. Austin, J.R. Searle).Finally I will analyse the problems around linguistic reflexivity within a discourse theoretical framework (J. Habermas, K-O. Apel).It will be questioned if the "discourse" would have to be understood as the linguistic equivalent to "reflection" . Then I will be looking at the relationship between discourse and metacommunication. The analysis will end in the attempt of a typology of discoursive-reflexive predicats.

Semantic implicatures are features for understanding the use of sentences. The status of this implementations of meaning is a quasi-logical relation as a "weak implication". They are determinated through types of lexical units and expressions in grammatical positions. But both are only necessary conditions for semantic implicatures. Further assumption for meaningful use of sentences are presupposed e.g. existence presuppositions, evidences, customs etc. So, the delimination to pragmatic (presuppositions) is indicated.