Through newly transcribed and translated lectures, Deleuze explores Spinoza's philosophy concerning questions of good and evil and humanity's potential for realizing a full life

Available for the first time in English, On Spinoza presents the annotated transcripts of Gilles Deleuze's fifteen seminars on the seventeenth-century philosopher's Ethics, delivered at the experimental University of Vincennes at the behest of Michel Foucault. Spinoza's ambitious treatise was central to Deleuze's thought, and his course provides an accessible framework for understanding the vitality of Spinoza's philosophy.

In an informal classroom setting, Deleuze addresses fundamental aspects of Spinoza's thought: How does one undo the negativity of harmful passions such as hate, resentment, and envy? How can a system of moral judgment based on good and evil be replaced by a more sophisticated ethics of the good and the bad? And since such questions commit Spinoza to a new theory of signs, Deleuze also delves into his thinking on how these signs should guide human existence and the differences between concepts of eternity, experienced in the here and now, and the immortality promised by philosophy and religion.

Building gradually from session to session, Deleuze shows how Spinoza rejects a hierarchical reality dominated by an authoritarian and impenetrable God, instead proposing a world ruled by light and reason in which all beings are equal. Annotated by David Lapoujade and including recorded exchanges with Deleuze's students, On Spinoza offers a rare window into Deleuze's teaching, offering readers a guide for linking Spinoza to other philosophers - including Deleuze himself.

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This book offers the first feminist and disability-informed account of how identities are co-constructed and how they ought to be shaped. Challenging dominant individualistic theories of the self, Alexandra Romanyshyn argues that many traditional accounts inadvertently exclude people with cognitive disabilities and overlook the lived realities of marginalized groups. Drawing on feminist philosophy, disability studies, developmental psychology, and care ethics, the book develops a normative relational theory of selfhood that addresses both the promise and the risks of our narrative dependence on others. Romanyshyn proposes moral and intellectual virtues that guide ethical identity construction, and she examines how individuals can resist and repair harmful narratives. Interdisciplinary and empirically informed, this monograph offers a compelling framework for understanding flourishing selves in a world shaped by relationships.

This book explores how English accents are perceived, evaluated, and socially interpreted within contemporary Nigeria. Drawing on original empirical research involving Nigerian university students, the author investigates how speakers assign value to different English varieties, specifically American, British, Ghanaian, Jamaican, and Nigerian English, and what these evaluations reveal about identity, power, and postcolonial linguistic hierarchies. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines surveys, interviews, and an indirect verbal-guise experiment, the book uncovers both conscious beliefs and unconscious biases shaping how Nigerians respond to different English accents. At its core, the book examines the relationship between accent, social status, and cultural belonging in a multilingual, postcolonial society, offering new findings and implications for scholars, language educators, and policymakers alike.

This edited volume offers a major reappraisal of contemporary hermeneutics through the lens of African philosophy. Moving beyond a text-centered model of interpretation, it shows how African hermeneutic traditions have reconfigured hermeneutics from within by engaging orality, myth, art, the lived body, memory, postcolonial history, and the search for a non-imperial universal. Across seventeen chapters, the book reconstructs the main currents of African hermeneutics from ancient interpretive traditions to ecological wisdom, narrative subjectivity, cultural restitution, and biblical interpretation. Its central claim is that meaning is never simply given: it is historically, symbolically, and practically mediated. This volume appeals to researchers and students; it brings African philosophy into dialogue with phenomenology, critical theory, theology, anthropology, and literary studies. It makes an original contribution to debates on interpretation, decolonization, and universality.

This book focuses on the development of artificial intelligence and rule of law in the world, by collecting and summarizing the information about the development of artificial intelligence and rule of law in China and the world, covering topics like AI strategy, policy, law, theoretical research and practical application, etc. It makes an in-depth analysis so as to provide an objective, fair and accurate report. The purpose is to promote the study of AI and law, promote the construction of AI and rule of law system, and create an AI and rule of law environment. In particular, it aims to play an active role in promoting the establishment of legislative norms, legal systems, policy systems and ethical norms that are compatible with the innovative development of AI, promoting the implementation of a new generation of national AI development strategies, ensuring the safe, reliable, controllable, healthy and sustainable development of AI. It is hoped that this book may provide useful reference for researchers of AI and law.

In this book, scholars from various fields share their insights into the role of communication in combating the American opioid crisis. The introduction provides an overview of the development of the crisis followed by a discussion of the role of communication in fighting the crisis. Part I of the book (Chapters 2-5) addresses how the language used to frame chronic pain, opioid use disorder (OUD) and the opioid crisis by the media, healthcare professionals and the public has facilitated the formation of stigmas associated with OUD and individuals with OUD and what can be done to change it. Part II of the book (Chapters 6-8) focuses on how communication can help prevent opioid misuse. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss strategies that may be used to create effective anti-opioid campaigns. Chapter 8 explores the role that academic detailing (AD) plays in improving health care providers’ compliance with the CDC’s guidelines for prescribing opioids and strategies for increasing the effectiveness of AD. Part III of the book (Chapters 9-10) explains how to use communication to improve OUD treatment and support individuals with OUD. Chapter 9 highlights the importance of patient-centered communication and patient navigators to OUD treatment. Chapter 10 analyzes the self-help program for individuals with OUD utilized by Narcotics Anonymous and offers suggestions for improvement. In conclusion, this book demonstrates that communication can help end the American opioid crisis by promoting prevention, removing barriers (e.g., stigmas), and improving treatment and support for individuals with OUD. The insights offered in this book will appeal to diverse readers including students of communication, persuasion and psychology, and health science; as well as campaign designers, healthcare providers, journalists, policy makers, social workers and the general public

This volume explores how firms, public institutions, and communities are responding to technological change, environmental pressures, regulatory developments, and evolving market and societal demands. Featuring contributions presented at the 2025 International Conference on Applied Economics (ICOAE) held in Bratislava, Slovakia, this volume address topics such as corporate governance, ESG and sustainability reporting, artificial intelligence (AI), digital public administration, taxation reform, logistics and supply chain resilience, consumer behavior, tourism, education, human resource management, and social inclusion. In doing so, the volume moves beyond a narrow business focus and highlights the interconnected roles of management, policy, governance, and society in processes of adaptation and reform. It also offers empirically grounded insights from a variety of national and sectoral contexts, particularly studies from Greece, Slovakia, Germany, Italy, Thailand, and broader European settings.

By combining empirical research with conceptual and application-oriented contributions, the volume contributes to ongoing academic and policy debates on organizational adaptation, institutional change, and sustainable development. It offers researchers rigorous empirical findings and comparative perspectives, while providing policymakers with evidence-based insights relevant to the design and implementation of policies in areas such as digital transformation, ESG, taxation, and public governance. The volume is also of interest to graduate students and practitioners engaged with contemporary economic and societal challenges.

This is the 39th volume of Springer's Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics series, the official book series of the Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES). This volume features selected papers presented at the 52nd EBES Conference, held in Istanbul, Tuerkiye, on July 3-5, 2025. The conference was organized with the support of the Istanbul Economic Research Association, jointly organized with the Gulf Financial Center and the College of Business Administration, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait, in Collaboration with the Bahcesehir University. At the conference, 215 papers were presented by 471 colleagues from 59 countries. The conference was held in a hybrid format, featuring both in-person and online paper presentations.

The volume offers a pioneering intervention in global literary and cultural studies by tracing representations of disability across the entire twentieth century-from early modernist literature to late postcolonial and popular cultural forms. Unlike most existing works that focus primarily on twenty-first-century narratives, this volume provides rare historical depth and a globally inclusive perspective.

Bringing together literary, cinematic, regional, and mythic narratives from Western and non-Western contexts-including Indian literature and film-the book constructs a comparative framework that illuminates how disability is embedded in diverse historical, cultural, and political settings. Covering texts from Kafka and Faulkner to Odia fiction and Indian partition narratives, it spans early modernism, interwar poetics, post-World War II trauma narratives, and late-century cultural media such as cinema, comics, autobiography, and myth.

Balancing academic rigour with accessibility, this book is an essential resource for scholars, students, and educators interested in literature, culture, and critical disability studies.

When millions of Syrians fled civil war after 2011, international donors and humanitarian organizations mobilized to provide assistance to neighboring countries. Focusing on Jordan-one of the world's largest refugee hosting states-Disease and Diplomacy investigates how medical aid to refugees operates as an instrument of diplomacy and control within the global refugee system. It argues that health, far from being an apolitical humanitarian good, is a bargaining tool that states commodify to extract resources and concessions.

Drawing on years of field research, interviews, and policy analysis, the book shows how the Jordanian government, international donors, and humanitarian agencies turned healthcare for refugees into a tool for negotiating power, resources, and responsibility. In these cases, refugees, caught within these negotiations, often found their access to care determined not by medical need, but by political calculation. Developing the concept of the weaponization of medical aid, the book extends theories of migration diplomacy and refugee rentierism to show how global power dynamics shape who receives healthcare. The analysis identifies a self-reinforcing "crisis loop" that privileges short-term, highly visible responses while neglecting chronic and long-term needs. Disease and Diplomacy advances an interdisciplinary framework for understanding how humanitarian practices reinforce global inequalities and argues for more equitable approaches to refugee health and responsibility-sharing in the international system.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of mathematical optimization models and techniques for solving facility location problems. It equips students with the theoretical foundations and practical knowledge needed to analyze real-world location planning problems, as well as to use and adapt optimization models and methods suited for these tasks. To support this, the book offers detailed explanations of the optimization theory underlying the methods used to solve the presented location problems. In particular, it discusses Lagrangian relaxation and duality, subgradient optimization, column generation, and Benders' decomposition in substantial depth.

Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises, some of which take the form of case studies that, while fictitious, reflect realistic applications. The book is further supplemented by a Python package, pyloa. At the end of each chapter, examples show how classes and routines from this package can be applied to solve selected location problems introduced in the chapter.

This book is intended for graduate students in operations research, applied mathematics, mathematics-economics, industrial engineering, and business administration with a focus on analytics or quantitative methods. It is also a valuable resource for university instructors designing 5-15 ECTS courses on location-planning optimization, as well as for researchers and practitioners seeking a thorough introduction to optimisation models and methods for facility location planning.

This book assesses the conceptual and practical contributions of the normativist and well-being approaches to health. A particular emphasis is placed on the holistic theory of Lennart Nordenfelt. The contributions of this theory are synthesized and discussed, and their relevance is put to the test, particularly with regard to mental health, which is particularly original and innovative in the field. Particular attention is paid to Nordenfelt's notions of ability and compulsion, assessing their relevance to the definition of the pathological character of depression and addiction. In addition, the book includes discussions of the notions of function and harm, for which it proposes redefinitions that take account of the most recent developments in the philosophy of medicine. Finally, the book extends this reflection on the central notions emerging from normativism in the definition of health: well-being by providing a critical analysis of the relationship between those two concepts. Several chapters discuss the relevance of a notion of well-being in the definition of health, mobilizing the philosophy of well-being as well as medical ethics.

In an era where cancer care is rapidly evolving, there is a growing recognition that healing extends beyond physical treatment to include psychological directions and spiritual wellbeing. This book "Spiritual and Positive Psychological Aspects of Cancer Treatment" is an integrative view of the role of inner factors like faith, hope, resilience, and meaning-making in improving coping, emotional balance, and overall quality of life in cancer patients and survivors.

This book combines academic wisdom on such important positive psychological concepts as mindfulness, gratitude, compassion, humour, and post-traumatic growth, as well as cultural, holistic, and integrated care. The book is intended to be used by researchers, academicians, clinicians, and students, and it bridges the gap between theory and practice and opens new directions in interdisciplinary research and patient-centred, integrated care of cancer patients.

This edited volume brings together state-of-the-art contributions dealing with different aspects of learning and teaching additional languages, contributed by scholars from different parts of the world. The chapters cover a wide variety of topics, including highly innovative ones such as the links between migration and multilingualism; variable-centered, person-centered, and person-specific approaches to examining emotions in language learning; the use of artificial intelligence in mitigating boredom; problem-based learning; peer mentoring; and issues involved in the use of duoethnography. Importantly, an effort is made to illustrate how theoretical positions and research findings can translate into daily classroom practices. The book is divided into three parts, each with contributions dealing with related themes. Accordingly, Part One includes chapters focusing on multilingualism, diverse contexts in which language learning takes place, as well as different educational challenges. Part Two brings together contributions concerning individual differences in the process of second language learning and teaching, ranging from emotions to the use of grammar learning strategies. Part Three includes chapters dealing with instructional practices and research methodology, focusing, for example, on problem-based learning, peer mentoring, or AI-enhanced materials. Due to the diversity of topics covered, its innovative character, and the emphasis on demonstrating how theory and research can inform instructional practices, the book is of interest to both researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, and language teachers at different educational levels.

This book discusses environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting as a measurement of the performance of organisations in achieving sustainable development. It provides an understanding of how businesses manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities, and assists readers in communicating sustainability initiatives by facilitating investors' measurement of risk and company performance to accurately inform business decisions in a sustainability context. From January 2024, according to the UE 2022/2464 Directive, known as "Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive" (CSRD), the number of companies required to submit their ESG report is expected to grow by about 50.000 companies in Europe. Given the importance of the subject, the book presents an examination of the concept of sustainability combined in three dimensions: environmental, social, and economic. In addition, the manuscript describes the significance and role of the ESG report for enterprises, which will, in a short time, also involve small and medium-sized enterprises, not currently covered by the obligations of the Community Directive, but that, operating within production and distribution chains, will be led to present their sustainability report. The book is aimed at entrepreneurs and practitioners who want to use sustainability reporting to declare their ESG performances.

The essays collected in Law and Media present German media theorist Cornelia Vismann investigating how law functions through the media technologies used to produce, disseminate, and preserve it-from papyrus and the codex to courtroom stenography and Stasi files. Expanding on the understanding of the cultural techniques of law advanced in her landmark first book, Files, Vismann explores topics including the history of Roman law, the development of law books and archives, the transcription and translation of laws and legal proceedings, and the techniques and technologies of bureaucratic administration

Translated here for the first time into English and featuring an introduction situating Vismann's thought in terms of her scholarly interlocutors, this book brings Vismann's creative theoretical work, in the form of lively and accessible essays, to readers in cultural studies, media studies, political philosophy, and legal history. For first-time readers of Vismann, these essays will provide a valuable introduction to her key concepts and ideas, while those familiar with the pioneering media theorist will find additional insight into the theories and scholarship that shaped her unique approach.

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the transformative relationship between technological advancement and human experience in the aviation sector. As a continuation of the first volume, this book examines how digitalization, Industry 4.0 technologies, metaverse applications, gamification, and sustainability-oriented innovations are reshaping the structure, processes, and culture of modern aviation.

The chapters collectively present interdisciplinary insights that bridge theoretical frameworks and practical implementations. By highlighting the integration of digital tools with experiential and social innovation, the book demonstrates how technological progress in aviation increasingly centers on human needs, emotional engagement, and sustainable development. This volume serves as a valuable reference for scholars, researchers, and industry professionals who seek to understand the evolving dynamics of aviation innovation. It emphasizes that the future of aviation depends not only on technological breakthroughs, but also on the creation of meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable experiences for all stakeholders in the global air transport ecosystem.

This study incorporates time and space variables, which are highly valued in the field of transportation economics, into the big data analysis of transportation. It is based on spatiotemporal economics, big data theory, transportation economics, and other theoretical methods. The book explains the physical-information relationship, the spatiotemporal relationship, the mechanism and effect of supply and demand, and builds the spatiotemporal economic theory and analysis framework based on big data in transportation. Using big data in transportation, it experimentally investigates significant transportation economic concerns in the areas of high-speed rail, civil aviation and shared mobility. It can serve as a reference for readers interested in other connected studies as well as for theoretical workers, policy researchers, government agencies, industrial management departments, and other pertinent individuals in the transportation field.