Chapter 3 challenges the critical commonplace in accounts of the lyric that Schubert’s thematic groups compose closed, self-contained entities that yield static forms. In particular, it re-examines the perceived equivalence of the term ‘closed’ with cadential closure and the Perfect Authentic Cadence (PAC). It argues that Schubert’s lyric forms compose ’closed’ ABA structures while simultaneously undermining or downplaying the role of cadence as a marker of finality. The first section clears the theoretical path by examining the primary and secondary parameters of closure and their non-congruence. Three analytical case studies follow and address, respectively, the concept of functional retrogression in Schubert’s earliest quartets, the composer’s particular ways of articulating or downplaying the medial caesura (MC), and his use of the elided PAC MC, explored through the formally unorthodox Quartettsatz. Each analytical case study demonstrates the destabilisation of moments of punctuation in Schubert’s lyric forms as well as the charged conflict between tonal and rhetorical parameters, which often creates a critical tension between punctuation and continuation.

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet’s construal of Apology 30b2–4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything else good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on εἶναι in Plato and Aristotle to γίγνεσθαι, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modem verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use (εἶναι, ὑπάρχειν, ὑφεστηκέναι) can be said to have existential meaning.

This chapter introduces liminality, an anthropological concept, before going on to explain why human embryos may be described as liminal beings. As an entity in a state of constant and rapid change, embryos sit ‘betwixt and between’ the various realms of legal categorisation. As such, the core problem for law is two-fold: ‘the embryo’ has neither a fixed status, nor is it possible to ‘fix’ its status. Law, accordingly, struggles to capture and regulate what embryos are ontologically (as opposed to what the ‘embryo’ is descriptively). The challenge in capturing these ontologies is perhaps part of the problem; if, indeed, this is what law has sought to do. This chapter argues that an embrace of liminality - both as a state embryos are led into, and as a lens for analysing that state - fully reveals the multiplicity of contexts in which embryos are used and created. This chapter shows that a liminal perspective demonstrates that there are vital aspects of embryos - some of which the law itself creates - that the law might better recognise, namely its contextually variable and relational qualities

I claim that both Being and Becoming are incarnated in a cosmological model within the causal set approach to quantum gravity in which spacetime is fundamentally discrete. I argue that, in the model, Being is subjective whereas Becoming is objective.

Upon reflection, I had, as a child, become a sound state-school student within a culturally diverse student group. The physical environment, from infants and primary school sites to the secondary school site, was not particularly diverse. It was often characterised by interiors of neutral-coloured linoleum, regulation departmental mid-blue accents, modular timber cupboards and exteriors defined by seriously brown brick walls, asphalt playgrounds and modestly allocated grass areas. Grey wire-fences surrounded the built environments of almost every school site. Landscaping was limited to an agglomeration of concrete-bound, sandstone forms providing an edging to the asphalt and was usually located near the entrance of the school. The plants inside were mostly hardy ‘natives’ that irrespective of their apparent suitability seemed to struggle to survive.