Moral Sentiments in Modern Society - Amsterdam University Press

Mor al Sentiments in Modern Society A New Answer to Classical Questions Edited by Gabriël van den Brink

Moral Sentiments in Modern Society A New Answer to Classical Questions

Edited by Gabriël van den Brink

Amsterdam University Press

Translation: Gioia Marini, Amsterdam Cover design: Maedium, Utrecht Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 775 7 e-isbn 978 90 4852 570 6 (pdf) nur 757 © Gabriël van den Brink / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

Table of Contents

Introduction 11 Gabriël van den Brink

1 2 3 4 5

Why this topic? Why the Netherlands? Why now? Personal motives Word of thanks

11 14 16 19 20

Part 1 1 Research questions and theoretical framework Gabriël van den Brink

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The theory of moral sentiments Morality and society Will the real Adam Smith please stand up? On modernity and modernisation Three fault lines Theories and trends Degrees of modernity The tension between morality and modernity The moral effects of modernity What this book is about

2 An archaeology of altruistic behaviour Gabriël van den Brink

1 Insights from biology 2 The transcendental order 3 The uniqueness of Christianity? 4 The beginning of the modern era 5 The secularisation of society 6 The moralisation of politics 7 Solidarity at the local level 8 Solidarity at the national level 9 Solidarity at the global level 10 Conclusions

25 26 31 36 39 41 45 49 55 58 62 65 66 70 75 78 80 85 90 92 95 97

Part 2 3 The Netherlands as a liquid society Gabriël van den Brink

1 Economic modernisation 2 Political modernisation 3 Cultural modernisation 4 Higher expectations 5 The erosion of institutional frameworks 6 Rise in social mobility 7 Family life 8 Civic life 9 Professional life 10 Conclusions

105 105 108 111 112 116 119 122 125 128 131

4 The hardening of the social climate

135

1 Secularisation 2 More sports 3 Intense experiences 4 More violence 5 Greater visibility 6 Moving in the wrong direction 7 Decline in tolerance 8 The immigrant problem 9 Moral uncertainty 10 Conclusions

136 140 142 144 146 149 152 155 157 160

Gabriël van den Brink

Part 3 5 The truly important things in life

Paul Dekker, Erik van Ingen & Loek Halman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Many deflective reactions Examples of views regarding ‘something higher’ Four types of ideals The link to religion Forms of spirituality Social background Social involvement

167 168 170 173 175 178 180 182

8 Motives for helping 9 Characteristics of the volunteers 10 Conclusions 6 Changes in norms and values

Erik van Ingen, Loek Halman & Paul Dekker

1 Two dimensions of modernisation 2 The Netherlands and Europe 3 Changes in values at the individual level 4 Hierarchy of values 5 Values in private life 6 Values of citizenship 7 Decreasing tolerance 8 Public morals stricter 9 The significance of work 10 Conclusions

186 187 190 193 194 196 199 202 206 209 212 215 216 220

Part 4 7 The role of ideals in professional life

227

1 Integrity and openness 2 Problems with the organisation 3 Social commitment 4 Companies in the private sector 5 Social values on three levels 6 Vitality and spirituality 7 Forms of moral deliberation 8 The mission statement 9 Professional codes of conduct 10 Conclusions

230 232 234 236 239 241 244 247 251 253

Heleen van Luijn & Nicole Maalsté

8 Moral imagination at work Karen Woets & Heidi de Mare

1 2 3 4 5

The status of fantasy novels Two (or more) imaginary worlds Personal relationships Morality and personal development The status of television series

257 261 264 266 268 270

6 Visual qualities of the hospital drama 7 Moments of empathy 8 Visual qualities of police series 9 The rule of law and self-sacrifice 10 Conclusions

274 276 279 281 284

Part 5 9 Signs of moral resilience

Wieger Bakker, Gabriël van den Brink & Erik van Ingen

1 Lasting religious interest 2 The scale and trend in volunteering 3 Mixed motives 4 Types of development aid 5 Changing images 6 Caring for nature and the environment 7 Social initiatives 8 Rediscovering public values 9 An old and modern phenomenon 10 Conclusions 10 Europe and modern morality Gabriël van den Brink

1 Spirituality 2 Belief in democracy 3 Human dignity 4 Social involvement 5 Professional life 6 Civic life 7 Intimacy 8 Nature and the environment 9 Cultural modernisation 10 Conclusions

291 292 294 297 300 304 307 310 312 313 316 319 321 323 326 328 329 332 335 337 338 342

Part 6 11 An outline of modern morality

349


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Back to the original question Negative effects Ambivalent or neutral effects Moderately positive effects Clearly positive effects The modernisation of morality The moralisation of modernity A void in the public domain The idealistic side of politics Schism in the public sphere

12 Reinventing civil society

Erik Borgman, Gabriël van den Brink & Paul Dekker

1 2 3 4 5

349 352 355 358 362 366 371 376 382 386

†

The proliferation of moral ideals The importance of the public imagination The ‘issues’ that matter The fiction of the Public Good The development of ‘civic talk’

393 394 396 398 401 403

Bibliography 411 Index 429

Introduction Gabriël van den Brink For two centuries, the greatest minds have voiced their doubts about the morality of man and society. Scholars have argued that spiritual values are a function of social structures, neurological networks, economic interests, political power or dominant discourses. Philosophers and writers have taught us that ethical principles are little more than a fig leaf for our basest instincts. And whoever still believes in moral values only has to follow the news for a few days in order to realise that humanity betrays its ideals day in, day out. One would expect people in the modern age to have understood by now that morality is an illusion. But the opposite is the case. Moral questions are once again (or perhaps still) at the top of the agenda, and public debate is conducted in highly normative terms. This is why we initiated a study six years ago into the meaning of moral sentiments in modern society. Although empirical data was gathered on the situation in the Netherlands, the interpretation of the data is relevant for an international audience. In this introduction, we will briefly discuss three questions: Why did we conduct this study? Why is the case of the Netherlands so interesting? And why is the issue so timely now?

1

Why this topic?

Looking back on the past century, one is surprised at the levity with which many intellectuals peddled their ideas. Take Friedrich Nietzsche, who proclaimed the death of God one hundred years ago. Numerous philosophers, writers and scholars have felt moved to echo him, but history has proven otherwise: God is not dead. Large parts of the world continue to hold onto a faith in something divine. Indeed, in the last ten years we have seen a revival of religious interest in many modern countries – one that is also leaving its trace in the academic literature. In the Netherlands, the Scientif ic Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, WRR) was one of the first to pick up on this signal. In 2006, it published Believing in the Public Domain, a substantial collection of theoretical considerations and empirical findings to which more than twenty authors contributed. Although their conclusions differed, they were all convinced that religious life has gone

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through a remarkable transformation that also has consequences for civic life.1 The WRR was certainly not the only one who sensed the emergence of a new mood. The following year, the journalist Koert van der Velden, who works for the newspaper Trouw, published a book entitled Religious Experiences. His research for the book involved speaking to more than a hundred people in the Netherlands about how they experienced God. They described their encounter with the divine as a sudden experience that threw them off balance but at the same time gave them more zest for life.2 Then Joep de Hart published a book, Floating Believers, in which he demonstrated the profusion of religious phenomena in the country, thereby disproving the notion that the Netherlands is a secular society.3 There are those who will shrug their shoulders about this type of book and believe that it is a Dutch aberration. But they would be shutting their eyes to the many studies on this topic that have appeared in the last ten years, also outside the Netherlands. To illustrate, there is the collection of essays edited by Hent de Vries, Religion: Beyond a Concept, in which 45 world-renowned scholars try to develop a new way of thinking about religion. 4 There is Ulrich Beck’s Der Eigene Gott which describes how a new type of spirituality is developing in the West, a development that poses both opportunities and risks.5 Or take American Grace in which Robert Putnam and David Campbell report on their investigation into the significance of religious differences in the United States.6 All this underlines the fact that a new theme has appeared on the intellectual horizon. Put another way, it illustrates the desire on the part of many researchers to reflect in a new way on an old subject. On closer examination, this theme appears to be part of a general trend that boils down to the rediscovery of moral values, spiritual ideals and philosophical principles. This includes, for example, Susan Neiman’s book entitled Moral Clarity. She argues that moral questions involve not academic issues but existential ones and that this is why the public discourse can never disregard moral issues.7 She was supported in her stance by Michael Sandel in his book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? He opposes the idea that governments should never take a stand on moral issues. This is not only impossible, according to Sandel, it is also bad for the public good. In the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Donk, W. van de 2006. Van der Velde 2007, Janssen 2008. De Hart 2011. De Vries 2008. Beck 2008. Putnam & Campbell 2010. Neiman 2008.

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debate on how to organise a just society, one’s own ideas and preferences about the good life inevitably resonate.8 We would note that the theme of moral values or ideals has been taken up not only by political philosophers but also by scholars with an alternative background. For example, in his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris attempts to answer old questions about good and evil from a new angle – the neurosciences.9 Joshua Greene takes a behavioural theoretical perspective in his study entitled Moral Tribes.10 And the psychologist Jonathan Haidt looks for modern society’s connection with ancient philosophical traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis.11 Given this diversity of perspectives, we cannot expect to find a consensus on the right approach to moral issues anytime soon. But it does confirm that these issues have become highly topical in various areas of intellectual life. The issue has even penetrated academic fields that have always avoided moral questions. The best example is the work of Frans de Waal, an ethologist who has discovered that forms of altruism and social behaviour also occur in animals. He believes that the human capacity for moral behaviour has an evolutionary basis. It is no coincidence that his most recent book is entitled The Age of Empathy and that it discusses what nature can teach us about creating a better society.12 The importance of empathy is also brought to the attention of the general public in other ways. For instance, Marco Iacoboni’s book The Reflective Brain outlines how mirror neurons affect our human interaction. They allow us to perceive what another person feels or intends, which then forms a basis for moral action.13 There is apparently growing interest in this theme, as the number of publications on this topic is expanding at a rapid pace. Within the Dutch language, books with titles such as The Empathic Brain, Why We are More Social than We Think,14 or The Moral Brain: Evolution, Emotions and Ethics15 appear regularly. Given the global popularity of the cognitive science approach, this is probably the case outside the Netherlands as well. A few scientists have attempted to synthesize insights from the life sciences, cognitive sciences and neurology. In his book The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin writes that we are 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Sandel 2010. Harris 2010. Greene 2013. Haidt 2006. De Waal 2009. Iacoboni 2008. Keysers 2012. Tyra 2013.

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moving into a new era – one that is no longer marked by reason but by empathy. According to Rifkin, the survival of human civilization essentially depends upon whether we are able to develop a global form of compassion.16 Against this background, it is not surprising that this book also addresses the issue of moral values and sentiments. We are not indifferent to the questions that have played an important role in the public and academic debate in the last ten years. At the same time, we hope to add something by linking this topic to the way in which modern society has developed over the past half century. That link is not obvious because most studies of modernity steer well clear of the topic of moral values. Therein lies the academic value of our book.

2

Why the Netherlands?

There are two trivial reasons the Netherlands was chosen for our research. First, it is a society that we know well because we live and work in it. And second, many aspects of this society have been documented, which is important if one is conducting empirical research. The most relevant question is, however, the extent to which the Netherlands is a suitable case if one wants to investigate the fate of moral values in modern society. And we believe this is the case on several counts. To begin with, there are few countries where one can observe the functioning of modern society better than the Netherlands. I would even dare to say that it is one of the most modern societies in the world. This has everything to do with the birth of this country and its subsequent development. Several factors contributed to the rise of Holland as a world power in the seventeenth century. There was a developed money economy, trade networks that stretched around the world, an army that functioned in a rational manner, a high degree of urbanisation, and an urban bourgeoisie that was subjugated to a limited degree to the power of a national state. In other words, the former Republic had virtually everything we would expect to find in a modern society. This applies equally to the spiritual aspects that characterise modern life. There was a relatively tolerant climate in the Republic which led critical minds from all over Europe to take refuge there. Numerous scholarly works were published at this time, and cultural life exhibited an unprecedented boom.17 While we clearly cannot draw 16 Rifkin 2009. 17 Frijhoff & Spies 1999.

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a straight line from the past to present-day Netherlands, many modern traits have prevailed over the centuries. Think of the importance of trade for the Netherlands and its strong international orientation; the influence of the urban bourgeoisie, with its penchant for egalitarian relationships; or even the spirit of liberalism and entrepreneurship, which are still very palpable today in Dutch cities. As a result of all this, the Netherlands was until recently the prime example of a modern and tolerant society, with its progressive laws drawing admiration from around the world. If one wants to examine in depth how moral sentiments and modern living interact, then I would venture to say that the Netherlands is a perfect case study. This is all the more so because the Dutch are experiencing the full brunt of the crisis of modern living, a crisis that was incidentally predicted by few. Until well into the 1990s, the Netherlands was governed by a progressive elite that cherished enlightened ideals. Conflicts and possible tensions were resolved by mutual agreement. Many saw the emergence of multiculturalism as something that enriched society. Nationalist sentiments were regarded as outdated, and people were convinced that the world would become a better place as a result of globalisation. But around the turn of the millenium, more and more dark clouds began to gather over our peaceful social order, eventually culminating in a storm that broke loose over the polder. And hence the country that liked to think of itself as the champion of tolerance and openness was rocked twice by political assassinations. In 2001, the politician Pim Fortuyn, who was on the brink of winning the general elections, was shot dead by an activist. In 2004, Theo van Gogh, a well-known but controversial filmmaker, was stabbed to death by a supporter of radical Islam. In the years that followed, a type of national populism began to emerge that many had considered impossible. Large-scale resistance to the process of European integration began to develop, a process the Dutch business community had put all its money on. The issue of immigrants became a topic that engendered fierce clashes and one that every columnist felt compelled to address. The country’s need for a strong leader grew, and the idea arose – especially abroad – that many Dutch people wanted to get rid of their open, tolerant and democratic tradition. While it is true that these changes also took place in other countries, the fact that this happened in a country that had first embraced freedom of conscience in Europe gave cause for reflection. This is one reason why our investigation into the fate of moral values could be relevant. Another reason is economic. We already mentioned the strong international character of the Dutch economy. This causes business cycles to

16


have a particularly strong impact here, as was evident in the economic crisis that began in 2008 and whose effects are still being felt to this day. The crisis led to a programme of major cutbacks in public spending as part of the government’s attempts to slim down the welfare system. The idea is that citizens and other social actors must themselves assume the tasks of a large part of the public service. However, this radical shift in policy masks the fact that the bureaucratic elite had adopted a neoliberal agenda much earlier. Already in the 1980s, the Netherlands had switched to a relatively radical (but little thought out) programme that had led to the privatisation and streamlining of many public services. This led to all sorts of problems in the public sector and frustrated the work of professionals. The result is that there has been much discussion in the Netherlands in the last decade about the practising of one’s profession and also about moral or normative questions related to it. There is a high degree of dissatisfaction among professionals. This is also the case for many citizens who for one reason or another are not satisfied with the way politicians are representing them. Increasingly they are developing their own initiatives, sometimes sidestepping laws and regulations. Those who closely follow these trends in the Netherlands will notice that there is a revival of interest in public moral that is hardly acknowledged by established politicians. We are heading for an interesting and at the same time risky confrontation between moral values and political rules. This also makes the Netherlands a highly relevant case, as we can observe how modernity and morality interact with each other.

3

Why now?

Just as it is no coincidence that moral issues are playing a prominent role in the Netherlands, we would say that it is no coincidence that they are appearing right now. The more relevant question is what trends are contributing to this re-emergence of moral issues. One cannot claim that moral issues have only become topical in recent years, as their history goes back a very long way. There have always been theologians, philosophers and historians who have explored this development in depth. Interestingly, some of them also appeal to a broad audience. This is the case with the theologian Karen Armstrong, who has been publishing books on the history of major world religions for many years. In The Great Transformation, she submits that inter alia Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a number of values in

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common.18 The philosopher Charles Taylor has forged another path. He has written a number of monumental works in which he analyses the meaning and genesis of modern humanism. Among other things, he asks why around the year 1500 every moral and spiritual striving inevitably referred back to God and why this is virtually unthinkable now, half a millennium later. With books such as A Secular Time and Sources of the Self, Taylor throws new light on contemporary forms of engagement. These authors are not the only ones who turn to the past to find answers to the question of how we should understand the spiritual life of our time.19 In A History of Our Gods, Frédéric Lenoir argues that we are witnessing a reversal of religious history. While monotheistic traditions have for centuries pursued some sort of rationalisation of religious life, we are now seeing a growing fascination with the emotional side of religion.20 This illustrates that there are still researchers who reflect on the times we live in and who attempt to establish a relationship with the great moral questions of the past. Apart from intellectual history, political affairs are also forcing us to deliberate anew on classic issues. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West assumed that other countries would welcome our model of democracy. Recent years have taught us that this was a most naive assumption. Russia and other Eastern European countries may be free from communism but have yet to embrace democracy. In China, it is unclear whether the country’s phenomenal economic growth will lead to political democracy. Attempts to implement democracy in countries like Iraq, after having dislodged their dictators, have failed miserably. This forces us to fundamentally reflect on the political order in which we live.21 There are also domestic reasons for this reflection. Consider the failure of the Third Way, which had social democratic parties in the West pursuing political modernisation.22 Or the question of how one might implement a renewal of civil society.23 Or the impact of new media on the behaviour of our politicians, as illusions and sentiments becoming increasingly what matters.24 As a result, less attention is given to the rational or the instrumental and more to the affective or normative dimension of political life. This has also ensured that questions

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Armstrong 2005, see also 1995. Taylor 2007, 2009. Lenoir 2010, 2013. Fukuyama 2012, 2014. Blond 2010. Alexander 2006. Nussbaum 2013.

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about values have once again risen to the top of the public agenda.25 What emerges is the need to develop a new vision of political life as it takes shape in the contemporary world and the changing opportunities that this offers citizen participation. The last and most recent event to trigger a discussion of moral values is the economic crisis that began in 2008. The outbreak of the crisis is a problem for economists. Although they like to present their field as an exact science, most economists did not see this crisis coming. And what is worse, they also do not know how to solve it. This has to do with the fact that economists work with mathematical models that are detached from social reality.26 Moreover, economists have a narrow view of human nature: they see humans as calculating creatures who pursue their own interests in a rational way. Moral motives do not play a role in the economists’ hypothetical economy. It is therefore not surprising that several authors argue for a critical reflection of the assumptions and methodology used in economics. Robert and Edward Skidelsky, for example, argue not only that the current problems arise from a lack of moral values but that the economy itself is part of that problem. Economists concentrate on the means and never allow themselves to elaborate on the ends.27 A related perspective is found in the work of Tomas Sedlacek, who believes that scholars need to consider the interconnection between economic and moral motives.28 This theme of the interconnection between economics and moral values also pops up in other disciplines. I am referring to David Graeber’s study on debt, which showed how indebtedness in both the monetary and moral sense of the word have been linked with each other for millennia.29 Coen Simon sees the issue from a philosophical perspective in his book entitled Guilt.30 In his book Without Values, the former banker George Möller critically analyses the functioning of banks.31 All these books deal in a penetrating way with the relevance of moral thinking to the economy. All in all, it is logical that the issue of moral values has become topical precisely in recent years. We see connections occurring between an intellectual reflection on modern life that has been going on for much longer and the political challenges of democratic states that have been struggling 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Hurenkamp e.a.2013. See the contributions by De Grauwe and Buiter in: Hemerijck et al. 2009, p. 82-89, 122-123. Skidelsky & Skidelsky 2013. Sedlácek 2012. Graeber 2012. Simon 2013. Möller 2012.

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for two decades, confronted with the questions brought on by the recent economic crisis. It would go far beyond my intellectual abilities to take this all up, but it certainly plays a role in the background. What this book offers is a philosophical perspective that might shed new light on this matter.

4

Personal motives

The foregoing demonstrates that the question asked in this research stems not only from a scholarly interest in the matter but also from issues and events that have affected public opinion in the Netherlands. Additionally, there are personal reasons for why I have dedicated myself for quite some time to the fate of moral values in modern society. It seems useful at this point to briefly go into this, if only because foreign readers will not be acquainted with me or my work.32 My longstanding fascination with the tension between morality and modernity is undoubtedly related to my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s in the countryside of North Brabant, an almost entirely Catholic region that had developed into an industrialised society within a relatively short time span. The ambiguity of that change made a big impression on me. This was evident in 1969 when I enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of Nijmegen, where I – along with thousands of my peers – embraced Marxism within weeks. Throughout my entire period of studies and long after, I immersed myself in the work of thinkers who assumed a critical – or at least a distanced – attitude towards modern capitalism. My intellectual heroes were not only the obligatory Marx, Nietzsche and Freud but also thinkers such as Foucault, Lévi-Strauss and other French theorists who drew attention to the drawbacks of modern life. Although their point of view evinced an involvement in ethical issues to some extent, it took some time before I could develop my own, more balanced approach. That only happened when I began conducting historical research in 1986. My research delved into the modernisation of everyday life observed in the Brabant village of Woensel between 1670 and 1920. This study, for which I 32 Although I have been conducting research into many aspects of modern life, I have published very little in English until now. There are two reasons for this. First, I like to combine theories and ideas from several disciplines, which makes it less attractive to write articles in specialised journals. Personally, I prefer to write books because they give me the opportunity to develop an argument that is more complex. Second, I deliberately address the general public in order to play a role in the public debate. An important disadvantage of this is, of course, that my work is unknown outside the Netherlands.

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received a PhD in 1996, taught me that the process of modernisation cannot be reduced to economic forces and conditions, although these clearly had a major impact on the daily lives of those in the village. Political and cultural changes also play a role. I came to the conclusion that the weight of the latter was greater than had been assumed by Marx and many other thinkers on modern society. In fact, I tended to adopt a Hegelian view of history in which the development of society is primarily understood as a spiritual process. In any case, I was able to show that efforts in the fields of education, religion and morality had contributed substantially to the development of modern society in Woensel. All this forced me to dramatically change the theoretical inquiry that I had once started and to give more weight to the question of values, ideas and other spiritual aspects.33 This has been decisive for the work I have done since 1996. I have researched various aspects of modern life in the Netherlands, ranging from family life to political dissatisfaction and from citizenship to aggressive youngsters. In the process, I realised more and more that the image of the Netherlands as an open society was rather biased. There was indeed a large degree of freedom within Dutch society, but at the same time it imposed exacting expectations (though never fully expressed) of a normative nature. In 2005, my appointment as Professor of Social Administration at the University of Tilburg followed. I was able to continue my theoretical inquiry into modernisation there, although the focus now lay more on political and administrative processes. In the meantime, a substantial turnaround in public opinion was taking place. While before the turn of the millennium an almost naive optimism prevailed in the Netherlands, by 2004 this had transformed into an atmosphere increasingly dominated by cynicism and resentment. Remarkably, it was mainly the ‘progressive’ intellectuals who relativised moral issues. This prompted me to start a major study in 2008 on the role of religious ideals and spiritual principles in a modern society such as the Netherlands. The present book is the result.

5

Word of thanks

My explanation above is not intended to suggest that I have devised or implemented everything in this book The insights presented in this volume are the fruits of a collective effort in which thirteen people contributed. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professors Erik Borgman, Paul 33 Van den Brink 1996.

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Dekker, Peter Nissen and Willem Witteveen – colleagues with whom I have had a very enjoyable and fruitful cooperation over the past years. My acknowledgement also goes to Hanneke Arts, Wieger Bakker, Loek Halman, Erik van Ingen, Heleen van Luyn, Nicole Maalsté, Heidi de Mare and Karen Woets, each of who took on one (or more) parts of the research. My gratitude also goes to Richard van Zwol and Ellen van Doorne who, as civil servants at the Department of General Affairs, contributed to the financing of the project. I would also like to say a word of thanks to Philip Eijlander who always showed interest in our project – first as dean of the law faculty and later as Rector of the University of Tilburg. Finally, I would like to thank several individuals and agencies who made a second operation of the project possible but who would like to remain anonymous. They prove that altruism still exists in the Netherlands.