Drawing on Foucault the author tries to answer the questions such as What is actually an event?, What is it that makes an usual phenomenon an event?, What is it that makes a historical event to emerge out of a set of banal events? It is evident, that the answers to these questions depend on the general view of history. Foucaultian history is nominalistic, i. e. stressing the uniqueness of historical event. The latter is (...) never isolated, but together with other events creating a net with an intrinsic structure. This structure determines the status or order and meanings of particular events and sheds light on the critical role of one of these events. And vice versa: due to this critical historical event a contingent set of events becomes structured and ordered. An illustration is Foucault's analysis of the origin of insanity as a mental illness. (shrink)

I am not 100% “objective” as a reviewer since I am Vietnamese and know many people profiled in the book. But my review is honest because it contains real thoughts, reflections and emotions.

It is only in the recent past that we have begun to recognize that history forms a discourse of contemporary taste and judgment. It is the historical system itself that forms its events, not as a matter of mere consciousness, but as a Diktat of culture. The historian must serve the same role as the archaeologist: examining cultural artifacts as evidence for the working out of an older social order in detail. When relatively ordinary events are examined in Judaism, (...) it becomes evident that they not only have no autonomous standing, but also that events constitute no species even within a genus, or historical order. In davar aher constructions, events are included in the same taxonomic compositions as names, places, and actions. An event becomes simply a component in a culture that combines facts into structures of its own design. "Event" has no meaning at all in Judaism, since Judaism forms culture through other than historical modes of organizing existence. Within the system and structure of Judaism, history forms no taxon, no happening is unique, and no event bears consequence. (shrink)

A great and significant church, our historic event is the event of the so-called Unity of our Church with the Universe. Thanks to her we accepted our Christianity and from which we separated, even not knowing when! For some reason there is no such date in the historical calendar of our people! Legally, we belonged to Constantinople, and then we fell under the Moscow Patriarchate, which still calls our return to the Ecumenical Church as a betrayal, apostasy, (...) union with heretics, and promise. Whom? From whom? How? (shrink)

The article addresses the ongoing debate about the origins of biopolitics. While Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics approached it as a modern rationality of government, Agamben’s Homo Sacer series presented biopolitics as having a longer provenance, dating back to the antiquity. These polar positions are not mutually exclusive but coexist in these and other theories of biopolitics, which approach its object as both modern and ancient, having its chronological origin in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries yet also possessing a prehistory of (...) precursors. The article interprets this dual origin in terms of Paolo Virno’s theory of historical temporality, which distinguishes between the chronological past of historical events and their potential past, which accompanies and is negated in them. Coexisting with its own unrealized potential, every historical event remains incomplete and extends itself both backwards and forwards, positing its precursors and prefiguring its future outcomes. While modern in the chronological sense, biopolitics is retrospectively inscribed in a longer historical lineage, its antecedents easily identifiable in the history of political thought. Finally, we apply this approach to Virno’s own account of the history of biopolitics, questioning his identification of past potential with labour-power. (shrink)

The use of the capacity method of rare events analysis [1,2] for the historical events analysis is demonstrated using the example of the Russian-Turkish wars. Modeling rare events as events of overflow of a certain capacity, for example, a cup of patience, it turns out to recover from these rare events the resulting function of the difference between incoming and outgoing disturbance flows. For different variants of representing the effect of an event, different functions were obtained, which were (...) given an interesting interpretation, as example the speed of preparation for the next war. (shrink)

A fascinating exploration into the 125 most important milestones in philosophy, all in one handy book perfect for keeping on your bedside table or carrying wherever you go. Now is the perfect time to expand your knowledge and learn something new or delve deeper into a topic you've always been interested in. With 125 concise, informative, and entertaining entries, The Bedside Book of Philosophy explores the key theories, great insights, thought-provoking questions, influential personalities, and seminal publications in the field over (...) the millennia. Gregory Bassham covers a wide range of topics and cultures--from Confucian ethics and Plato's theory of forms to Occam's Razor, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, existentialism, feminist philosophy, Social Darwinism, and The Good Place--all in an accessible, conversational voice. Includes 75 black-and-white illustrations throughout. (shrink)

This paper will explore the possibility of a creative philosophy of history in the work of Gilles Deleuze. It will do so by focusing on Deleuze’s concepts of ‘intensity’ and ‘depth’, as discussed in his seminal work Difference and Repetition . By analysing these concepts in light of several historical thinkers whom Deleuze significantly draws upon (Bergson, Péguy and Braudel), I will show in this paper how Deleuze promotes a theory of history that is not opposed to his philosophy (...) of becoming and creativity, but in concert with it. (shrink)

We develop a new understanding of the historical horizon of event ontology. Within the general area of the philosophy of nature, event ontology is a still emerging field of investigation in search for the ultimate materialist ontology of the world. While event ontology itself will not be explicated in full mathematical details here, our focus is on its conceptual interrelation with the dominant current of Idealism in Western thought approached by us as a problem in the (...) history of ideas. Our presentation is designed to be accessible to a wider audience. We especially highlight the deep connection between event ontology and postmodernism in general, and the post-war French philosophers Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari in particular, who are viewed as main sources for current and future programs of abstract materialism. (shrink)

Questions such as ‘What if such small companies as Hewletts and the Varians had not been established in Santa Clara County in California?’ or ‘What if Q-type keyboards had not been invented?’ are well known among economists. The questions point at a phenomenon called path dependence: ‘small events’, the argument goes, may cause the evolution of institutions to lock in to specific paths that may produce undesirable consequences. How about applying such skeptical views in economics to human ideas and thought (...) in general? That is to say, what if we ask such questions as: what if Greek philosophy had not been interested in ‘essences’ and ‘foundations’? What if Kant had not invented the ‘thing-in-itself?’ Nature and society, according to such Platonic philosophers, can be known only if it can be shown that events are governed, regulated and characterised by ‘forms’, which are immutable, complete, and perfect in their nature. But is there an ‘essence’ that makes a man 100 per cent male? Was there really a ‘foundation’ in history that caused a proletarian revolution in Russia? What if we had pushed aside the rhetoric of utopian ideality? What if we had a worldview different than the one depicted by Thomas More in his Utopia? The essay points at the possibility of such skepticism in human ideas and thought. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking volume, Krzysztof Ziarek rethinks modern experience by bringing together philosophical critiques of modernity and avant-garde poetry. Ziarek explores, through selective readings of avant-garde poetry, the key aspects of the radical critique of experience: technology, everydayness, event, and sexual difference. To that extent, The Historicity of Experience is less a book about the avant-garde than a critique of experience through the avant-garde. Ziarek reads the avant-garde in dialogue with the work of some of the major critics of (...) modernity (Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Jean-François Lyotard, and Luce Irigaray) to show how avant-garde experiments bear critically on the issue of modern experience and its technological organization. The four poets Ziarek considers—Gertrude Stein, Velimir Khlebnikov, Miron Biaoszewski, and Susan Howe—demonstrate the broad reach of and variety of forms taken by the avant-garde revision of experience and aesthetics. Moreover, this quartet illustrates how the main operative concepts and strategies of the avant-garde underpinned the practices of canonical writers. A profound philosophical meditation on language, modernity, and the everyday, The Historicity of Experience offers a fundamental reconceptualization of the avant-garde in relation to experience. (shrink)

History is replete with false and unfulfilled promises, but also with singular acts of courage, resilience, and ingenuity. These episodes have led to significant changes in the way people think and act in the world, or have set the stage for such transformations in the form of rational expectations in theory and the hopeful anticipations of dialectical imagination. -/- Negative Dialectics and Event: Nonidentity, Culture, and the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness revisits some of Theodor W. Adorno’s most influential (...) writings and theoretical interventions to argue not only that his philosophy is uniquely suited to bring such events into sharp relief and reflect on their entailments, but also that an effective historical consciousness today would be a consciousness awake to the events that interpellate and shape it into existence. -/- More broadly, Vangelis Giannakakis presents a compelling argument in support of the view that the critical theory developed by the first generation of the Frankfurt School still has much to offer in terms of both cultivating insights into contemporary human experience and building resistance against states of affairs that impede human flourishing and happiness. (shrink)

The philosophy of historical sciences investigates their distinct objects of study, epistemic challenges, and methodological solutions. Rethinking astronomy in this light offers a contribution. First, the methodology of historical sciences adds to a more adequate description of how astronomers study and utilize token events. Second, astronomy faces a typical difficulty in identifying traces of some past events and has developed a delicate solution. This enriches the idea of trace and suggests a methodology that relies on iterations between data-driven (...) approaches and theory-driven approaches, together with the cross-validation between multiple relevant historical events or datasets. (shrink)

These lectures are concerned with spiritual forces and influences working in world history and in the karma of human beings. Steiner's penetrating insights into the events and personalities history are one of his major contributions to modern times. Steiner focuses here on the Babylonian and Greek cultures and the connecting threads running between individual personalities and the evolution of humanity as a whole.

This article aims to explore representation of the content knowledge of historical Malay manuscripts by extracting the event features using an event ontology framework. The manuscript used during the testing is Sulalatus Salatin by Abdul Ahmad Samad and it was published at University of Malaya Digital Library database. In aligning to a domain-specific ontology, the Simple Event Model model is adopted and an event-based ontology for historical Malay manuscripts is designed. Information extraction approach is (...) done manually to extract events from the manuscript and mapped into Protégé editor. Competency questions were constructed and submitted to the Protégé editor using SPARQL to check the ontology capability of providing answers as well as to examine its correctness. Event-based ontology model assists in discovering and representing the content knowledge of historical Malay manuscripts and supports organisation of knowledge. All the main concepts are extracted from selected Malay manuscript and 17 concepts used to develop the event-based ontology model. The knowledge was verified by three domain experts in Malay manuscript. In the findings, the interrater reliability for Event and Actor instances is 84%, which means 16% of instances and its type are incorrect and need amendment. For Place, interrater reliability is 95% and 99% for Role. Meanwhile, the experts achieved 100% agreement for Time. In addition, the experts agreed that the concepts, properties and instances for Malay Manuscript Ontology and complied with the criteria of consistency, completeness, conciseness, expandability and ease of use. The development of the event-based model of an ontology-based system with a high level of semantic granularity reflects the various cultural riches and intellectual aspect stored in Malay manuscripts. This will enable systematic research of the knowledge embedded in the manuscripts and make it widely and easily accessible by everyone. (shrink)

The article examines three dimensions of the interpretation of both historical and modern war events as they are perceived and undretstood at the level of official propaganda. First, it indicates that consequences of such propaganda are various manifestations of violence, and particular in many cases the emergence of repressive regimes and wars. Second, the article raises the issue of “politics of reconciliation”, the interpretive basis of which is a compromise reading of historical events by participants of conflicts or (...) hostilities. Since propaganda can affect not only interstate relations, but, above all, serve the need for domestic policy formation, the author of the article also pays attention to the interpretation of historical events within a country. In this context, the propagandists explore the idea of “positive reading of one’s own history”, i.e. they are focusing attention on those events that had a positive impact on the life of society. The other leading idea, which is used by propaganda to maintain unity in the state, is the idea of “policy of national unity.” The article concludes about the relevance of study of the phenomenon of propaganda, in particular due to new opportunities developed by modern social media. The author emphasizes the ability of propagandistic interpretations of events to disorient and engage citizens that will largely efect on which political forces a person will support in electoral races. Therefore, there is a need to develop a clear strategy for interpreting the events of history, filtering the mass media space from various manifestations of information distortion. And after all, the process of state formation involves, among other things, the implementation of a number of measures aimed at establishing national unity, i.e. «policy of national unity». (shrink)

These lectures are concerned with spiritual forces and influences working in world history and in the karma of human beings. Steiner's penetrating insights into the events and personalities history are one of his major contributions to modern times. Steiner focuses here on the Babylonian and Greek cultures and the connecting threads running between individual personalities and the evolution of humanity as a whole.

A mass casualty (MASCAL) event is different to a major incident. The crux of this difference is that in a major incident, by the adoption of special measures, normal or near-normal standards of care can be maintained. In a MASCAL, irrespective of what special measures are instituted, standards of care inevitably drop. This is a, currently unmet, challenge for medical planning and planning policy. Twenty-First century weaponry is capable of producing thousands of causalities a day over a period of (...) several days in peer-on-peer conflict. In this chapter, we propose that medical planning for military events on this scale should include the following: explicit acceptance that ‘gold standard’ care cannot be given to patients who are triaged for treatment, a better understanding how to identify those patients who will not be triaged for treatment, a focus on ensuring patient flow (which includes diversion, self-care and remote monitoring), and implementation of the principle that care should be given by the lowest capable provider. We attempt to begin to develop some principles for planners to consider drawing on historical precedents and explore some of the ethical implications of our proposals. (shrink)

Significant work in the philosophy of history has focused on the writing of historiographical narratives, isolated from the rest of what historians do. Taking my cue from the philosophy of science in practice, I suggest that understanding historical narratives as embedded within historical practice more generally is fruitful. I illustrate this by bringing a particular instance of historical practice, Natalie Lawrence’s explanation of the sad fate of Winston the platypus, into dialogue with some of Louis Mink’s arguments (...) in favour of anti-realism about historical events. Attending to how historians seek out and utilize archival resources puts serious pressure on these arguments, motivates realist positions, and re-focuses the philosophy of history towards making sense of historiography as a part of the diversity of historians’ interests. (shrink)

The history of corporations in the United States (U.S.) is much older than the country, as it must be understood in the context of the history of peoples of Europe who eventually dominated the North American continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These European settlers came, in part, to achieve economic prosperity for themselves and, in many cases, for early forerunners of the modern corporation. These business organizations had predecessors in Europe millennia earlier as ancient Romans had developed a (...) functional and successful form of corporation for the purpose of conducting commerce in the Roman Empire. In the decades that followed the founding of the U.S. in 1776, corporations evolved from rare, small, closely controlled business organizations with a multitude of restrictions to very large, very powerful modern institutions that enjoy many of the legal rights of humans. With this evolution came ethical issues, as (1) the ethical distance was altered between corporate decision-makers and those affected by those decisions, and (2) many of the legal rights of individual humans were extended, through litigation, to corporations. This article explains the historical development of the U.S. corporation and identifies 20 Critical Events in the Ethics of Corporation History (CEECH). An understanding of these historical events may facilitate comprehension of many of the current ethical issues associated with a legal organizational form that profoundly affects business and society. (shrink)

In what follows, I attempt to show that a look at some curious examples of translations from European texts makes us think about issues in translation theory and post-colonial theory from a slightly different angle. The metaphor of translation can very well be employed for understanding the relation between European texts, and some texts and some social and political practices in India in the colonial period, and this in turn helps us look critically at what I shall call our fuzzy (...) post-colonialism. I also argue that Walter Benjamin's metaphor of translation as the after-life of a work can be extended to posit two basic modes of after-life. (shrink)