49th International Congress on Medieval Studies8 May 2014Western Michigan UniversityKalamazoo, Michigan Emmett Randolph Daniel became interested in the subjects of medieval apocalypticism, eschatology and related matters largely on the heels of the pioneering work done in these fields during the 1950s and 1960s by European scholars like Herbert Grundmann,1 Marjorie Reeves,2 Beatrice Hirsch-Reich,3 and Bernhard Töpfer.4 Nearly fifty years later, that is to say, after the publication of his brief but ground-breaking article of 1968 in Speculum on the (...) subject of the Franciscan Joachites,5 one can attest that “Randy” Daniel was for many years an integral part of a new group of distinguished American... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:1. The impetus of Herbert Grundmann's work on researching the religious lives of women in the thirteenth century has led to a reinterpretation of many aspects of this complex subject. Even today, some points remain unclear. At times it seems as if we are confronted with a play in which the actors – the sisters, friars and the papal curia – move in a manner which is (...) difficult to decipher and could even be described as contradictory.In particular, Herbert Grundmann carried out a study on the development of female forms of monastic life which were linked with both the Franciscan and Dominican Friars; however, he neglected to give sufficient attention to the role of the papal curia in both Orders. The action of the papacy was considered merely an answer to demands made by nuns or friars – without grasping the fact that such decisions were due to a complex papal design in the reorganization of regular life.The history of the development of regular communities of religious women has a clear and systematic development. The women originally known as the pauperes dominae inclusae were not institutionally linked to the Order of Friars Minor until 1227, indicating the emergence of Apostolic guidelines to establish and build a new form of monastic life for women which was directly subject to papal authority. Until now, this aspect of religious foundations has not been the subject of scholarly attention, which has instead focused on the initiatives of the "founders" and risked taking the actual work out of context.The present article outlines the steps in the gradual legalization of the "Dominican" Sisters. Its findings are largely based on Jordan of Saxony's correspondence, which has not been given adequate scholarly consideration. Jordan was a Parisian master who entered the Order in 1220. He was subsequently elected Provincial Superior of Lombardy and in the following year until his death in 1237 was General Master of the Order. He also played a significant role in the foundation of the monastery of St. Agnese in Bologna.2. The complexity of the correspondence poses various problems. Not only because its very composition is based on continual discovery but also because of an almost total absence of historical information, which makes certain aspects difficult to interpret. Despite this, there is great interest in the reconstruction of significant moments in the constitutional history of the Order of Friars Preachers – a subject which has been enriched by the studies of Gert Melville as well as those of Sonderforschungsbereich himself.Jordan of Saxony's correspondence is composed of thirty-seven letters addressed to Diana of Andalo, who had professed religious vows before Dominic, and had played a leading role in creating the convent of St. Agnese in Bologna . Five of Jordan's letters were sent to Diana's convent and a further eight were sent to the general community.Beginning with the valuable observations of Angelo Walz, the most studied aspect of the correspondence has been feminine religious life with a particular focus on the spiritual themes which were elaborated on by Jordan. This is evident simply by referring to the observations of Raoul Manselli and Andrea Tilatti. The survival of Jordan's letters is due to the need to prove both their origins and their institutional link to the Order of Preachers. Since the 1430s, the nuns understood that by convincing both the Order and the Roman Curia of this, they might avoid the danger of losing the continued cura of the friars.Using this collection as a starting point, I intend to consider the institutional developments of the Bolognese Monastery, as well as female monasticism linked to the Order of Preachers.3. The Vita beatae Dianae was composed shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. Despite its title, it primarily.. (shrink)

The author's primary aim is to help readers discover what is distinctive in Confucius & to learn what he can teach us.

Phenomenological Psychology in Phenomenological Philosophy [i] Introductory Remarks The chief purpose of the present chapter is to serve as a reminder. ...

Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agents per se, but as depictions of social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a (...) class consist of three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. With social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents – the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models. (shrink)

Using Figurative Language presents results from a multidisciplinary decades-long study of figurative language that addresses the question, 'Why don't people just say what they mean?' This research empirically investigates goals speakers or writers have when speaking figuratively, and concomitantly, meaning effects wrought by figurative language usage. These 'pragmatic effects' arise from many kinds of figurative language including metaphors, verbal irony, idioms, proverbs and others. Reviewed studies explore mechanisms - linguistic, psychological, social and others - underlying pragmatic effects, some traced to (...) basic processes embedded in human sensory, perceptual, embodied, cognitive, social and schematic functioning. The book should interest readers, researchers and scholars in fields beyond psychology, linguistics and philosophy that share interests in figurative language - including language studies, communication, literary criticism, neuroscience, semiotics, rhetoric and anthropology. (shrink)

The commonly accepted interpretations ofFermat's method of extreme values tell us that this is a curious method, based on an approximate equality and burdened with several contradictions withinFermat's writings. In this article, both a philological approach taking into account that there is only one manuscript written inFermat's own handwriting and a mathematical approach taking into account that brilliant mathematicians usually are not so very confused when talking about their own central mathematical ideas are combined. A new hypothesis is put forward (...) which renders the mathematics clear and coherent and which does not need the assumption thatFermat was confused. Probably a number of words have been added byCarcavy in two ofFermat's papers. (shrink)

Idealism has always struggled against the hedonistic trends in philosophy which see the goal of existence in the happiness of the individual and which identify happiness with pleasure. Idealism insists that happiness is a subjective concept which makes man dependent upon chance and accident. Happiness, it holds, does not lead beyond the particular interests of the individual, whereas the progress of mankind, reason in history, demands the subordination of particular interests to the whole. So long as happiness is defined as (...) the state of satisfaction of the isolated individual, it must remain an abstract concept. It expresses the condition that the satisfaction of one individual within an antagonistic society is only possible at the expense of another. The essential relationships between men cannot be permeated with happiness when the life process of society is driven on by work for the sake of profit and mere self-preservation» when the destiny of the individual is shaped by the blind mechanism of the market. Only brief moments of immediate pleasure are possible. To the extent that hedonism holds firmly to the subjective demand for happiness in the face of the demands of a reified world, it expresses a materialist protest. This protest, however, is itself imprisoned within the antagonistic society, in that it is concerned with the satisfaction of the isolated individual.But the concept of happiness points beyond the isolation of the subject. His personal pleasure and satisfaction is not necessarily happiness, his immediate interest is not necessarily his real interest. The content of happiness is to be approached through a consideration of its truth. The needs and satisfactions of the individual are not given once and for all, but are determined by the social relationships in which they arise. Until now they have borne the stigma of universal injustice and lack of freedom. The disciplining of the masses for the modern labor process has brought with it corporal and spiritual atrophy, suppression, and incapacity for happiness. Real happiness presupposes a transformed organization of society, in which the realization of individual potentialities will no longer be diverted by internalization and no longer made meaningless by competition. In its real form, happiness is identical with freedom. It ceases to be merely a subjective feeling and becomes the real constitution of mankind.Les doctrines hédonistes de la philosophie, qui voyaient dans le bonheur le but de l’existence individuelle et qui confondaient le bonheur avec le plaisir, ont toujours été combattues par l’idéalisme. On leur opposait que le bonheur est un principe subjectif, qui soumet les hommes à l’arbitraire et au hasard. Le bonheur ne saurait être l’essentiel, car le bonheur ne mène pas au delà des intérêts particuliers des individus. Le progrès de l’humanité, la raison dans l’histoire exigent la subordination des intérêts particuliers à l’universel. Si longtemps que le bonheur est déterminé comme l’état de satisfaction de l’individu isolé, il reste un concept abstrait. Il dénote un état de fait : dans la société antagoniste, la satisfaction de l’individu n’est possible qu’aux dépens des autres. Le travail en vue du profit et de l’intérêt strictement personnel est constitutif du procès social, la destinée de l’individu dépend des mécanismes aveugles du marché : dans ces conditions toutes les relations entre les hommes ne peuvent être fondées sur le bonheur. Pour celui-ci ne subsistent que le loisir et la jouissance immédiate. Dans la mesure où l’hédonisme maintient la prétention subjective au bonheur, face aux exigences de l’universalité devenue chose, il représente une protestation matérialiste. Mais la protestation reste elle-même liée à la société contradictoire dès lors qu’elle s’arrête à la satisfaction de l’individu isolé. Le concept de bonheur dépasse l’isolement du sujet. La joie, le consentement de celui-ci n’est pas encore bonheur, son intérêt immédiat n’est pas encore son intérêt authentique. Il est légitime de poser à propos du contenu du bonheur la question de vérité. Besoins et satisfactions des individus ne sont point encore données ultimes, ils sont constitués par les rapports sociaux dans lesquels ils apparaissent. Jusqu’à ce jour dans l’histoire, les besoins portent la marque de la non-liberté et de l’injustice générales. Pour former les masses à la discipline moderne du travail, on les a mutilées physiquement et psychiquement, on les a condamnées à refouler leurs désirs. Onlesarendues dans une large mesure incapables de jouissance. Le bonheur réel suppose une forme autre de la société dans laquelle l’accomplissement des possibilités individuelles ne sera plus détourné par l’intériorisation, ni privé de sens par la concurrence. En sa figure véritable, le bonheur est identique à la liberté, il cesse d’être un état affectif purement subjectif et devient la constitution réelle de l’humanité. (shrink)

The notion of ‘electronic texts’ has gained universal currency. What, exactly, does this phrase refer to? Most authors answer by describing a set of surface characteristics resulting from the application of computer technology to traditional texts. Such depictions, I want to argue, can be seriously misleading. They presuppose a conventional understanding of ‘text’ in order to make sense of the phenomenon of digitised inscriptions. The simple choice of the phrase ‘electronic text’ suppresses the radical challenge raised by the new medium. (...) Its impact is supposedly captured by modification of an existing concept, so it is hardly surprising that most accounts end up with a typical ambivalence. Electronic texts, we are told, are quite different from—but, at the same time, comparable to—their traditional precursors. Some things that could not be done in the entire history of literacy have become possible nowadays. Yet, it is this very history that provides the background for the understanding of digital processes. Describing something previously unknown by means of well-known categories is bound to lead to these kinds of mildly schizophrenic pronouncements. This chapter discusses their initial plausibility and probes their underlying logic. (shrink)

Excerpt from Essay in PhysicsIn many respects this book does not follow present trends in physics and may therefore prove controversial. I cite those eminent names only in order to express my thanks and not in any degree as invoking their authority in support of the propositions and arguments put forward. These scientists have of course not been asked to sponsor this book either as a whole or in any part. If it is to be criticized as heterodox it must (...) stand on its own feet and speak for itself.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)