What is the body? How was it culturally constructed, conceived, and cultivated before and after the advent of rationalism and modern science? This interdisciplinary study elaborates a cultural genealogy of the body and its legacies to modernity by tracing its crucial redefinition from a live anatomical entity to disembodied, mechanical and virtual analogs. The study ranges from Baroque, pre-Cartesian interpretations of body and embodiment, to the Cartesian elaboration of ontological difference and mind-body dualism, and it concludes with the parodic and (...) violent aftermath of this legacy to the French Enlightenment. It engages work by philosophical authors such as Montaigne, Descartes and La Mettrie, as well as literary works by d'Urfé, Corneille and the Marquis de Sade. The examination of sexuality and the emergence of sexual difference as a dominant mode of embodiment are central to the book's overall design. The work is informed by philosophical accounts of the body (Nietzsche, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty), by feminist theory (Butler, Irigaray, Bordo), as well as by literary and cultural historians (Scarry, Stewart, Bynum, etc.) and historians of science (Canguilhem, Pagel, and Temkin), among others. It will appeal to scholars of literature, philosophy, French studies, critical theory, feminist theory, cultural historians and historians of science and technology. Dalia Judovitz is Professor of French, Emory University. She is also author of Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit and Subjectivity and Representation in Decartes: The Origins of Modernity. (shrink)

Dialectic and narrative reflect the respective inclinations of philosophy and literature as disciplines that fix one another in a Sartrean gaze, admixing envy with suspicion.

The long Nineteenth Century spans a host of important philosophical movements: romanticism, idealism, socialism, Nietzscheanism, and phenomenology, to mention a few. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Marx are well-known names from this period. This, however, was also a transformative period for women philosophers in German-speaking countries and contexts. Their works are less well-known, yet offer stimulating and path-breaking contributions to nineteenth-century thought. In this period, women philosophers explored a wide range of philosophical topics and styles. Throughout the movements of romanticism, (...) idealism, socialism, and phenomenology, women philosophers helped shape philosophy's agenda and provided unique approaches to existential, political, aesthetic, and epistemological questions. While during the Nineteenth Century women continued to be (largely) excluded from formal education and positions, they developed ways of philosophizing that was accessible, intuitive, and activist in spirit. The present volume makes available to English-language readers--often for the first time--the works of nine significant women philosophers, with the hope of stimulating further interest in and scholarship on their works. The Editors' introductions offer a comprehensive introduction to the contributions of women philosophers in the period, but also to individual figures and movements. The translations are furnished with explanatory footnotes and are designed to be accessible to students as well as scholars. (shrink)

Why must critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) screening be legislated? This was my first reaction to Hom and colleagues' (2016) analysis. As the authors explain, pulse oximetry is painless and...

The article is devoted to reflections on the future of the humanistic paradigm that underlies modern culture, and an analysis of the views of modern philosophers and historians on this scientific problem. Modern science and technology are evolving very rapidly. Society is trying to keep up with their development and modernize culture to meet new requirements. The foundation of modern culture is humanism as a system of views and values associated with the recognition of the central role of man, as (...) well as with the belief in the need to coordinate strategies for solving any socio-cultural issues with the essence of human. At the same time, a person in the context of a humanistic worldview is certainly perceived as a bearer of the individual “I”, acts as the basis of personality. Science and technology are still developing within the framework of a humanistic system of values, and they also set ambitious goals based on such value. However, there are already very significant contradictions between the values of humanism and scientific achievements. Consequently, there is a need for a fundamental analysis of this situation. It seems that technology poses a significant threat to humanism, and this threat can be realized in several scenarios. On the one hand, modern science undermines “faith” in humanism when it claims that despite advances in the analysis of the functioning of the brain, it has failed to find the very center of personality, the individual “I” of a person, on the basis of which the humanistic paradigm is built. That is, science has failed to figure out how electrical impulses turn into consciousness. And if we assume that no “I” actually exists, that this is only a certain function of the brain to create a holistic picture of the world, then a person can be considered simply as one of the algorithms. Then it does not matter on what basis this algorithm works, that is, “live” and artificial algorithms in fact are not fundamentally different. Such considerations, of course, leave humanism no chance. Such reasoning, of course, leaves no chance for humanism. On the other hand, the “humanistic” goals of humanity can lead to its complete or partial transformation into a certain “super-humanity”. And attempts to define the “spiritual” values of such a future “new formation” look like a fundamentally insoluble task. So, from the point of view of determining the future states of humanism, modern philosophers have something to think about. (shrink)

Among the most used expressions in scholarly articles concerning collective memory, is “dealing with the past”, or its more specific alternative, “dealing with the traumatic past”. This is a rather inexact formulation, because what scholars, artist, curators deal with is not the past in itself but the manner in which it is narrated and represented, or remembered, reconstructed. A series of questions are triggered by this statement: who “remembers”, for what purpose, with what consequences? The scope of this yearbook is (...) to present two different ways of approaching the construction of collective remembrance: the authoritarian one and the post-authoritarian one. Th e articles discuss case studies of collective memory and identity building in Communist Romania, comparative studies of participative art in post-authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, or intricate artistic approaches of traumatic collective memories. (shrink)

Nassar distinguishes an understudied philosophical tradition that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, traces its development, and argues for its continued significance. She shows how four key thinkers, whom she calls the 'romantic empiricists', developed a distinctive approach to the study of nature, which culminated in an ecological understanding of nature and the human place within it. Nassar contends that the romantic empiricist insights and approaches remain crucial for us today, as we seek to address (...) the environmental crisis.--. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Schelling’s early understanding of intellectual intuition. I argue that although the common interpretation of intellectual intuition traces it back to Fichte’s enumerations in the First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre of 1797, an examination of the early Schelling reveals that he was employing the term well before Fichte (already in 1795) and in a way that is decisively distinct from Fichte. Thus, I disagree with well-known Schelling scholars, including Xavier Tilliette, who regard the early Schelling as (...) a mere disciple of Fichte. In contrast, I argue that the more influential thinker in Schelling’s earliest development, especially with regard to intellectual intuition, is Spinoza. I illustrate through close textual analysis of Schelling’s Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie (1795), that Schelling is employing a conception of intellectual intuition that mirrors Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge. I emphasize, however, that in spite of Schelling’s proximity to Spinoza, he retains a certain distance—one which he repeatedly emphasizes. I consider and provide an explanation of why Schelling continues to distinguish himself from Spinoza, in spite of the clear similarities in their understanding of knowledge and in their conception of the absolute as causa sui. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is often described as weighing reasons. When one deliberates about what to do one puts all the reasons for the action on one side and all the reasons against the action on the other side. The balance between both sides determines the outcome of the deliberation. Assuming that this description is correct, the next question is how the different reasons for and against the action determine the outcome of the deliberation. This is the place where the notion of (...) weight enters. The natural answer is that every reason for or against an action has a weight, and the weights of all the reasons involved determine what one should do. The aim of this paper is to argue that this answer is wrong; weights of reasons have no role in a theory of reasoning. (shrink)

Having a premature or critically ill infant in a neonatal intensive care unit is a traumatic experience for parents that can alter their lives. Parents navigate complex emotions of fear, unc...

The current section of issues 12/2021-13/2022 of History of Communism in Europe deals with East-East and East-South relations among socialist countries and countries of the Global South. Exploring local specificities and global ambitions, the papers bring to light the beginnings of the socialist developmental projects, and bilateral relations that overcome the strict framework of the monolithic socialist bloc.

In the paper I exploit Frege's notions of sense and synonymity in order to amend the slingshot argument. The main emendation is to replace the assumption about logical equivalence by an assumption about synonymity. While the replaced assumption begs the question about the reference of sentences, the replacing assumption has much more theoretical support from Frege's general conception of sense and reference and the relation between them. In the paper I use a specific notion of synonymity which I believe is (...) faithful to Frege's discussion of the subject. I notice that if a stronger notion of synonymity is used, my version of the argument fails. The failure is explained by showing that this stronger notion of synonymity enables the assignment of facts, and not truth values, as the references of sentences. (shrink)

First published in 1999, this volume focuses on the relation of supervenience which plays a crucial role in contemporary philosophical discussions in diverse fields including the philosophy of mind, ethics and aesthetics. Contrasting the material and conceptual worlds, Dalia Drai questions what we are committed to when we adopt a position affirming determination but denying reduction. The answer Drai develops is that in both cases this position commits us to an anti-realist approach with regard to the supervenient domains.

This paper deals with the Romanian experience as a developer of projects and investor of resources in the countries of the Global South during the 1970s. It follows the country’s grand narrative in its Communist Party’s documents, as compared to that of the statements of the international meetings of the commu­nist parties in the 1960s and 1970s and to that present in the party’s newspaper Scinteia, and in contrast to documents of the political executive committee of the Romanian Communist Party (...) collected from the Romanian National Archives and the Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. The purpose of this research is to analyse the Romanian solidarity messages in the party discourse, their degree of compliance with the solidarity messages of the rest of the countries in the socialist camp, actual actions of humanitarian assistance in the countries of the Global South, and how those actions and messages were filtered and transmitted to the Romanian readers of print press. The results indicate a discrepancy between public discourse and archival discourse on the one hand, and the nature of information disclosed to the public, on the other. (shrink)

In the paper I exploit Frege's notions of sense and synonymity in order to amend the slingshot argument. The main emendation is to replace the assumption about logical equivalence by an assumption about synonymity. While the replaced assumption begs the question about the reference of sentences, the replacing assumption has much more theoretical support from Frege's general conception of sense and reference and the relation between them. In the paper I use a specific notion of synonymity which I believe is (...) faithful to Frege's discussion of the subject. I notice that if a stronger (and to my mind implausible) notion of synonymity is used, my version of the argument fails. The failure is explained by showing that this stronger notion of synonymity enables the assignment of facts, and not truth values, as the references of sentences. (shrink)

There are two problems discussed in the article. The first one is the phenomenon of mass literature and semiotic approach to it. According to Lotman, mass literature of the 20th (and 21st) centuries is not so much an object of semiotics as of sociology. However, it is possible to consider mass literature of earlier times as an object of semiotics of culture. Lotman discusses Russian mass literature of the 18th and 19th centuries as such an object in the article “Massovaya (...) literatura kak istoriko-kulturnaya problema”. Considering mass literature a dynamic factor of the semiotic system, Lotman distinguishes its main features: a high degree of automatization and syndrome of retardedness. In the second part of the article the author discusses the phenomenon of mass poetry in contemporary Lithuania. This kind of mass literature is much more similar to the phenomenon discussed by Lotman than to the mass literature of the postmodernist epoch. Lithuanian mass poetry employs the codes of national romanticism (the end of 19th century) and considers itself an ignored part of high culture. This sort of poetry unknown to Western societies exhibits archaising tendencies in the modern postsoviet culture. (shrink)

The book Maupassant (1976), which is devoted to an analysis of Maupassant’s short story “Two friends”, is one of A. J. Greimas’ most important works. In it he tried out the semiotic tools he had developed up to that point, tested models for narrative analysis, and anticipated future perspectives in the development of semiotic theory. We discuss how the book puts forward the principle of immanent analysis, and how the “closed” text – the object of semiotic analysis – is constructed. (...) Th e article reveals that while Greimas declares, in the book’s Foreword, that he is distancing from context – the literary sociocultural universe – within the analysis itself he is forced to recognize certain contextual elements. Greimas recognizes the importance of acknowledging contextual facts such as the French concept of patrie and does not attempt to hide certain subjective interpretive elements. Yet at the same time Greimas attempts to suppress context’s invasion of his interpretation. He recognizes the semantic isotopies generated by context to the extent to which they suit the coherence of his analysis, considering them auxiliary in terms of the syntactic and discursive structures of the text. Nevertheless, a contextual isotopy – based on intertextual ties to a Biblical parable – becomes the main one. We come to the conclusion that the principle of immanence in Maupassant is not a negation, but a problematization that demonstrates how relevant contextual material can be integrated into a semiotic analysis.Книга ≪Мопассан≫ (1976), посвященная анализу новеллы ≪Два друга≫ французского писателя XIX века, – один из главных трудов Альгирдаса Юлиуса Греймаса, в котором используются ранее созданные им инструменты семиотического анализа, проверяются и дальше создаются модели нарративного анализа, намечаются будущие перспективы развития семиотической теории. Автор статьи обсуждает, каким образом в книге постулируется принцип имманентного анализа и конструируется ≪закрытый≫ текст – объект семиотического анализа. В статье показывается, что несмотря на то, что в предисловии к работе Греймас декларировал отстранение от контекста – социолектического универсума литературы, в самом анализе Греймас вынужден принимать во внимание определенные элементы контекста, а некоторые из них интегрировать в интерпретацию новеллы. С одной стороны, Греймас признает необходимость считаться с данными контекста, такими как французское понятие родины, и не скрывает некоторых субъективных элементов интерпретации (опираясь на биографические данные, автор статьи обсуждает возможный генезис некоторых из этих элементов). С другой стороны, в то же самое время автор ≪Мопассана≫ старается совладать с ворвавшимся в интерпретацию контекстом. Генерируемые контекстом семантические изотопии он признает настолько, насколько они вписываются в когерентный анализ, и считает их вспомогательными по отношению к синтаксическим и дискурсивным текстовым структурам. Однако в кульминации анализа такая контекстуальная изотопия возвращается интертекстуальной связью с библейской параболой (притчей) и становится главной. Автор статьи делает вывод, что принцип имманентности в ≪Мопассане≫ не отрицается, но становится проблемным, показывая, как релевантные данные контекста могут быть интегрированы в семиотическую интерпретацию. Raamat “Maupassant”, mis on puhendatud 19. sajandi prantsuse kirjaniku novelli “Kaks sopra” analuusile, on uks Algirdas Julius Greimase tahtsamaid toid. Selles katsetas ta semiootilisi tooriistu, mille oli selleks ajaks valja tootanud, pani proovile narratiivianaluusi mudeleid ning jatkas nende loomist ja ennetas tulevikuperspektiive semiootikateooria arengus. Artikli autor vaatleb, kuidas selles teoses esitatakse immanentse analuusi printsiipi ja kuidas konstrueeritakse “suletud” teksti – semiootilise analuusi objekti. Artiklist ilmneb, et kui Greimas kuulutas raamatu eessonas, et ta distantseerub kontekstist – kirjanduslikust sotsiaalmajanduslikust universumist, on ta analuusis eneses sunnitud tunnistama teatavaid kontekstuaalseid elemente ning isegi loimima moningaid neist tolgendusse, mille ta loole annab. Uhest kuljest tunnistab “Maupassant’i” autor selliste kontekstuaalsete faktidega, nagu seda on naiteks Prantsuse moiste ‘patrie’, arvestamise tahtsust ega urita peita teatavaid subjektiivseid interpreteerivaid elemente (artikli autor kasutab nende voimaliku geneesi vaatlemisel biograafi list materjali). Ent samal ajal uritab Greimas alla suruda konteksti pealetungi oma tolgendusele. Konteksti loodud semantilisi isotoope tunnustab ta maaral, mil need sobivad tema analuusi sidususega, pidades neid teksti suntaktilisi ja diskursiivseid struktuure silmas pidades korvalisteks. Siiski saab peamiseks uks kontekstuaalne isotoopia, mis pohineb intertekstuaalsetel sidemetel Piibli vordumiga. Artikli autor jouab jareldusele, et immanentsuse printsiip “Maupassant’is” ei ole eitus, vaid problematiseering, mis toestab, kuidas on voimalik olulist kontekstuaalset materjali semiootilisse analuusi loimida. (shrink)

There are two problems discussed in the article. The first one is the phenomenon of mass literature and semiotic approach to it. According to Lotman, mass literature of the 20th (and 21st) centuries is not so much an object of semiotics as of sociology. However, it is possible to consider mass literature of earlier times as an object of semiotics of culture. Lotman discusses Russian mass literature of the 18th and 19th centuries as such an object in the article “Massovaya (...) literatura kak istoriko-kulturnaya problema”. Considering mass literature a dynamic factor of the semiotic system, Lotman distinguishes its main features: a high degree of automatization and syndrome of retardedness. In the second part of the article the author discusses the phenomenon of mass poetry in contemporary Lithuania. This kind of mass literature is much more similar to the phenomenon discussed by Lotman than to the mass literature of the postmodernist epoch. Lithuanian mass poetry employs the codes of national romanticism (the end of 19th century) and considers itself an ignored part of high culture. This sort of poetry unknown to Western societies exhibits archaising tendencies in the modern postsoviet culture. (shrink)

Contra widespread readings of Karoline von Günderrode’s 1805 “Idea of the Earth ” as a creative adaptation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, this article proposes that “Idea of the Earth” furnishes a moral account of the human relation to the natural world, one which does not map onto any of the more well-known romantic or idealist accounts of the human-nature relation. Specifically, I argue that “Idea of the Earth” responds to the great Enlightenment question concerning the human vocation, but from (...) a distinctive romantic-idealist angle. I begin by demonstrating the influence of Fichte’s 1800 Vocation of Humanity on Günderrode’s thinking, which involves an investigation of both Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s critical response to it. I then turn to “Idea of the Earth” where I analyse Günderrode’s understanding of nature and the self in light of her critique of Fichte, and thereby distinguish her position from Fichte’s and from the position espoused by her fellow romantics and idealists. By reading “Idea of the Earth” alongside Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s remarks on it, this article sheds new light on both Günderrode’s understanding and defence of Naturphilosophie – against Fichte’s critique of it – and her distinctive contribution to romantic philosophies of nature. (shrink)

The term transnationalism has developed into a concept with a broad meaning, defining anything having to do with transgressing the national boundaries. There are limits to it: it has more to do with non-statal actors, it relates to trans-border cultural, political and economic spaces, and it follows identity-defining experiences of individuals who have lived a complex, international life. The current issue of History of Communism in Europe is entitled Transnational Biographies. Destinies at the Crossroads before and after the Cold War (...) and deals especially with the latter situation. The volume comprises a rich diversity of articles that explore adventurous biographies, enriching the studies of transnationalism. (shrink)

The general post-communist perspective of historiography on the Cold War era is that the world was divided into two blocs, so different and isolated from one another that there was no interaction between them whatsoever. As revisionist literature is expanding, the uncovered data indicates a far more complex reality, with a dynamic East-West exchange of goods, money, information, human resources, and technology, be it formal or informal, official or underground, institutional or personal. The current volume History of Communism in Europe: (...) Breaking the Wall: National and Transnational Perspectives on East-European Science tries to confer more detail to this perspec­tive, by bringing together research papers that focus on the history of science during the Cold War. The articles cover a wide range of subjects, from biology to philosophy and from espionage to medical practices, all sharing an ideological context that continuously impacted and molded the professional relations among scholars from both sides of the Iron Curtain. (shrink)