Amidst a crowded field of contenders, the Scopes trial retains a powerful claim to the title Trial of the Past Century, with repercussions that have already extended well into the next. As an acutely divisive event in American scientific, legal, political, educational and religious life, the Scopes trial has persistently attracted commentators intent on mapping the dense network of persons and interests forcefully drawn together in Dayton, Tennessee in the often hotly contentious proceedings of July 10–21, 1925. These commentators have (...) been keen to explore both the foundations and the far-reaching consequences of courtroom polemics, sometimes with their own polemical intentions laid bare: from journalist H. L. .. (shrink)

Jewish Nietzscheans have traditionally shied away from any detailed examination of Nietzsche’s comments on contemporary Jewry or the Jewish religion. Scholars who have examined Jewish Nietzscheans have therefore sought to connect Nietzsche with some dimension of Jewish thought through similarities in views between Nietzsche and the Jewish intellectuals who were purportedly influenced by him. The two books under consideration in this essay strain to find solid connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the writings of eminent Jewish writers. Daniel Rynhold and Michael (...) Harris examine how selected Nietzschean concepts can also be found in the work of the noted Jewish thinker Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. David Ohana, by contrast, examines a variety of Jewish writers who at some point exhibited an enthusiasm for Nietzsche, ranging from Hebrew scholars and translators to German-Jewish intellectuals. Both books suffer from many of the shortcomings of general Nietzschean influence studies: there is often no sound philological evidence of influence, or the “connection” is so general that it is difficult to see Nietzsche as the source of influence, or the alleged influence was of short duration, and it is difficult to understand what remains Nietzschean in the individual influenced. (shrink)

This is a 2020 revision of my 1988 dissertation "The Choreography of the Soul" with a new Foreword, a new Conclusion, a substantially revised Preface and Introduction, and many improvements to the body of the work. However, the thesis remains the same. A theory of consciousness and trance states--including psychedelic experience--is developed. Consciousness can be analyzed into two distinct but generally interrelated systems, which I call System X and System Y. System X is the emotional-visceral-kinaesthetic body. System X is a (...) harmonic system of "endokinetic" (internal bodily) and "ectokinetic" (emotionally expressive) movement. System Y is a "teleokinetic" (goal directed) system that includes language, cognition, perception, voluntary motor control, manipulation of the environment, etc. Contrary to theories of consciousness prevalent in the Western philosophical traditions that begin with Plato, I argue that System Y is secondary to and dependent upon System X, not the reverse. In building my thesis I draw upon the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, psychoanalysis, Jungian depth psychology, political anthropology, modern neuroscience, Pythagorean music theory, and the mathematical theory of harmonic systems. (shrink)

¿Qué es una revolución? ¿Qué fuerzas la desencadenan? ¿Por qué fases atraviesa? ¿Es un acontecimiento imprevisible, que actúa al modo de una explosión volcánica, como pensaba Joseph de Maistre, o es un fenómeno enraizado en factores observables, acumulados a lo largo del tiempo, como afirmó Tocqueville? ¿Es el resultado necesario de factores estructurales, de acuerdo con procesos deterministas de carácter inevitable, como pensaba Karl Marx, o es algo contingente, provocado y dirigido por la acción consciente de grupos sociales con propósitos (...) definidos, como demostró Ted R. Gurr? Y, de ser así, ¿están enraizados tales factores y/o responden tales propósitos a aspiraciones predominantemente materiales y económicas, o son más bien de tipo espiritual, relacionados con la dignidad y el deseo de libertad de los participantes, o incluso con percepciones transcendentes, relacionadas con la seguridad ontológica y la percepción identitaria de las sociedades y los grupos participantes? ¿Qué resultados cabe esperar de las revoluciones y qué factores inciden sobre ellos? (shrink)