In 1912, Julian Huxley published his first book The Individual in the Animal Kingdom which he dedicated to the then world-famous French philosopher Henri Bergson. Historians have generally adopted one of two attitudes towards Huxley’s early encounter with Bergson. They either dismiss it entirely as unimportant or minimise it, deeming it a youthful indiscretion preceding Huxley’s full conversion to Fisherian Darwinism. Close biographical study and new archive materials demonstrate, however, that neither position is tenable. The Bergsonian elements in play in (...) Julian Huxley’s early works fed into his first ideas about progress in evolution and even his celebrated theories of bird courtship. Furthermore, the view that Huxley rejected Bergson in his later years needs to be revised. Although Huxley ended up claiming that Bergson’s theory of evolution had no explanatory power, he never repudiated the descriptive power of Bergson’s controversial notion of the élan vital. Even into the Modern Synthesis period, Huxley represented his own synthesis as drawing decisively on Bergson’s philosophy. (shrink)

Poetic and dramatic readings of selected Platonic dialogues show the fallacy of the philosophical and political positions usually attributed to Plato. Dialogues dealt with include Apology, Meno, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Laws.

This article discusses the influence that Schopenhauer’s thought had on Mihai Eminescu’s work with reference to the idea of “pessimism.” It also considers Schopenhauer’s influence on Romanian philosophy and literature at the end of the nineteenth century. We shall examine Eminescu’s alleged “Schopenhauerian pessimism,” considering firstly “pessimism” as a part of Eminescu’s “myth.” Secondly, we shall cover the critical reception of Eminescu’s “Schopenhauerian pessimism,” discussing the existing literary and philosophical scholarship. Finding that there are issues for debate regarding Schopenhauer’s alleged (...) influence upon Eminescu, we argue that Eminescu’s “Schopenhauerian pessimism” may be a “legend.” The article examines the connection between Eminescu and one of Schopenhauer’s most influential followers, Eduard von Hartmann. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic capital’ has been used to study various kinds of elites. This article shows how it can help us understand the status and privileges of early modern English courtiers—and how these could be won and lost. The discussion focuses on the funeral, burial and commemoration of the most successful of contemporary generals, Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 8th Baron Mountjoy (1563–1606), and sets these in the context of the Jacobean court’s concern with symbolic capital. It demonstrates (...) that the ceremonies normally accorded someone of Mountjoy’s rank and military success were not observed properly. He was penalised because he had married his long-standing lover, Lady Penelope Rich (1563–1607), the ‘Stella’ of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnets. King James I showed the couple great favour until their marriage, which he declared unlawful and annulled. The heralds accepted his ruling, after disagreeing among themselves. The article shows that though the funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, Mountjoy was not buried there but in another London church, formerly known as Greyfriars, where a monument was erected to him. Lady Rich was personally and symbolically excluded from the funeral. Also discussed is the privately printed poem that Mountjoy’s client Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) wrote for the funeral, which defends Mountjoy and alludes, in a half-hidden way, to Penelope’s exclusion. The article concludes by considering how the symbolic capital of the whole court sank in this period. Most of the archival evidence considered has not been published before, some of it illustrated in figures, the rest in appendices (an armorial description of Mountjoy’s arms at his funeral, bills from the Westminster Abbey funeral and a translated extract from a contemporary history in Latin). (shrink)

The life and work of Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, is examined as an example of how difficult it was for women to win recognition as intellectuals in 20th-century Latin America. Despite an international reputation for erudition and political commitment, Mistral has traditionally been represented in stereotypically gendered terms as the ‘Mother’ and ‘Schoolteacher’ of the Americas, and it has been repeatedly claimed that she was both apolitical and (...) anti-intellectual. This article contests such claims, arguing that she was not only committed to fulfilling the role of an intellectual, but that she also elaborated a critique of the dominant male Latin American view of intellectuality, probing the boundaries of both rationality and nationality as constructed by male Euro-Americans. In so doing, she addressed many of the crucial issues that still confront intellectuals today in Latin America and elsewhere. (shrink)

χαιρέτω ἡμέτερος βασιλεὺς σωτήρ τε πατήρ τε·ἡμῖν δὲ κρητῆρ’ οἰνοχόοι θέραπεςκιρνάντων προχύταισιν ἐν ἀργυρέοις· †ὁ δὲ χρυσὸςοἶνον ἔχων χειρῶν νιζέτω εἰς ἔδαφος.†σπένδοντες δ’ ἁγνῶς Ἡρακλεῖ τ’ Ἀλκμήνηι τε,Προκλεῖ Περσείδαις τ’ ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχόμενοιπίνωμεν, παίζωμεν· ἴτω διὰ νυκτὸς ἀοιδή,ὀρχείσθω τις· ἑκὼν δ’ ἄρχε φιλοφροσύνης.ὅντινα δ’ εὐειδὴς μίμνει θήλεια πάρευνος,κεῖνος τῶν ἄλλων κυδρότερον πίεται.May our king rejoice, our saviour and father; let the attendant cup-bearers mix for us a crater from silver urns; †Let the golden one with wine in his hands wash (...) to the base† Pouring libations piously to Heracles and Alcmene, Procles and the sons of Perseus and Zeus first of all, let us drink, let us play, let our song rise through the night. Dance someone, willingly begin the festivities. And anyone who has a fair girl waiting to share his bed will drink more like a man than all the others.(Ion, fr. 27 West = fr. 90 Leurini). (shrink)

Inspired by Charles Taylor’s locating of Herder and Rousseau’s “expressivism” in Marx’s understanding of the human as artist, I begin this essay by examining expressivism in Taylor, followed by its counterpart in M. H. Abrams’s work, namely the wind as metaphor in British Romantic poetry. I then further explore this expressivism/wind connection in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and Marx’s The German Ideology. Ultimately I conclude that these expressive winds lead to poetic gesture per se, and thereby, (...) to a kind of poetry at the heart of Marx’s philosophy. (shrink)

This article introduces the little-known humanist Pompeo Pazzaglia of Bologna. Drawing on the evidence of two collections of his works preserved in miscellaneous manuscripts, it not only reconstructs his biography, but also showcases a selection of his Neo-Latin poems, published and translated here for the first time. Moreover, it publishes some letters and writings which provide new information about book history as well as social, cultural and political events in mid-fifteenth-century Italy, especially in the ambit of Pomponio Leto’s Roman Academy, (...) the papal curia and the court of Naples. Pompeo’s previously unstudied writings yield unique insights into such diverse subjects as the decoration and symbolism of the Roman Pantheon and the Palazzo di San Marco, the marriage of Ippolita Maria Sforza and King Ferrante in Naples, the death of Jacopo Piccinino and the fall of Negroponte to the Ottomans. This study therefore makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on early Renaissance humanism in Rome and Aragonese Naples. (shrink)

Includes an introd. of 49 p. by S. G. Abbas.

Wolfgang Pauli referred to him as 'my discovery,' Robert Oppenheimer described him as 'one of the most gifted theorists' and Niels Bohr found him enormously stimulating. Who was the man in question, Gunnar Källén (1926-1968)? His appearance in the physics sky was like a shooting star. His contributions to the scientific debate caused excitement among young and old. Similar to his friend and mentor, Wolfgang Pauli, he demanded honesty and rigor in physics - a distinct dividing line between fact and (...) speculation. In his obituary, Arthur S. Wightman would write: 'Gunnar Källén was a proud continuer of the tradition in quantum field theory established by Wolfgang Pauli. His papers on quantum electrodynamics in the period 1950-1954 carried the non-perturbative approach to quantum electrodynamics forward to a point beyond which very little essential progress has been made up to the present day. At the time I was trying to puzzle out the grammar of the language of quantum field theory, and here was Källén already writing poetry in the language!'. In addition to being a remarkable scientist, Källén had a very interesting personality, well worth exploring. In her book, physicist Cecilia Jarlskog traces both the personal and scientific trajectory of this unsung hero of the early days of high-energy physics and quantum field theory. A number of invited contributions by members of the Källén family and distinguished researchers from the field, all of them personally acquainted with Källén, combine to form an authentic portrait of the researcher and the man. Last but not least, the reader will become acquainted with some aspects of the history of particle physics in those days, as related by Källén and those who corresponded with him. A commented selection of his most important and not easily accessible papers is included as an added bonus for specialists. (shrink)

Zen master Dōgen 道元, the founder of the Sōtō sect in medieval Japan, is often referred to as the leading classical philosopher in Japanese history and one of the foremost exponents of Mahayana Buddhist thought. His essays, sermons and poems on numerous Buddhist topics included in his main text, the Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵, reflect an approach to religious experience based on a more philosophical analysis of topics such as time and temporality, impermanence and momentariness, the universality of Buddha-nature and naturalism, and (...) the role of language and emotions in the experience of enlightenment, as well as practical matters such as ethics and the precepts or meditation and daily activity, than is generally found in the writings of most thinkers in the Japanese Zen school. The single main element in Dōgen’s unique approach to Buddhist theory and practice is his emphasis on the multiple meanings of “impermanence” in personal experience and as the basis for Buddhist metaphysics. In particular, he emphasizes the radical impermanence of each and every phenomenon and the need to attain spiritual realization by acknowledging and identifying, rather than resisting or denying, the ephemeral nature of reality. The notion of impermanence or the transiency of all aspects of human and natural existence has always been a fundamental feature of the Buddhist teaching since the sermons of the Buddha dealing with the doctrines of anātman and anitya regarding the insubstantial, selfless nature of things. However, Dōgen repeatedly cautions against any subtle tendency to view ultimate reality––nirvāṇa or the universal “Buddha-nature” ––as an eternal realm separable from, or independent of, impermanence. Instead, he stresses that a full, unimpeded, and perpetually renewed experience of impermanence and of the unity of “being-time” is the touchstone and framework of every aspect of Buddhist meditative training and spiritual realization. Other key doctrines related to this are the “spontaneous here-and-now manifestation of Zen enlightenment”, the “eternal moment of meditation”, the “immediacy of awakening”, and “impermanence-Buddha-nature”. In addition to looking at Dōgen’s poetic writings on aesthetic experience, later writings on karma and supernaturalism will be briefly examined for their contributions to his philosophical discussions of mystical awareness and the issues of commitment and responsibility involved in authentic religious practice. (shrink)