Daniel, Michael E Review of: Saints, sacrilege and sedition: Religion and conflict in the Tudor reformations, by Eamon Duffy, pp. 253, paperback, $27.99.

Le présent article revient sur l’expression en vieil islandais vargr í véum (« loup dans les sanctuaires »). En comparant différents récits de tels loups, notamment le mythe de l’enchaînement de Fenrir, l’article montre que plutôt qu’une vieille catégorie préchrétienne dénotant le sacrilège, l’expression doit être comprise comme un moyen discursif servant à marginaliser son objet. Elle devait ainsi s’avérer utile pour des auteurs médiévaux et donc chrétiens au moment où ceux-ci pensaient des problèmes tels que les hiérarchies sociales ou (...) encore la centralisation de l’état. (shrink)

The sacrilegious proposition of the existence of cultures in whales and dolphins should open the discussion of cultures in other animals, allowing us to find what is unique in human cultures. The ethnographic approach used by all anthropologists is the key in this investigation and revealed that cultural differences are present in animals and could result from different learning mechanisms.

: This essay is about women being crucial to the constitution of the state and the construction of the ideal of the nation. It argues that the role of actual women as reproducers of the nation and as iconic representations of mythological figures at the helm of nation building is bound up with a certain psychical fantasy of woman. It argues further that Women in Black and other political activist groups have developed embodied feminist politics that not only bring the (...) feminine body into public view during wartime but also undermine the place of the good woman as the reproducer of the nation who mourns only for the lost soldiers of her people. (shrink)

The master narrative of a profound crisis in traditional faith leading to a hardening of authority and religious persecution in late fifth-century Athens has a long scholarly history, one that maintains a persistent presence in current research. This paper proposes to reexamine some aspects of religious authority in late fifth-century Athens through one case-study: the trial of Andocides in 400 BCE. Instead of proposing a new reconstruction of the events that led to this trial, it will compare and contrast the (...) rival rhetorics of authority deployed by Andocides in De mysteriis and Ps.-Lysias in In Andocidem and attempt to locate them in their respective social and cultural contexts. (shrink)

The publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 ignited a public storm he neither wanted nor enjoyed. Having offered his book as a contribution to science, Darwin discovered to his dismay that it was received as an affront by many scientists and as a sacrilege by clergy and Christian citizens. To answer the criticism that his theory was a theory only, and a wild one at that, he published two volumes in 1868 to demonstrate that evolution (...) was obvious to anyone who cared to look at a bull in a pasture or a dog on a hearth. In response to those who insisted that species were distinct since creation, Darwin pointed to breeders of pigs and pigeons. In reply to those who protested that human intervention is one thing and natural selection another, he argued, "If organic beings had not possessed an inherent tendency to vary, man could have done nothing." To counter those who scorned his descriptions of species in exotic places, he submitted local evidence of cabbages and cauliflower. Based on a wide array of sources, from ancient pictographs to Polish roosters, from skins and from skeletons, from scientific journals and breeding manuals, Darwin assembled a mass of proof--and a hypothesis about species reversion that risked his reputation anew. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a two-volume compilation of his thorough and intensive research and the revolutionary conclusions that resulted. The first portion of his work is dedicated to a meticulous analysis of various aspects of plant and animal life, including an inventory of varieties and their physical and behavioral characteristics, investigation of the impact of a species' surrounding environment and the role that both natural and forced changes in this environment have had. Darwin then turns to a richly detailed discussion of the roles of inheritance and crossing in the development of species. A wealth of illustrations further support and enhance his findings. This fascinating, invaluable, and courageous undertaking eventually formed the foundation for our current understanding of evolution. "In science as in politics the victors tend to write the history books. As a result, the record of the past is edited, intentionally or unintentionally, so that it focuses mainly on the precursors of contemporary orthodoxy. Such a focus may accurately represent the genealogy of modern ideas, but it almost inevitably misrepresents the historical experience of their progenitors... Even the powerful, persuasive, and ultimately triumphant theory of evolution by natural selection required not only defense, but repeated buttressing and revision. Variation showed Darwin hard at work on this rearguard action, using the materials he had at hand... His information was gleaned from the observations of fanciers, breeders, and amateur naturalists, as well as from the treatises of those on the cutting edge of zoology and botany. As hindsight narrows the historical spotlight, it imposes its own sense of hierarchy on the preoccupations of the past. But Darwin was interested in all of these topics, valued all of these sources, and belonged, to a greater or lesser extent, to all of these communities."--from the Introduction. (shrink)

Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the “fetish ethic.” Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply “infected” our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by 1) repudiating the fetishistic (...) impulse, by 2) “sublimating” our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by 3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn’t as obviously misguided as some suggest. (shrink)

Part 1. Spaces within spaces -- 1. Extremes -- 2. Nature abhors a vacuum -- 3. Space travel -- 4. Learn to say -- 5. Metaphysical habitats -- 6. Departures -- 7. Plumage and talismans -- 8. Inner space -- Part 2. Snares for the eyes -- 9. The fallen giant -- 10. The stone -- 11. The voices of things -- 12. Nature and art -- 13. Nature -- 14. In touch -- Part. 3. The sacred -- 15. (...) class='Hi'>Sacrilege -- Part 4. Violence -- 16. Material culture -- 17. Orders -- 18. Filth -- 19. Fake fetishes, disrobed mannequins -- 20. Wallowing in glory -- 21. The art of war -- Part 5. Splendor -- 22. The face of death -- 23. The emergence of dance -- 24. Collective performances -- 25. War and splendor. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Skeptical View of IntegralismElizabeth CoreyNo observer of the American right could say that the past decade has been boring. In recent years, people who formerly called themselves conservatives have become integralists, "national conservatives," "common good" conservatives, and "postliberals." They reject the fusionism that formerly brought libertarians into alliances with paleo- and neo-conservatives. They argue that principles of limited government and individual rights no longer suffice in an age (...) that has suffered the left's Gramscian march through the institutions (Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, 1891–1937).Among the most prominent of the new dissenters are certain Catholic conservatives who argue not only that "liberalism" has failed, but that that the remedy for its failure lies in a reintegration of religion and politics. Many of these writers argue that liberalism itself is a religion, or at least a quasi-religion, that should be opposed by real religion, which is Catholic Christianity.1 Liberalism's political liturgy, they maintain, is one of individual rights, freedom, and unfettered choice; but liberalism is a bad religion that leads to moral decline. It must be resisted by holding to the true liturgy, an [End Page 919] authentically religious one of obedience to Catholic doctrine and a revival of traditional morality in the public square. Who is responsible for enforcing this new liturgy? Why the new theorists themselves, of course, who believe that they are the recipients of privileged gnosis.These theorists have no qualms about asserting the desirable unity of politics and religion. Indeed, their primary interest in government seems to be in prescribing a religiously inspired morality for those they would govern. No mere rule-of-law regime will do. As journalist Sohrab Ahmari has boldly asserted: "Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy."2The confidence of these former conservatives is remarkable, and they are in fact making converts of young men everywhere. The clarity of their moral vision is undeniably attractive to a certain kind of soul. If the highest good for mankind is salvation, as Christians believe it is, then why not strain every nerve to achieve it, not only in worship but also in political action? Chad Pecknold has summarized the postliberal integralist view as follows: "We must recognize that our cities simply are religious. Our most fundamental political conflicts are religious and theological. Thus, Christians who care about their neighbor must not be indifferent to the sacred bonds of the city, but must oppose civic sacrilege, and work to reorient the domestic and civic altars alike to God's heavenly city." He concludes with a rousing peroration: "As pilgrims with our faces set towards Christ, the bright sun of justice itself, our cause is just. We have a great hope even in this temporal order which is passing away; we have a high calling to order not only our souls, but also to order our cities rightly, on earth as it is in heaven."3 The only task that remains, on this telling, is to put this vision into practice.It is never easy to follow the words of Jesus himself in the Lord's Prayer. Yet the skeptic in politics might be excused for a bit of throat-clearing and perplexity about precisely what is being argued, and about how such a grand vision is to be accomplished, or whether it is even desirable. In the pages that follow, I identify an alternative way of thinking about politics that is significantly less exalted than integralism. This more "skeptical" alternative is potentially capable of achievement, given the political institutions currently in place in the United States. It is also significantly more respectful of the political and moral pluralism that now exists and seems unlikely to disappear. [End Page 920]Following the lead of British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, I consider two opposed ways of thinking about politics, which Oakeshott called, in On Human Conduct, "enterprise and civil association," and elsewhere "faith and scepticism." With this framework in mind, I consider the dark and pessimistic view of modern society held by the postliberal integralists. I... (shrink)

An inquiry into the problematic of perjury, or lying, and forgiveness from one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. “One only ever asks forgiveness for what is unforgivable.” From this contradiction begins Perjury and Pardon, a two-year series of seminars given by Jacques Derrida at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris in the late 1990s. In these sessions, Derrida focuses on the philosophical, ethical, juridical, and political stakes of the concept of responsibility. His (...) primary goal is to develop what he calls a “problematic of lying” by studying diverse forms of betrayal: infidelity, denial, false testimony, perjury, unkept promises, desecration, sacrilege, and blasphemy. Although forgiveness is a notion inherited from multiple traditions, the process of forgiveness eludes those traditions, disturbing the categories of knowledge, sense, history, and law that attempt to circumscribe it. Derrida insists on the unconditionality of forgiveness and shows how its complex temporality destabilizes all ideas of presence and even of subjecthood. For Derrida, forgiveness cannot be reduced to repentance, punishment, retribution, or salvation, and it is inseparable from, and haunted by, the notion of perjury. Through close readings of Kant, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Plato, Jankélévitch, Baudelaire, and Kafka, as well as biblical texts, Derrida explores diverse notions of the “evil” or malignancy of lying while developing a complex account of forgiveness across different traditions. (shrink)

An exploration of the political dimensions of forgiveness and repentance from Jacques Derrida. Perjury and Pardon is a two-year seminar series given by Jacques Derrida at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris during the late 1990s. In these sessions, Derrida focuses on the philosophical, ethical, juridical, and political stakes of the concept of responsibility. His primary goal is to develop what he calls a “problematic of lying” by studying diverse forms of betrayal: infidelity, denial, false testimony, (...) perjury, unkept promises, desecration, sacrilege, and blasphemy. This volume covers the seminar’s second year when Derrida explores the political dimensions of forgiveness and repentance. Over eight sessions, he discusses Hegel, Augustine, Levinas, Arendt, and Benjamin as well as Bill Clinton’s impeachment and Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s testimonies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The seminars conclude with an extended reading of Henri Thomas’s 1964 novel Le Parjure. (shrink)

Speech in the publication of A.P. Ogurtsov talks about the contemporary understanding of culture by M. Heidegger, which testifies to the spiritual fall of the world and the replacement of the concept of “spirit” with the concept of “culture” in a specific meaning — as a value, which Heidegger considers “the highest sacrilege”, because God appears among the values. This understanding of culture is associated with “the secularization of thought and the oblivion of being; value thinking is rooted in (...) the will to power”. It is significant that in our time it is not uncommon to understand culture as a value. (shrink)

Strict pacifists say that killing is always wrong. Jewish and Christian pacifists often appeal to the claim in Genesis that all people are made in the image of God, suggesting that killing them represents a kind of sacrilege as well as a violation of human dignity. Christian pacifists also refer to sayings of Jesus in the Gospels to love one's enemies and not retaliate against force with force. Hindu and Buddhist pacifists would cite their basic obligation of ahimsa, avoiding (...) harm to any sentient creature. And nonreligious pacifists often say that violence only begets more violence. (See my "Ethics and War in Comparative Religious Perspective."). (shrink)

Many Christian churches in parts of Ghana dominated by Akans do not allow corpses to be brought inside the church during funerals services. Others face constant and vehement objection when it is done. Cultural differences on the subject have fuelled heated disputes that have led in some cases to severe congregational division. Opposition is often sustained by a culturally biased approach to biblical texts concerning sacredness and defilement as related to Old Testament sanctuary and temple ritual. Particularly, the religious philosophy (...) of mmusuo provides the psycho-emotive motivation from which many Akan Christians vehemently oppose the practice as sacrilegious. It also provides an analytical and rhetorical framework for appropriating various biblical passages relating to religious sacrilege. This paper unpacks this framework and proposes effectively contextualized theology as a means of avoiding such erroneous conflations and resolving the disputes that arise at the interface of African culture and Christian religion, especially in multicultural congregations. (shrink)

God — as we well know since Nietzsche — is dead. However, it is necessary to correct this sentence that was a sacrilege yesterday and has become common place today. We should be talking of the death of the “gods,” rather than of God; for what has been disappearing from the social space of modernity (I do not speak of the inner conscience of the faithful here), is not just the God who sits enthroned atop altar and dogma. What (...) has disappeared are the “gods” more generally; by this we understand the link with the world that, certainly rooted in religion but transcending it, surrounds things and beings with an aura of wonderful significances; that places them outside of those structures that modern man understands to be the utilitarian, the rational and the functional. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Overtones:A CollagePaul Youngquist (bio)Mom leans against the keyboard of the old upright piano in the den. She puckers her lips and gently fingers the valves. A couple of times a month, she frees her trumpet from the purple velveteen lining its case—out of love or frustration I can never tell. She stares hard at the bell, pointed somewhere near my feet. She inhales deeply, pressing the silver mouthpiece to (...) her crumpled lips. A silent moment passes—torn by a noise pitched past the sun, a shrieking flare sound. Another follows and another, bright glissandos blinking out somewhere below middle C. They shatter everything I know about her. Everything I thought I knew. What sound was that, what cry? What aspiration to be free? After those initial stabs, she falls into familiar melodies: "Bugler's Holiday" by Leroy Anderson, maybe, or "When the Saints Go Marching In." I'm unsettled for the rest of the day.Trumpeter Don Cherry's sound unsettled me too. I was much older when I first encountered it on Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. It took me back to Mom's cries. I heard her sound in his: bright, high, and transient: less pitch than smudge, transmitting unknowable overtones. On "Lonely Woman," for instance. Cherry states the plaintive melody in hazy unison with Coleman, blurs the third note, wavers and plays his peculiar temper, untimely and free to move beyond the platitudes of harmony until, after Coleman's baffled cry, he parts company to play a sixth above (if such language matters, and it doesn't), descending in half steps to resolve (not happily) on a minor third, Cherry now pitched below. Their unison breaks apart to reconverge, and the brief bridge feels like a heaving between sobs. This isn't music. It's too raw for the repartee of bebop or the sociability of swing. But everybody can feel it, which explains the scandal of Coleman and company's extended appearance in late 1959 at the Five Spot in New York's East Village. Writing in the New York Times Magazine years later, Joseph Hooper likened it to the furor erupting after Stravinsky's Paris premier of "The Rite of Spring" in 1913. In an interview with Terry Gross, Cherry remembers everyone who was musically anyone being there—from Leonard Bernstein to Thelonious Monk—to witness the sacrilege. The implacable trickster Charles Mingus appeared one [End Page 133] night with Phineas Newborn, a keyboard virtuoso famous for his perfect pitch. Newborn sat and stared at his cufflinks. He never played a note. After the set, Mingus barreled onto the stage and, with his long arms and big hands, crashed all the keys. "That's where it is," he bellowed. "It's all there." Everywhere and nowhere. Cherry and Ornette decentered intonation. They distempered tradition's scales. Afflicted with perfect pitch, Newborn couldn't follow their cries and whispers. They flew free from the comforting staff. Still you feel them, hear their immeasurable sound.Don Cherry: "I've always been on the outside, and that's a good quality for the music to have, like the wind in your face."Cherry's mother Daisy gave him his first horn when he was fourteen. It breathed life into him, offering a way to express sounds his body harbored. Born in Oklahoma City in 1936 to "Negro-Choctaw Indian parents" (his words—his mother's mother was half native), Cherry heard gospel, blues, and Indian songs from the start. The family's move to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1940 only multiplied the sounds of diverse ethnicities mixed with the rumble of jazz from the Cherry Blossom, his father's club, where Don and his sister sometimes danced for dimes. His horn funneled all this sound—all the music he'd ever make—through a peculiarly powerful feeling: "that feeling to me, through as much music as I've learned, I still remember just that feeling when I first got that horn." What feeling exactly? "Infant happiness" (in-fant, not speaking). The feeling of life before language: "infant happiness, infant happiness, beautiful! That's what music is really... (shrink)

This paper raises objections to the constitution of these lines in the OCT. The lines are gnomic but they generalize based on an actual sequence of events just described and should contain an allusion to the offence that will cause the Greeks to perish, the outrage against Athena's temple. This, it is argued, stood in a lacuna best marked after 95. The article has three theses: (1) sacking ‘cities, temples, and tombs’ is implausible because the latter two are parts of (...) the first; (2) plundering tombs refers to nothing in the play, nor was this thought of as an offence against the gods; (3) 96–7 do not refer to the offence that causes the fool's death but are a description of his success, the destruction of the hated enemy population. That success stands in ironic contrast with his subsequent death. (shrink)

What does philosophy have to say about the argument that blasphemous art ought not to be publicly displayed? We examine four concepts of blasphemy: blasphemy as offence, attack on religion, attack on the sacred, attack on the blasphemer himself. We argue all four are needed to grasp this complex concept. We also argue for blasphemy as primarily a moral, not a religious concept. We then criticise four arguments for the public display of blasphemous art: it may be beautiful, provocative, devoutly (...) intended, and is autonomous of religious concerns. Finally, we discuss the notions of blasphemy and blasphemous art as public offences. We conclude that the display of blasphemous art is a public, and not merely a private moral offence, and that there are respectable philosophical arguments for this conclusion. (shrink)

In the debate about heterologous embryo transfer (HET), or embryo adoption, within marriage, discussion to date has proceeded predominantly from the perspective of the acting woman, with less attention paid to the effects on her spouse. In directing the focus of this paper to the man’s experience, the author is confirmed in his opinion that HET is contrary to the man’s dignity as husband and father. It is an infidelity to the exclusive union of his marriage, an affront to the (...) husband’s right to be the means by whom his wife becomes a mother, and a sacrilege to the sacrament by which his fatherhood is called to be an expression of God’s creative love. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.2 (Summer 2013): 287–297. (shrink)

In AFTERLIVES OF AFFECT, Watson considers the life and work of Mayanist Linda Schele (1942 - 1988) as an entry point to discuss the nature of cultural inquiry and the metaphor of decipherment in anthropology. Watson figures Schele as a trickster guide in his experimental, person-centered ethnography, reanimating the work of decipherment and drawing upon an "affect of discovery" that better expresses the affective engagement of anthropologists and their subject of study. Through her archive, Watson finds an archaeologist wholly animated (...) by her fieldsite and immersed in a more "spiritual science," though nonetheless still imbricated in a system of settler-colonial knowledge production. By holding Schele's work in conversation with both her own interlocutors and prominent voices in the field today, Watson refocuses on anthropologists who are engaged as individuals; carrying their own attachments with them as they describe, interpret, and decipher what they observe, and in doing so, positions affective engagement as a constitutive element in a more reflexive anthropology. The book is organized into six chapters that progress thematically through Schele's life and Watson's autoethnographic reflections on his own research. In Sacrilege (chapter 1), Watson draws together moments throughout his research where he felt his exhumation of Schele's work veered too closely to disturbing what was laid to rest-much like Schele's own work, which relied on the unearthing of sites long laid to rest, reanimating long-dead Mayan rulers and artists. The chapter sets the tone of the work as always toeing the line and risking the introduction of the mystical and affective into scientific interpretation-edgewalking with Schele. In Animals (chapter 2), Watson draws upon metaphors in the animal world, as did Schele when she sought inspiration for her next moment of insight; spider webs present a Geertzian metaphor for webs of signification, while rabbits are trickster guides, a transtemporalizing technology, drawing Schele (and Watson) forward and back through time. Through these reflections, Watson builds iteratively on arguments throughout the book that return to themes more recognizable in contemporary theory conversations: more-than-human worlds, the question of modernity, and the social conditions of knowledge production. This book will be of interest to readers in anthropology, especially those engaged in the ontological turn and more-than-human worlds, as well as the history of anthropology and anthropology theory more broadly. This book will also be of interest to readers in science studies, the posthumanities, and affect theory. (shrink)

The story of the Aquedah represents one of the most moving stories of the Bible. Most modern discussions on it take their point of departure from Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling . I shall do so too in this essay, which focuses on the relations between ethics and religious belief and tries to show that Kierkegaard misinterpreted the story. The inquiry analyzes philosophical responses to the Aquedah from Philo and Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers until the present. It underscores its paradoxical (...) implications, including a structuralist analysis and comparison of the Aquedah with the biblical story of Yephta's daughter. The final conclusion asserts that what Kierkegaard extolled, Judaism condemns as sacrilege. (shrink)

My education in political poetry begins with William Blake’s remark about John Milton in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.”1 The statement is usually taken as a charming misreading of Milton or as some sort of hyperbole. We find it lumped with other readings which (...) supposedly view Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s in A Defence of Poetry, although neither Blake nor Shelley says anything of the kind.2I consider Blake’s statement simply accurate. I think it the best single thing anybody has ever said about Paradise Lost. If not clear as a bell, then at least as compressed as diamonds. The insouciant opening gesture takes for granted what to Blake is obvious” that the poetry qua poetry is better, more exciting, more energetic in the sections dominated by Stan, worse, duller, less poetic in the sections dominated by God. As a lover of poetry Blake has evidently struck a perplexity. Why does Milton’s Satan excite me and this God bore me even though he plainly intends me to adore God and scorn Satan? The answer could have been that Milton “wrote in fetters” where constrained by theology and the danger of lapsing into inadvertent sacrilege, but “at liberty” otherwise. Other critics have claimed that it is impossible to make God talk successfully in a poem, but the Book of Job is enough to refute that position. Why did Milton choose to make God talk at all? Dante cleverly avoided that difficulty.The second half of Blake’s sentence not only solves the Paradise Lost problem but proposes a radical view of all poetry which might be summarized as follows: All art depends on opposition between God and the devil, reason and energy. The true poet is necessarily the partisan of energy, rebellion, and desire, and is opposed to passivity, obedience, and the authority of reason, laws, and institutions. To be a poet requires energy; energetic subjects make the best material for poems; the truer the poetry, the more it will embody the truths of Desire. But the poet need not think so. He can be of the devil’s party without knowing it. 1. William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” Complete Poems, ed. Alicia Ostriker , p. 182.2. Let one instance serve: Marjorie Hope Nicolson wonders whether the members of the “‘Satanic School’ of Milton criticism” have read past books 1 and 2 of Paradise Lost . Alicia Ostriker, professor of English as Rutgers University, is the author of Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Her most recent book of poetry is Imaginary Lover. (shrink)

In the third book of Cicero's De re publica L. Furius Philus, one of the protagonists, is assigned the task of putting the case against justice. Among his arguments he makes the familiar claim that justice is a product of society, not of nature . If, he explains, justice and injustice were natural phenomena, they would be the same for all men, but in fact people hold very diverse views on what is just. This argument is supported by a motley (...) collection of exempla: the Egyptians worship Apis, a bull; while the Greeks and the Romans fill their temples with statues in human form, the Persians consider such practices to be sacrilege; various nations indulge in human sacrifice; the Cretans and Aetolians hold the view that brigandage is perfectly respectable; the Spartans used to claim as their own all the territory which their spears might touch; the Athenians used to take public oaths that all land which produced olives and grain belonged to them; the Gauls despised corn-growing and raided the fields of others instead. All these instances would be familiar to Cicero's audience. (shrink)

La transgression est une posture critique. On peut l'associer à l'audace, à la subversion, à la révolte. La transgression s'affiche, elle est revendiquée. Elle remet en cause ce qui est considéré comme acquis, accepté par tous, et ébranle la légitimité d'un système de valeur. Elle est donc contestation. La transgression est à la fois une forme de résistance et la proposition d'autre chose. Elle ouvre de nouveaux espaces, de nouvelles aventures, débouche sur de nouvelles expériences. Transgresser, c'est donner à voir (...) et à penser autrement. (shrink)

Este artículo realiza un análisis léxico-semántico de la terminología irreligiosa en la literatura griega. Se ha seleccionado un término clave y un autor relevante a fin de ilustrar la importancia del fenómeno irreligioso en la sociedad de Época Clásica. El adjetivo ὅσιος describe el respeto religioso en acciones y actitudes hacia las divinidades y también hacia otros seres humanos. Sófocles usa la forma privativa ἀνόσιος en contextos donde falta ese respeto religioso, con consecuencias negativas para la polis.

A citizen of Basel wrote in 1908, “When the great and long-expected day has finally arrived, and at the stroke of four the signal is given for the entrance of His Majesty Carnival, the city becomes the theater of intense life and activity whose meaning and value only the natives of Basel can appreciate”. This opinion, according to which only “Baselers” understand the real meaning of their fêtes, is still quite widespread, and it is almost a sacrilege that someone (...) from the outside, such as I am, should try to explain the customs that give Basel its eminent place in folklore. (shrink)

The author interprets idolatry, totemism, sacrilege and taboo through her theory of sexual difference and her study of Eastern spirituality. She argues that the taboo on spirituality in Western culture has cancelled difference, resulting in our current forms of idolatry. Preserving difference, however, would allow the transcendence of the human other to exist. The task of learning to respect difference is central to human spirituality and spiritual progression. The article is a translation of “La transcendance de l’autre” in Autour (...) d’idôlatrie: figures actuelles de pouvoir et de domination, Ed. Bernard Van Meenen, Publications des Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels: 2003. (shrink)

In The Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington placed the Persian Wars at the beginning of the long line of clashes between civilizations. To the modern reader the emphasis Huntington puts on the role played by religion in defining Athenian civilization and its conflict with the “barbarians” appears to be consistent with Herodotus’ position on these wars. However, this position overlooks the fact that the ancient polytheistic beliefs and cults implied a particular attitude to religion, unlike that of monotheistic religions. In (...) the ancient Mediterranean world the temples and sacred places were to be universally respected and any violation of this rule was regarded as sacrilege that justified persecution of the wrongdoers, whose ethnicity was of no, or only of secondary, importance. The purpose of this article is to survey the main passages in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon that treat the wars between the Greeks and Persians and between Greek city-states, and to demonstrate that the line dividing defenders of divine cults from offenders of the gods was not drawn between Greeks and barbarians, but between defenders and offenders. (shrink)

This is a multi-authored review of a book that is extremely rich and lengthy (43 chapters, among whose titles are: Chapter III, In the name of the Lord God, this round Earth of the Ancients becomes flat again. Or perhaps not? (In which - by way of preface - the story is told of how our great Sphere, which was measured and drawn by Egyptian Alexandria, became a Mystery, Sacrilege and dark until ten years ago); Chapter X, Strabo: ‘The (...) Pillars? Gibraltar or Cádiz! But none of us have ever really seen them’ (An impossible Interview with the great Greek historian/geographer who summarizes for us what was known by the great men who preceded him. Christ had not yet been born and the site of those famous pillars had already been lost); Chapter XII, With Herodotus in the Eldorado of silver. A voyage to Tartessos, the Andalusian Atlantis (In which it will be seen that neither the Bible nor Herodotus ever said Tartessos was Spain. But only that it was in the West and beyond the Pillars of Hercules: exactly like Sardinia...); Chapter XXVIII, The Peoples-of-the-Sea versus Ramses III or the Very First World War). The author writes on culture for the daily newspaper La Repubblica. (shrink)