The author of the article turns to the modern discourse about man and his place in the humanities system. A retrospective analysis of the modern discourse about man allows us to distinguish three stages in its development: anti-humanism, anti-anthropology and post-anthropology. Despite the fact that the main topics around which he is focused are concentrated on criticism of "anthropocentrism" and "eurocentrism", the author concludes that the anti-anthropological narrative retains all the features of cultural and epistemological "narcissism". The anti-anthropological narrative continues (...) to function as a system of "recognizing oneself", as a system of "differentiating oneself and the other" and as a system of "justifying oneself through the other". (shrink)

With the use symbols by political subjects arises the problem of their understanding. Groups of symbols can be created in such a way to contain a message. The state coat of arms is a political symbol, in which is concentrated a number of meanings and significance. The coat of arms — it is a symbol garnished with colossal endless meaning and potential withing its power. Besides this, the state coat of arms appears in numbers like mandalas: it is like this (...) archaic symbol, that combines various geometric shapes expressing the idea of order. The state coat of arms perceptively unites people of different genders, ages, social status andfaith into a united orderly community. A person contemplating the state coat of arms understands it as the center of the universe. The coat of arms is transformed into endlessness, attaining the result of uniting the macrocosm — society and state — and with the macrocosm — man. The function of political symbols exists so as to represent the “body” of a concrete political subject or society as a whole, at the same time in every part of a text “is highlighted” yet another part of the endless semantical richness of the symbol. Political symbols have important significance for the support or destruction of socio-political order. But the chief essence ofpolitical symbols — is the ability to give meaning to all political activities, and the regular “exposition” of state symbols guarantees the stability of the existing socio-political system. (shrink)

The problem of objective threats and subjective experiences of fragility, insecurity of human life in the conceptual opposition to the boundlessness of the life force of humanity as a global community is discussed. Modernity multiplies both risks and threats, as well as the protection and omnipotence of man, leaving the individual a wide space of self-determination, in which, however, dangerous tendencies independent of man continue to persist. They are connected both with the progress of the technical and intellectual environment, and (...) with unexpected outbursts of militarism and political arbitrariness. (shrink)

In the article an idea is conducted that practice of education goes away the roots to the deep layers of human civilization. The author of the article concentrated the attention on the analysis of work of Socrates and Aristotle. It is shown that Socrates first began consciously to use the bottom- up reasoning and give general determinations, work on concepts. On the initial stage of educating Socrates induced students the system of questions to find truth, that in modern pedagogical anthropology (...) is one of main tasks in education. By means of the skilfully put questions Socrates tricked into a student to confession of those positions that are true. The author of the article pays attention to that Socrates used the new for that time methods of educating constantly, for example, conversation, unlike sophists that preferred to the lecture. The feature of conversations of Socrates consisted in that the simplest vital cases came into question at first, but after themes became complicated. Comparisons, metaphors, turns, satire, were thus used, that facilitated perception of sense of conversation to the students. In the article the analysis of anthropological and pedagogical ideas is given in labours of Aristotle. It is shown that Aristotle studying a man, his " nature" and " essence", did not stop thereon, and set by the question of improvement of human family by means of education. Aristotle considered that education must be under control the state, and nobody can doubt in that a legislator must belong with exceptional attention to education of young people, as in the states, where small attention is spared the questions of education, the political system suffers from it. (shrink)

This paper was made as part of a wider research I made about rituals and their meaning and roles they are playing in the religious system of thinking. The way they are thought, displayed, precisely followed as instructed and believed, makes them a powerful social act that has been always provided by any religion, and also a tool for religion to make the human society what it is today. After I speak about what is a ritual and its religious content (...) in general, I am enumerating roles and functions of play and theatre in particular have, both for profane and religious purpose. Do we still use play/games as adults because they are rewarding, they give us pleasure? They are used as means of relaxation, or for continuing the age of childhood; or it is in our nature to play games in everything we do? In this paper I have emphasized play as adaptive potentiation or adaptive variability useful both in therapy, as in religious ceremony. The relation and comparison of rituals with play is due to the fact that playing is the most engaging behavior performed by man and animals, and it can be found as foundation of almost any ritualist activity. (shrink)

It is most likely for anyone to ask himself at least once if it would be possible to live in a dream? Questioning the fabric of “reality” we live in consciously was one of the main doubts man ever had. It is so likely for us to answer positive to it due to so many factors; starting from the many and various facets of reality each individual envision the world, from the enormous differences we all have while perceiving and defining (...) the reality, etc. That is why, at the conscious level, life seems almost like a dream in a dream, always hoping to wake up from the negative, unwanted version of it. That is why my assertion here, based on latest theories on consciousness and AI, aim to say that we live in between reality and dream, being “conscious” of ourselves, but not really wanting to be “aware” of what is really going on with us. (shrink)

It is most likely for anyone to ask himself at least once if it would be possible to live in a dream? Questioning the fabric of “reality” we live in consciously was one of the main doubts man ever had. It is so likely for us to answer positively to it due to so many factors; starting from the many and various facets of reality each individual envision the world, from the enormous differences we all have while perceiving and defining (...) the reality, etc. That is why, at the conscious level, life seems almost like a dream in a dream, always hoping to wake up from the negative, unwanted version of it. That is why my assertion here, based on latest theories on consciousness and AI, aim to say that we live in between reality and dream, being “conscious” of ourselves, but not really wanting to be “aware” of what is really going on with us. Living as a human is not a path towards improvement in the way of getting rid of subjectiveness and valorization because these so-called errors make the most of human living. (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another important Romanian (...) philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another important Romanian (...) philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

Abstract:This article explores the representation of human‒animal interaction in D. H. Lawrence's poems "Bat" and "Man and Bat." Many influential critics interpret the poems as emphasizing the lack of connection, hospitality, and empathy between the poet and the bats, focusing on the relentless objectification of the animals and the poet's negative attitude towards them. We argue, however, that these poems can also invite different types of readings, by investigating the ways in which Lawrence employs perceptual and kinetic imagery to create (...) a certain degree of embodied, kinesthetic empathy with the bats. Using theoretical and methodological frameworks from cognitive-literary approaches to kinesthesia and human‒animal studies, we analyze Lawrence's multilayered poetic rendition of human‒animal interaction, to understand how the poet stages the tension between the symbolic/cultural connotations associated with bats and humans' perception of their embodied, affective, and kinetic being. (shrink)

Aim of this study was to investigate whether parental mental representations during pregnancy and after delivery differed between parents who conceived after Assisted Reproductive Treatments and spontaneous conceiving parents. Effects of specific ART variables were also taken into account. Seventeen ART couples and 25 SC couples were recruited at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. At both 32 weeks of gestation and 3 months postpartum participants completed the Semantic Differential of the IRMAG, a self-report tool which measures specific domains of mental representations (...) pertaining either individual or parental characteristics. Results showed that ART parents had significantly more positive representations of the child compared to SC parents, while the scores at Partner dimension improved from T1 to T2 for SC parents only. With regards to ART history, scores at the Self-as-woman/man dimension were significantly less positive for ICSI than IVF parents and improved substantially from T1 to T2 only in case of mothers with previous ART attempts and of fathers at the first ART cycle. The representation of own parents increased from T1 to T2 in case of infertility diagnosis due to male factors, while a decrease emerged when infertility was due to female factors. Findings suggest the need to investigate parental mental representations after ART, in order to improve the understanding on the transition to parenthood of infertile couples and to target more specific intervention for parenting support. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 67-87.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The English Polydaedali:How Gabriel Harvey Read Late Tudor LondonNicholas PopperHarvey and GauricoIn 1590 Gabriel Harvey read his copy of Luca Gaurico's 1552 Tractatus Astrologicus, a collection of genitures and commentaries for cities and individuals.1 Harvey had spent the previous twenty-five years at Oxford and Cambridge, mastering Greek and Latin, earning renown as a rhetorician, and promoting English letters. He was a well-known partisan of the French Calvinist Peter Ramus, (...) whose works on curriculum reform had sparked vicious [End Page 351] controversies in the English universities. But Harvey read Gaurico far removed from the schools where he had acquired fame and notoriety as an orator and poet. He had recently relocated to London, where he daily faced a dense, active city unlike his native Saffron Walden and the university towns. Nevertheless he read as he always had, carefully recording his reactions in the margins of the printed text, filling blank spaces with his own commentaries on the subjects presented by Gaurico. The notes disclose an experience of reading that intervened in contemporary debates regarding technology, astrology and utility.2 They also place Harvey among a group of scholars in London in the 1590s, such as Francis Bacon and Hugh Plat, who were examining the benefits local artisans might offer the commonwealth and reconsidering the intellectual status of craft knowledge.Harvey read and annotated Gaurico on several occasions, but the particular strain of notes that I will follow, united by a common ink and hand, engages the learning and erudition of Gaurico's subjects.3 Concentrated almost [End Page 352] exclusively in Book Four, which discussed learned men, these annotations evaluate the poets, philosophers, philologists, and others whom Gaurico had canonized as especially learned.There are only spare annotations prior to Book Four. On the title page of Book Two, devoted to churchmen, Harvey observes the quality of the individuals Gaurico presented and details his own method of evaluation:The most excellent Exemplars of this century [are] in Gaurico, and Cardano: Giovio, and Guiccardini. There are as many of the wisest men as of the greatest actors. Still others live, whether inferior, equal, or superior. And it is of interest to every skillful artificer, to know those most outstanding in their class, and the most celebrated professors of all. Certainly it is very profitable to observe exquisitely the most perfect artificers either of the world or of neighboring nations, or at least of your own people, and to consider with most cunning reason what it is, where it comes from, and what is most excellent. But seriously, and solidly, and always to the point, seeing that singular things are efficacious and are useful to polytechnoscopy. It is judicious to avoid all trivial detail, and to consider only the most pregnant theorists and practitioners of operating.4The notion of a sophisticated form of active knowledge labeled "polytechnoscopy" is the most striking element of this passage. This term seems to have been Harvey's own invention, with no direct precedents; nor was it adopted or used by others after him.Harvey repeatedly referred to polytechnoscopy in his notes. A carefully designed triptych annotation on the title page of Book Four clarifies it as a category uniting practice and knowledge. To the left Harvey wrote, "it is my task to observe the most excellent examples of this age which are useful for polytechnoscopy." On the right, "a polytechnic, polymechanic, polydaedalic, and almost panepistemic book; and likewise sufficiently polychristian. For philologists should be skimmed through; while polytechnics should be examined closely; as I did not only in the Lives of Giovio, but also in those of [End Page 353] Laertius, Eunapius, Philostratus, and others."5 The related Greek descriptors "polymechanic" and "polydaedalic" shed further light on polytechnoscopy. This constellation of terms refers to a method of garnering information by deploying technical knowledge. While not a systematic discipline, its practices—active applicability, craft expertise, observation of experience—constitute a significant realm of learning.In the central panel of the triptych, Harvey notes:[I] compared [this] to Giovio's Elegies of Learned Men. Give me the best man outdoors, and his image at home. For even true life is... (shrink)

Andrei Platonov’s novel Chevengur does not only describe the concrete model of building communism that was being realized in real life; it also discusses the problem of creating a new human being w...

This essay is focusing on the understanding of the necessity to care more and more about the value of human life, and consequently to find a pathway of cultivating and improving the humanness of man, considering the nowadays climate with its serious moral and ecological crisis. Facing the risks of a spiritual malady due to a profound alienation from his very own essence, human being has to look for the best opportunities in avoiding the situation of becoming the prison of (...) an artificial existence’s captivities and of falling in barbarism. Thus, we think that a real chance for human well-being rising to the excellence of man is an aretaic propaideia; respectively, an education centered on the moral meaning of arete / virtue, by restoring the significance of golden measure, finally leading to equilibrium and harmony, to the health and the joy of an authentic human life in freedom and dignity. (shrink)

author. University Professor in the School of Law, Columbia University. (From July 2006, Professor of Law, New York University.) Earlier versions of this Essay were presented at the Colloquium in Legal and Social Philosophy at University College London, at a law faculty workshop at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at a constitutional law conference at Harvard Law School. I am particularly grateful to Ronald Dworkin, Ruth Gavison, and Seana Shiffrin for their formal comments on those occasions and also to (...) James Allan, Aharon Barak, Richard Bellamy, Aileen Cavanagh, Arthur Chaskalson, Michael Dorf, Richard Fallon, Charles Fried, Andrew Geddis, Stephen Guest, Ian Haney-Lopez, Alon Harel, David Heyd, Sam Issacharoff, Elena Kagan, Kenneth Keith, Michael Klarman, John Manning, Andrei Marmor, Frank Michelman, Henry Monaghan, Véronique Munoz-Dardé, John Morley, Matthew Palmer, Richard Pildes, Joseph Raz, Carol Sanger, David Wiggins, and Jo Wolff for their suggestions and criticisms. Hundreds of others have argued with me about this issue over the years: This Essay is dedicated to all of them, collegially and with thanks. (shrink)

C. Antoniade -- P.P. Negulescu -- Petre Andrei -- Mihai Ralea -- Tudor Vianu.

. The purpose of this essay is to argue that considerations of fairness play an essential role in the justification of democratic decision procedures. The first part argues that considerations of fairness form part of a practical authority's legitimacy, and that in the political context, those considerations of fairness entail a principle of equal distribution of political power. Subsequently, the article elaborates on the kind of equality which is required in democratic procedures, arguing that different principles of equality should apply (...) to the deliberation and the decision stages of democracy. Finally, the article concludes with a few sketchy remarks on the possible relations between considerations of fairness and soundness of democratic procedures. (shrink)

This book has been written for our time of need. It is an affirmative declaration of human values at a time of crisis in what the author regards as the great moral revolution of our age. It began when Paul Kurtz published the four-page Humanist Manifesto II in The Humanist magazine. The reaction was volcanic. The New York Times carried an extensive front-page story on it, as did hundreds of newspapers throughout the United States and abroad. The controversy is unabated. (...) Theologians throughout the country continue to attack and defend the Manifesto. In Russia, Andrei Sakharov, one of the signers of the Manifesto, was given a warning about his collaboration with Western liberals, and then subjected to a large-scale attack in the Soviet Press. The generative ideas presented in the controversial Manifesto are fully developed in this powerful book. In Part I, Kurtz takes us on a tour of the chief religious and moral philosophies available to Western man at this time. He gives detailed critiques of Christian theism and of Marxism. He shows how the original humanism of Marx has been betrayed in the Communist nations. "The crux of the tragedy of modern Communist societies is that they have abandoned these fundamental human rights . . ." In Part II, "The Humanist Alternative," Kurtz brilliantly develops a positive viewpoint, a dynamic presentation of the elements of "the good life" in which we may realize "the human potential and the fullness of being." The author here describes the virtues of the sensual life, the joys and benefits of physical pleasure, and the various ways by which we achieve true self-realization. This section concludes with chapters on libertarianism, the principle of equality, and the democratic ethic inherent in the humanist philosophy. In Part III the author provides an arresting exposition of international problems and their intelligent solution. He stresses the global consciousness of the humanist outlook and its allegiance to all humanity, and demonstrates how the methods of reason can be applied in our personal lives and in world affairs. (shrink)

In this article I want to support a certain conception of legal authority. The question I want to address is this: Is it possible to attribute legal authority to a given norm if its authority does not derive from the authority of someone who has issued that norm? Basically, I will try to defend here a negative answer to this question, espousing a personal conception of authority.

The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of Man, (...) leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and 'enlightened despots' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Motion and Mercutio in Romeo and JulietDaryl W. PalmerThere is nothing permanent that is not true, what can be true that is uncertaine? How can that be certaine, that stands upon uncertain grounds? 1It is by now a commonplace in modern scholarship that drama, particularly Tudor drama, poses questions, rehearses familiar debates, and even speculates about mere possibilities. 2 In 1954, Madeleine Doran spelled out some of the ways (...) in which debate "affected the structure of Elizabethan drama." 3 In turn, Joel B. Altman, having eloquently extended Doran's examination, concludes that "the plays functioned as media of intellectual and emotional exploration for minds that were accustomed to examine the many sides of a given theme, to entertain opposing ideals, and by so exercising the understanding, to move toward some fuller apprehension of truth that could be discerned only through the total action of the drama." 4 Altman points to Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres (c. 1490) as an exemplar of this practice. Although the interlude instructs and entertains, "the center of interest has shifted from demonstration to inquiry. The action develops not from an abstract assertion, but from a specific question: who is the nobler man, Cornelius or Gaius?" 5 By the time William Shakespeare began to write his plays, inquiry was an essential part of dramatic construction. So Juliet asks, "What's in a name?" 6 Hamlet opens with the question: "Who's [End Page 540] there?" (1.1.1), and achieves a kind of apotheosis in the figure of its hero: "To be, or not to be, that is the question..." (3.1.55). Everyone recognizes these familiar questions, and we know (or think we know) how to describe the most viable answers. I want to suggest, however, that this familiarity has dulled our appreciation of the drama's interrogative range. As a way of resisting this tendency, I want to argue that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet takes up an ancient conversation about motion, a dialog that originates with the pre-Socratics. This is not to say that the play is ultimately about motion. It obviously engages a panoply of thematic materials. I have simply chosen, in this limited space, to concentrate on the way the playwright stages his questioning as a kind of fencing lesson. My goal is to produce neither a "reading" of the play nor an allegory of philosophy, but rather to recollect the ways in which Shakespeare's drama qualifies and extends an ancient interrogative tradition. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell who maintains "that Shakespeare could not be who he is—the burden of the name of the greatest writer in the language, the creature of the greatest ordering of English—unless his writing is engaging the depth of the philosophical preoccupations of his culture." 7Some of the most venerable documents of Western philosophy fix on the problem of motion. If we go back more than 2,300 years, we come upon Plato's Theaetetus, in which Socrates explains a "first principle" to the title character, namely that "the universe really is motion and nothing else." 8 A kind of history lesson in ontology and epistemology, this tentative explanation has its origins in Heraclitus or Empedocles or Protagoras or some combination of the aforementioned. Perhaps the most famous expression of this ideal comes from Heraclitus: "You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on." 9 More to the point is the following declaration from the same philosopher: "Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed." 10 In this spirit, Protagoras declares, "All matter is in a state of flux." 11 Such precedents provide the backdrop for Socrates in the Theaetetus as he summarizes: "The point is that all these things are, as we were saying, in motion, but there is a quickness or slowness in their motion" (Thea, 156c). In this historical spirit, he identifies "a tradition from the ancients, who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures, that Oceanus and Tethys, the source of all things, are flowing streams and nothing is at rest" (Thea, 180d–e).To... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Motion and Mercutio in Romeo and JulietDaryl W. PalmerThere is nothing permanent that is not true, what can be true that is uncertaine? How can that be certaine, that stands upon uncertain grounds? 1It is by now a commonplace in modern scholarship that drama, particularly Tudor drama, poses questions, rehearses familiar debates, and even speculates about mere possibilities. 2 In 1954, Madeleine Doran spelled out some of the ways (...) in which debate "affected the structure of Elizabethan drama." 3 In turn, Joel B. Altman, having eloquently extended Doran's examination, concludes that "the plays functioned as media of intellectual and emotional exploration for minds that were accustomed to examine the many sides of a given theme, to entertain opposing ideals, and by so exercising the understanding, to move toward some fuller apprehension of truth that could be discerned only through the total action of the drama." 4 Altman points to Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres (c. 1490) as an exemplar of this practice. Although the interlude instructs and entertains, "the center of interest has shifted from demonstration to inquiry. The action develops not from an abstract assertion, but from a specific question: who is the nobler man, Cornelius or Gaius?" 5 By the time William Shakespeare began to write his plays, inquiry was an essential part of dramatic construction. So Juliet asks, "What's in a name?" 6 Hamlet opens with the question: "Who's [End Page 540] there?" (1.1.1), and achieves a kind of apotheosis in the figure of its hero: "To be, or not to be, that is the question..." (3.1.55). Everyone recognizes these familiar questions, and we know (or think we know) how to describe the most viable answers. I want to suggest, however, that this familiarity has dulled our appreciation of the drama's interrogative range. As a way of resisting this tendency, I want to argue that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet takes up an ancient conversation about motion, a dialog that originates with the pre-Socratics. This is not to say that the play is ultimately about motion. It obviously engages a panoply of thematic materials. I have simply chosen, in this limited space, to concentrate on the way the playwright stages his questioning as a kind of fencing lesson. My goal is to produce neither a "reading" of the play nor an allegory of philosophy, but rather to recollect the ways in which Shakespeare's drama qualifies and extends an ancient interrogative tradition. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell who maintains "that Shakespeare could not be who he is—the burden of the name of the greatest writer in the language, the creature of the greatest ordering of English—unless his writing is engaging the depth of the philosophical preoccupations of his culture." 7Some of the most venerable documents of Western philosophy fix on the problem of motion. If we go back more than 2,300 years, we come upon Plato's Theaetetus, in which Socrates explains a "first principle" to the title character, namely that "the universe really is motion and nothing else." 8 A kind of history lesson in ontology and epistemology, this tentative explanation has its origins in Heraclitus or Empedocles or Protagoras or some combination of the aforementioned. Perhaps the most famous expression of this ideal comes from Heraclitus: "You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on." 9 More to the point is the following declaration from the same philosopher: "Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed." 10 In this spirit, Protagoras declares, "All matter is in a state of flux." 11 Such precedents provide the backdrop for Socrates in the Theaetetus as he summarizes: "The point is that all these things are, as we were saying, in motion, but there is a quickness or slowness in their motion" (Thea, 156c). In this historical spirit, he identifies "a tradition from the ancients, who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures, that Oceanus and Tethys, the source of all things, are flowing streams and nothing is at rest" (Thea, 180d–e).To... (shrink)

Books Reviewed in this Article: Transforming Bible Study. By Walter Wink. Pp.175, London, SCM Press, 1981, £3.50. Isaiah 1–39. By R.E. Clements. Pp.xvi. 301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1980, £3.95. Isaiah 40–66. By R.N. Whybray. Pp.301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1975, Reprinted 1981, £3.95. Die Gestalt Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien. By Heinrich Kahlefeld. Pp.264, Frankfurt, Verlag Josef Knecht, 1981, no price given. Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. By Ernest Best. Pp.283, Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1981, (...) £15.00, £5.95. The Origin of Paul's Gospel. By Seyoon Kim. Pp.xii, 391, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1981, 78 DM. An die Römer. By Ernst Käsemann. Pp.xvi, 411, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1980, 48 DM. Les Récits de Resurrection des Morts dans le Nouveau Testament. By Gerard Rochais. Pp.xv, 252, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £15.00. Prêtres Anciens, Prétre Nouveau selon le Nouveau Testament. By Albert Vanhoye. Pp.366, Paris Editions du Seuil, 1980, no price given. Woman in the World of Jesus. By Evelyn and Frank Stagg. Pp.292, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1981, no price given. Jesus, Man and the Church. By Karl Rahner. Pp.260, London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, £14.50. Jesus Lord and Savior: A Theopathic Christology and Soteriology. By William M. Thompson. Pp.ix, 287, Leominster, Fowler Wright, 1981, £7.45. God and World in Schleiermacher's ‘Dialektik’ and ‘Glaubenslehre’. Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics. By John E. Thiel. Pp.xiv, 239, Bern, Frankfurt and Las Vegas, Peter Lang, 1981, SF 49.50. Ministry: A Case for Change. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Pp.ix, 165, London, SCM Press, 1981, £4.95. The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology. Edited by Michael J. Taylor. Pp.274, New York, Alba House, 1981, $7.95. Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith. A Report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England. Pp.ix, 310, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.50. Confessing the Faith in the Church of England Today. By R.T. Beckwith. Pp.36, Oxford, La timer House, 1981, £1.00. A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. By J.I. Packer. Pp.39, Oxford, Latimer House, 1981, £1.00. Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the Christian Faith. By Anthony Hanson and Richard Hanson. Pp.xii, 283, Oxford University Press, 1981, £8.50. Doctrine in the Church of England. The 1938 Report with a new introduction by G.W.H. Lampe. Pp.lx, 242, London, SPCK, 1982, £8.50. The Divine Right of the Papacy in Recent Ecumenical Theology. By J. Michael Miller. Pp.xvi, 322, Rome, Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1980, 18,000 Lire. Der heilige Geist in der Theologie von Heribert Mühlen: Versucheiner Darstellung und Würdigung. By John B. Banawiratma. Pp.ix, 310, Frankfurt and Bern: Peter D. Lang, 1981, SFr. 60.00. Standing Before God: Studies on Prayer in Scriptures and Tradition with Essays in Honor of John M. Oesterreicher. Edited by Asher Frinkel and Lawrence Frizzell. Pp.410, New York, Ktav Publishing House, 1981, $29.50. Judaism and Healing. By J. David Bleich. Pp.xiii, 199, New York, Ktav, 1981, $15.00. The Diversity of Moral Thinking. By Neil Cooper. Pp.x, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1981, £15.00. L'Homme: Sujet ou Objet? By Jacques Croteau. Pp.260, Montreal, Bellarmin: Tournai, Desclée et Cie, 1981, $15.00. The Texture of Knowledge: An Essay on Religion and Science. By James W. Jones. Pp.97, Washington, University Press of America, 1981, no price given. Cosmos and Creator. By Stanley L. Jaki. Pp.xii, 168, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1980, £6.75. Dante, Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. By Patrick Boyde. Pp.vii, 408, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £30.00. Dissidence et Philosophie au Mayen Âge. By E.L. Fortin. Pp.201, Montreal, Bellarmin, 1981, $12.00. The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton. By Richard Acworth. Pp.x, 388, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1979, 74 DM. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought. By David Miller. Pp.xii, 218, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £15.00. Hegelianism. By John Edward Toews. Pp.x, 450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £25.00. One Hundred Years of Thomism. Edited by V.B. Brezik. Pp.210, Houston, Centre for Thomistic Studies, 1981, no price given. Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. By J.V. Femia. Pp.xiii, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £17.50. Greek and Roman Slavery. By Thomas Wiedemann. Pp.xvi, 284, London, Croom Helm, 1981, £10.95, £5.95. Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves. Edited by Ann Williams. Pp.x, 355, London, Longman, 1980, £25.00. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate. By Felicity Heal. Pp.xv, 353, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £17.50. Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe. By Michael Mullett. Pp.xxiv, 193, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1980, £10.50. The Jesuits. By J.C.H. Aveling. Pp.390, London, Blond and Briggs, 1981, £16.95. The Beginnings of Ideology. By Donald R. Kelley. Pp.xv, 351, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £24.00. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. By J.C. Davis. Pp.x, 427, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £25.00. Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979. By Hansjakob Stehle. Pp.466, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981, £16.20, £8.10. Structuralism or Criticism? By Geoffrey Strickland. Pp.viii, 209, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £17.50. The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert. By Robert B. Shaw. Pp.xiii, 123, Cambridge, Mass., Cowley Publications, 1981, $5.00. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Edited by Frank Whaling. Pp.xx, 412, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.95. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. By Robert D. Pelton. Pp.312, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, £15.00. (shrink)

The Franciscan Geraldus Odonis (d. 1349) presented his indivisibilist theory of continua in Paris at a time when similar theses were advanced in the studia across the Channel. The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Henry of Harclay (d. 1317), caused considerable stir among his colleagues by endorsing a mathematical atomism, and his most famous follower, Walter Chatton, O. F. M., developed his brand of atomism in the early 1320s. The present article focuses on one of the five different redactions (...) of Odonis’s famous question De continuo, preserved in his commentary on Book ii of Peter Lombard’s Sentences (d. 44, q. 4). The first part of the article examines the main differences between the various redactions of the question De continuo. The second part explores the philosophical content and the circumstances surrounding the redaction found in Book ii of Odonis’s Sentences commentary. While acknowledging that Odonis’s atomism is similar to Harclay’s, it is argued that Odonis’s theory is a significant departure from the type of atomism espoused by Harclay. The Appendix provides the first complete critical edition of the said redaction of Odonis’s question De continuo. (shrink)

Although the idea of constitutionalism has been widely discussed and in fact, most countries in the world have a written Constitution, it is still an in- teresting question whether Constitutions are legitimate, topic that is ad- dressed in this study. The article, through a detailed analysis of the main arguments in favor and against constitutionalism, examines the main moral concerns regarding legitimacy of Constitutions.

The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another requires a rulegoverned institutional setting. To have authority is to have power, in the juridical sense of the term, and power can only be conferred by norms constituting it. Power conferring norms are essentially institutional, and the obligation to comply with a legitimate authority’s decree is, first and foremost, institutional in nature. Thus, the main argument presented in this essay is that an explanation of practical authorities is a (...) two-stage affair: the special, practical import of an authority can only be explained on the background of an institutional setting which constitutes the authority’s power and the corresponding obligation to comply. However, this obligation is not an all things considered obligation, it is conditioned on reasons to participate in the relevant institution or practice. A complete account of the reasons to regard authoritative decisions as binding must also rely on the reasons for having the institution or practice in question and the kind of authoritative structure that it has. This argument is presented here on the background of a critique of two alternative accounts, Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority and Stephen Darwall’s second personal standpoint account. (shrink)

One of several life-affirming themes in Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning is the inviolate character of human freedom. Contrasting what he calls “inner freedom” with the dire external restrictions he experienced as a prisoner at Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Frankl insists that no matter how restrictive and dehumanizing one’s situation, the exercise of this internal freedom is always a possibility. Similar sentiments are found in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. Though it contains elements of a typical 1980s (...) American action movie, on closer inspection, Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1985 film, Runaway Train, proves far from typical. In interviews, Konchalovsky draws parallels between the film—based on an original screenplay by Akira Kurosawa—and philosophical themes in Dostoyevsky, and identifies the “relativity of freedom” as one of its primary concerns. My article uses Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train to shed light on the hard-won vision of the inviolate nature of human freedom on display in Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. (shrink)

Using semiotic and historical methods, the article recovers the ancient Russian concept of ‘state’, which appeared and gained a foothold in the Russian social and cultural space in the fourteen and fifteenth centuries. In the authors’ opinions, this content has determined the basic features for understanding the State in modern post-Soviet Russian society to date. Accordingly, it is important to reassemble the main conceptual threads in the ‘state’ concept during the epoch of Ivan the Terrible, the Muscovite Tsar, the epoch (...) when the ‘state’ concept gained a foothold in Russian political culture. To re-establish the content of the ‘state’ concept, a historical description, an etymological and comparative analysis of this concept, as well as content analysis of the first epistle from Tsar Ivan the Terrible to Duke Andrei Kurbsky were employed. As a result, it was possible to recover the aspects of the ‘state’ concept that continue to be reproduced in post-Soviet Russian culture and predetermine certain elements of modern Russia’s political outlook. This concerns the central role of the ‘sovereign ruler’ in the State, the ideal of the ideological unity, the State’s mission of mediation between man and God, the hierarchy of the State and the sacral role of the ruler at the peak of this hierarchy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of HobbesWilliam WalkerReason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner; xvi & 477 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, $49.95.Having shown in his earlier work how the classical Roman texts on rhetoric governed to an important extent the formulation of republican ideas in Italian Renaissance and therefore modern political thought, Skinner now returns to these texts in order to (...) treat more comprehensively one of the major subjects of his research over the last thirty years—Thomas Hobbes. Determined to understand not so much what Hobbes’s writings mean as what Hobbes is doing, what “traditions he reacts against, what lines of argument he takes up, what changes he introduces into existing debates” (p. 8), Skinner devotes the entire first half of the book to “classical eloquence in Renaissance England” (p. 17). Citing mainly the Ad Herennium and the texts on rhetoric by Cicero and Quintilian, he provides a superb account of the classical Roman theory of persuasive speaking, as well as the ideal of citizenship which underlies it: for the Romans, the vir civilis, the good citizen, is the virtuous, wise, rational man [End Page 204] who exercises his mastery of the art of rhetoric to serve his community by pleading for just verdicts in the courts and beneficial policies in the assemblies. Citing the Tudor humanists who were instituting and teaching at the grammar schools, but also several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English rhetoricians, poets, and prose writers, Skinner then observes how this classical theory of persuasion and its ideal of citizenship achieved “widespread currency” (p. 1) in England and served as the foundation for “the rhetorical culture of Renaissance humanism” (p. 250).It is in relation to this culture, Skinner insists in the second part of the book, that Hobbes must be understood. For although, as many have pointed out, Hobbes’s thinking was in part formed by the scientific developments of the century, “his intellectual formation was overwhelmingly indebted not to the culture of science but to the humanist literary culture” (p. 216). But this is not to say that Hobbes abides peacefully within this culture. After observing how his education, career, and publications up to 1640 are those of the “typical Renaissance humanist” (p. 217), Skinner argues that in his two major works of the early 1640s, Hobbes powerfully repudiates the entire classical theory of eloquence and its ideal of the vir civilis. For in The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes claims to have made the study of moral and political theory into a scientific discipline. On the basis of this assertion, Skinner argues, Hobbes claims that reason unaided by eloquence is sufficient to persuade others of the truths of civil science, that eloquent men have not sustained but destroyed civil life, and that the most important duties of citizenship lie in the private sphere. In short, “Hobbes’s argument culminates in a view of citizenship and its obligations diametrically opposed to the image of the vir civilis” (p. 291). He does so, moreover, in prose which studiously avoids the invocation of commonplaces and authorities, the establishment of any ethos, the manipulation of definitions, the redescription of vices as virtues and virtues as vices (paradiastole), and the tropes and figures—Hobbes practices the repudiation of rhetoric he preaches.But then there is Leviathan (1651). Responding primarily out of his understanding of how Presbyterian and House of Commons demagogues incited civil war, Hobbes in his most celebrated work “reverts to the typically humanist assumption that, if we are to succeed in persuading others to accept our arguments, we shall have to supplement the findings of reason with the moving force of eloquence” (p. 426). Though he continues to understand himself transforming politics and morality into a scientific discipline, Hobbes ultimately reaffirms the premises of the rhetorical culture that produced him and that he repudiated in his first major political works. And though he continues to be critical of commonplaces, reliance on authorities, and tropes and figures, Hobbes in this work again practices what he preaches. In the final chapter of the book, Skinner meticulously documents how Hobbes uses the tropes and... (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Paisley Livingston, ‘Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy’, Philosophy Compass 3/4 (2008): 509–603, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2008.00158.x Author’s Introduction The idea that films can be philosophical, or in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, has recently found a number of prominent proponents. What is at stake here is generally more than the tepid claim that some documentaries about philosophy and related topics convey philosophically relevant content. Instead, the contention is that cinematic fictions, including popular movies such as The (...) Matrix, make significant contributions to philosophy. Various more specific claims are linked to this basic idea. One, relatively weak, but pedagogically important observation is that some films can be used to provide philosophy students with vivid and thought‐provoking illustrations of philosophical issues. Film screenings stimulate discussion and may motivate renewed engagement with difficult philosophical texts. A stronger contention, however, seeks to link innovative and philosophically valuable thinking to ‘the film itself’ or to the ‘specificity of the cinematic medium’. Such claims raise interesting questions, including questions about the status of the increasingly prevalent philosophically motivated interpretations of particular movies. Who is actually doing the philosophizing in such cases? Is it the audio‐visual display, the film‐maker, or the philosopher who devises an interpretation of the work? What is the role of specifically cinematic devices in the philosophical points made in such interpretations? Is there any tension between the goal of appreciating a film as a work of art and the goal of arguing that a film has significant implications for a position on a problem in philosophy? A course in the general area of cinema as philosophy can focus on issues related to the locus and status of cinematic philosophizing. It can also delve into specific films and film‐makers and philosophically oriented interpretations of specific philosophical topics, such as personal identity. Issues pertaining to interpretation, meaning, and authorship can be usefully investigated in this connection, as can topics in meta‐philosophy related to the very nature of philosophical insight or knowledge. Author Recommends Carroll, Noël and Jinhee Choi, eds. 2008. The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, Part VIII: Film and Knowledge. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 381–405. Inclues a brief introduction by Carroll followed by papers by Bruce Russell, Karen Hanson, and Lester H. Hunt. Kania, Andrew, ed. 2009. Memento. London: Routledge. A number of philosophers elucidate philosophical themes in Memento and discuss more general issues pertaining to cinema’s philosophical significance. Livingston, Paisley. 2009. Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Part 1 surveys arguments surrounding the cinema as philosophy theme, providing detailed criticisms of some of the bold theses in this area. Part 2 discusses issues related to cinematic authorship and the status of philosophically motivated interpretations of works of fiction, arguing for a partial intentionalist account of a work’s meanings. Part 3 illustrates the intentionalist principles in a discussion of Ingmar Bergman’s philosophical sources, providing insight into themes of motivated irrationality, inauthenticity, and self‐knowledge in some of Bergman’s works. Livingston, Paisley and Carl Plantinga, eds. 2009. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Part IV: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge. 547–659. Offers a succinct survey by Wartenberg as well as entries on Ingmar Bergman, Terrence Malick, and Andrei Tarkovsky, discussions of film and specific philosophical topics (morality, skepticism, personal identity, and practical wisdom), and examples of philosophically motivated interpretations of three specific films: The Five Obstructions, Gattaca, and Memento. Smith, Murray and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds. 2006. Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. A collection of papers that combines essays devoted to general positions on the cinema as philosophy topic as well as specific interpretations of works in different genres. Turvey, Malcolm. 2008. Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A probing critical investigation into the assumptions underlying influential philosophical claims about the epistemic value of cinema. Wartenberg, Thomas E. 2008. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge. Ably surveys and responds to arguments against the idea that films can ‘do philosophy’. It defends a conditionalist form of intentionalism in response to the ‘imposition objection’ according to which it is only the commentator who reads philosophical themes ‘into’ the movie; illustrates the favored account of film as philosophy with interpretations of specific cinematic fictions. Online Materials Film‐Philosophy Founded in 1996, this peer‐reviewed online journal is dedicated to philosophically oriented interpretations of films and cinema studies more generally. The e‐mail salon encourages discussion of related topics. Includes essays, festival reports, calls for papers, conference and job information, and book reviews. The archive includes contributions from 1997 to the present. Wartenberg, Thomas E. ‘Philosophy of Film.’The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; A brief survey of a range of issues in the philosophy of cinema including a few paragraphs on the film as philosophy topic. Philosophical Films A briefly annotated list of philosophical films grouped in rubrics such as ‘The Meaning of Life’ and ‘Environmental Ethics’. Sample Syllabus What follows is a 4‐week ‘start‐up module’ followed by samples of optional units that focus on particular topics and cinematic examples. Introductory Module Week I: Introduction & Overview Livingston, Paisley. ‘Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy.’Philosophy Compass 3 (2008): 1–14, 20 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2008.00158.x). Wartenberg, Thomas E. 2009. ‘Film as Philosophy.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Ed. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 549–59. Russell, Bruce. 2008. ‘The Philosophical Limits of Film.’The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology. Ed. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 387–390. Week II: The Bold Thesis on Film as Philosophy Reading: Livingston, Paisley, ‘Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.’Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman, Chapter One. 11–38. Screening: October (dir. Sergei Eisenstein 1928). Week III: Debating the Bold Thesis: The Case of October Carroll, Noël. 1998. ‘For God and Country.’Interpreting the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 80–91. Smuts, Aaron. 2009. ‘Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67:4: 409–20. Week IV: Cinema as Philosophy: Objections and Replies Livingston, Paisley. 2009. ‘Arguing over Cinema as Philosophy.’Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman, Chapter Two. 39–59. Additional Optional Units Depending on the instructor’s areas of interest and expertise, any of the following units could be added (and in some cases, easily expanded into longer segments). The Case of Ingmar Bergman Livingston, Paisley. 2009. ‘Ingmar Bergman.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 560–568. Screening(s): Wild Strawberries (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1957), or The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1957), or Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1966). Skepticism Fumerton, Richard. 2009. ‘Skepticism.’ In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 601–10. Screening: The Matrix (dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski 1999) or Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven 1990). Ethics Kupfer, Joseph. 1999. Visions of Virtue in Popular Film. Boulder, CO: Westview. 35–60. Falzon, Chris. 2009. ‘Why be Moral?’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 591–599. Screening: Groundhog Day (dir. Harold Ramis 1993), or Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen 1989), or Hollow Man (dir. Paul Verhoeven 2000). Personal Identity Knight, Deborah. 2009. ‘Personal Identity.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 611–619. Hanley, Richard. 2009. ‘Memento and Personal Identity: Are We Getting it Backwards?’Memento. Ed. Andrew Kania. London: Routledge. 107–126. Martin, Raymond. 2009. ‘The Value of Memory: Reflections on Memento.’Memento. Ed. Andrew Kania. London: Routledge. 87–106. Screening: Memento (dir. Christopher Nolan 2000). Freedom and (Genetic) Determinism Sesardic, Neven. 2009. ‘Gattaca.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 641–649. Screening: Gattaca (dir. Andrew Niccol 1997). Focus Questions • Is there anything special about the experience of fiction films that is especially well suited to the stimulation of worthwhile philosophical reflection? • Have any novel and philosophically significant ideas found their first expression in a cinematic work? • Under what circumstances can the film medium be used as an expression of a cinematic author’s views? • What sort of background knowledge has to be in place for a film to be interpreted as articulating reasonably precise philosophical theses and arguments? • Does the goal of spelling out a film’s philosophical meaning sometimes conflict with the goal of appreciating its value as a work of art? (shrink)

We review the psychological literature on the organization of valence, discussing theoretical perspectives that favor a single dimension of valence, multiple valence dimensions, and positivity and negativity as dynamic and flexible properties of mental experience that are contingent upon context. Turning to the neuroscience literature that spans three levels of analysis, we discuss how positivity and negativity can be represented in the brain. We show that the evidence points toward both separable and overlapping brain systems that support affective processes depending (...) on the level of resolution studied. We move from large-scale brain networks that underlie generalized processing, to functionally specific subcircuits, finally to intraregional neuronal distributions, where the organization and interaction across levels allow for multiple types of valence and mixed evaluations. (shrink)

This Festschrift in Professor Kristeller’s honor consists of contributions by scholars who have had some connection with Columbia University, his "intellectual home in the United States for three decades." It also includes a Tabula Gratulatoria listing many other friends from the United States and Europe. The editor’s opening essay provides an interesting and informative account of this scholar’s academic career, and should be read together with the complete annotated bibliography of his publications through 1974. The latter lists 149 "major publications" (...) and 220 "minor publications." Kristeller’s contributions to the history of Renaissance philosophy are well known to historians of philosophy, and deservedly so. Here reference should be made to his groundbreaking studies on Marsilio Ficino and Pomponazzi, and on others such as Pico della Mirandola and Petrarch, as well as on Renaissance Platonism, Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, Thomism in the Renaissance, Paduan Averroism, and Alexandrism. But he has also contributed greatly to the fields of medieval and Renaissance history, and especially to our understanding of Renaissance humanism, Renaissance music, and Renaissance art. He is universally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on manuscript research, as is witnessed, for example, by the cooperative project, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, which he founded, and by his Iter ltalicum. In all of these enterprises he has set an enviable example for other scholars by the exacting standards and the breadth of his expertise. It is only fitting, then, that the many essays in this Festschrift should reflect the breadth and depth of the scholarship so evident in the man to whom they are dedicated. Limitations of space will only permit us to list them here, with a few remarks reserved for those of more special interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "The De magia naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples" ; Donald R. Kelley, "Louis Le Caron Philosophe", on Le Caron’s effort to bring together jurisprudence and classical, especially Platonic, philosophy; Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance", with fascinating material about theories concerning men before Adam in La Peyrère and widely scattered earlier sources; Richard Lemay, "The Fly against the Elephant: Flandinus against Pomponazzi on Fate", on an unedited attack by an Augustinian Bishop against Pomponazzi’s espousal of the Stoic doctrine of fate; Martin Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Medieval Tradition of God’s Foreknowledge", on Pomponazzi’s solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom inlight of his familiarity with earlier discussions by Boethius, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham; F. Edward Cranz, "Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes", helpful to all who wish to consult late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century versions of the Latin Aristotle and especially the Latin Averroes; Josef Soudek, "A Fifteenth-Century Humanistic Bestseller: The Manuscript Diffusion of Leonardo Bruni’s Annotated Latin Version of the Aristotelian Economics" ; Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality", which details a radical shift on Vernia’s part from an earlier Averroistic reading of Aristotle; Joan Kelly-Gadol, "Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter-Reformation", which attempts to account for some of the shifts and inconsistencies in Campanella’s political writings by placing them within the troubled personal and political circumstances of his life; Charles Trinkaus, "Protagoras in the Renaissance: An Exploration" ; Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "Voluptas, molle quoddam et non invidiosum nomen: Lorenzo Valla’s Defense of voluptas in the Preface to his De voluptate" ; Neal W. Gilbert, "Richard de Bury and the ‘Quires of Yesterday’s Sophisms"’, with much interesting material on the medieval tradition of sophismata, especially at Oxford; Malcolm Brown, "A Pre-Aristotelian Mathematician on Deductive Order" ; John H. Randall, Jr., "Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered", on evidence for influence of the Italian Aristotelian tradition on Galileo; William F. Edwards, "Niccoló Leoniceno and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method" ; C. Doris Hellman, "A Poem on the Occasion of the Nova of 1572" ; Edward Rosen, "Kepler’s Mastery of Greek" ; W. T. H. Jackson, "The Politics of a Poet: The Archipoeta as Revealed by his Imagery" ; John Charles Nelson, "Love and Sex in the Decameron" ; George B. Parks, "Pico della Mirandola in Tudor Translation" ; Richard Harrier, "Invention in Tudor Literature: Historical Perspectives" ; Helene Wieruszowski, "Jacob Burckhardt and Vespasiano da Bisticci " ; Morimichi Watanabe, "Gregor Heimburg and Early Humanism in Germany" ; Raymond de Roover, "Cardinal Cajetan on ‘Cambium’ or Exchange Dealings" ; and a series of text editions with introductions including Julius Kirshner, "Conscience and Public Finance: A Questio disputata of John of Legnano on the Public Debt of Genoa" ; John Mundy, "The Origins of the College of Saint-Raymond at the University of Toulouse" ; Charles B. Schmitt, "Girolamo Borro’s Multae sunt nostrarum ignorantionum causae " ; Guido Kisch, "An Unpublished Consiliumof Johannes Sichardus" ; Patricia H. Labalme, "The Last Will of a Venetian Patrician " ; Felix Gilbert, "The Last Will of a Venetian Grand Chancellor" ; Herbert S. Matsen, "Giovanni Garzoni to Alessandro Achillini : An Unpublished Letter and Defense" ; Theodore E. James, "A Fragment of An Exposition of the First Letter of Seneca to Lucilius Attributed to Peter of Mantua". The editor, his collaborators, and the contributors are all to be commended for the high quality of this volume.—J.F.W. (shrink)

The paper is one of the four central texts where Clifford Geertz summarized his ideas. Geertz suggests an understanding of art as a social phenomenon and gives a social anthropological account of aesthetic experience. In opposition to structuralism, which analyzes art as a closed sign system developing according to its inherent logic, and to radical functionalism, which attempts to study art as if its main function was to maintain established institutions of culture, Geertz proposes to view a work of art (...) as a symbolical expression of the significant experience of its creator. In this case the ability of aesthetic perception of the work of art is treated as the ability to recognize the symbols it contains — the ability that results from involvement in the relevant cultural practices. Author illustrates his argument by the examples from the studies of that time: studies of Abelam tribe of New Guinea, Yoruba people of Western Africa, Quattrocento Italia, and modern Morocco. (shrink)

This paper considers ways in which rulers can respond to, generate, or exploit fear of COVID-19 infection for various ends, and in particular distinguishes between ‘fear-invoking’ and ‘fear-minimising’ strategies. It examines historical precedent for executive overreach in crises and then moves on to look in more detail at some specific areas where fear is being mobilised or generated: in ways that lead to the suspension of civil liberties; that foster discrimination against minorities; and that boost the personality cult of leaders (...) and limit criticism or competition. Finally, in the Appendix, we present empirical work, based on the results of an original survey in Brazil, that provides support for the conjectures in the previous sections. While it is too early to tell what the longer-term outcomes of the changes we note will be, our purpose here is simply to identify some warning signs that threaten the key institutions and values of democracy. (shrink)