This essay seeks to examine the problem of explaining religious phenomena which appear very strange by focusing on a specific example, the Aztec complex of human sacrifice and cannibalism which reached its greatest intensity in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Three scholarly approaches to this complex are described and evaluated in regard to explanatory power and evidential support: an approach which explicates the Aztecs' own mythic self-understanding ; an approach which tries to identify conscious and rational policy choices (...) on the part of Aztec leaders ; a materialist approach emphasizing ecological factors that sustained human sacrifice and cannibalism .Though each of these explanatory strategies achieves some success, our puzzlement about Aztec human sacrifice and cannibalism persists. These efforts to make Aztec beliefs and practices appear coherent or rational do not keep them from being an affront to our notions of what it is to be human or overcome our surprise at horrendous violence inflicted without apparent hatred of the victims. There remains little danger that we shall explain away either Aztec violence or any other religious phenomenon. (shrink)

At the end of the sixteenth century, Friar Juan de Torquemada watched the game of volador on the central plaza in Mexico. At the top of a pole some twenty meters high there was a small pivoting platform. Four ropes were wound around the top of the pole and held in place by a wooden frame. Five men dressed in feathery costumes making them look like birds climbed up the shaft. One of them reached the narrow platform and began to (...) dance. Then the other four bird-men tied themselves to the ends of the ropes and plunged into space, head down, held by the ropes around their waists. This initiated a spectacular circular flight in ever widening rings as the cords unwound. They straightened up only at the last moment, just in time to put their feet on the ground, dizzy and staggering. But on that particular day, one of the dancers was not to straighten himself up. The rope had been badly attached and broke, dropping the man like a heavy mass to the ground, lifeless. The Franciscan at once used this as an argument to demand that the Viceroy prohibit this game. But the civil authorities refused to do so, to the monk's great consternation. (shrink)

By applying diverse approaches to study the Aztec gods, light can be shed on different aspects of their personalities. In this article the cognitive theory of conceptual blending, developed by Fauconnier and Turner, is applied. In this perspective the functioning of the human mind is viewed as being grounded on the constant blending of mental spaces, a process that, in turn, makes new mental spaces emerge. After briefly reviewing the attempts to apply this theory to the ritual domain in general, (...) I consider two types of Aztec rituals, one dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc, and the other to Xochiquetzal, the goddess of seduction. I show the importance of the compression of time in the blending process that condenses three moments: mythical time, ritual time and the immediate future. The capability of the gods to subvert the lineal passage of time and to compress past, present and future stands out as a one of the chief characteristics highlighting the advantages found by applying Blending-Theory. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Aztecs and Their Kings Nezahualcoyotl: Renaissance Man of Aztec Culture The Uses of Nezahualcoyotl: Bridging Spanish and Aztec Cultures Nezahualcoyotl's Place, and the Place of Gardens, in Aztec Political History Texcotzingo Notes.

This article is a review essay on James Maffie's recent book titled Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion. I try to understand the nature and significance of Aztec philosophy when interpreted as a version of process philosophy.

Winner of the American Philosophical Association’s 2019 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought | Western imperialism has received many different types of moral-political justifications, but one of the most historically influential justifications appeals to an allegedly universal form of human nature. In the early modern period this traditional conception of human nature—based on a Western archetype, e.g. Spanish, Dutch, British, French, German—opens up a logical space for considering the inhabitants of previously unknown lands as having a ‘less-than-human’ nature. This appeal (...) to human nature originally found its inspiration in the philosophy of Aristotle, whose ethical thought pervaded the work of European philosophers at the outset of the early modern period and the modern age of empire. Indeed some Spanish writers—most famously, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (b. 1494)—explicitly appealed to Aristotle’s moral-political philosophy in order to justify the conquest of the Americas in the early sixteenth century, for instance to justify war against the Aztecs and other indigenous peoples. At the time of European arrival, the Aztec civilization was easily the greatest in Mesoamerica—and yet the Europeans generally considered the Aztec people to be ‘barbaric,’ i.e. less-than-fully-human. (shrink)

This essay takes a first step in comparative ethics by looking to Aristotle and the Aztec's conceptions of the good life. It argues that the Aztec conception of a rooted life, neltiliztli, functions for ethical purposes in a way that is like Aristotle's eudaimonia. To develop this claim, it not only shows just in what their conceptions of the good consist, but also in what way the Aztecs conceived of the virtues (in qualli, in yectli).

Hermeneutic philosophy, and Paul Ricoeur’s formulation of hermeneutics in particular, faces a serious challenge, not from external sources, but from internal proponents of the program. In what might be called the Collapse Challenge, Ricoeur’s understanding of the hermeneutic circle is criticized for making use of structuralist methods that are no longer considered viable. Rather than look to replace Ricoeur’s work with an external model, the present essay draws on his late model of translation to suggest two viable paths forward beyond (...) the Collapse Challenge. To develop these paths, the essay gives two concrete cases, one using Confucian philosophy, which is comparative, another using Aztec philosophy, which is syncretic. (shrink)

A curious feature of Aztec philosophy is that the basic metaphysical question of the “Western” tradition cannot be formulated in their language, in Nahuatl. This did not, however, prevent the Aztecs from developing an account of 'reality', or whatever it is that might exist. The article is the first of its kind to compare the work of Aristotle on ousia (being) and the Aztecs on teotl and ometeotl. Through this analysis, it suggests that both of the Nahuatl terms (...) are fundamental for expressing the basic character of reality as process for the Aztecs. It also defends their notion as prima facia reasonable, despite its wide divergence from Aristotle's view. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Contact‐Period Indigenous Andean Philosophy Contact‐Era Aztec or Nahua Philosophy Conclusion References.

Zusammenfassung In der Debatte um die Integrität der Religionswissenschaft verteidigen einige Autoren angesichts der Dominanz metatheoretischer Reflexionen und diskursanalytischer Genealogien des Religionsbegriffs die außereuropäische Religionsgeschichte als Kerngeschäft der Disziplin. Statt die Bedeutung der Religionsgeschichte für die Theoriebildung hervorzuheben, stellt der Artikel die umgekehrte Frage: Welchen Nutzen haben neuere theoretische Ansätze wie Postkolonialismus, Diskurstheorie und Religionsästhetik für die konkrete religionshistorische Arbeit? Der aus diesen Ansätzen resultierende Perspektivwechsel wird am Beispiel aztekischer Göttervorstellungen diskutiert, konkret an León-Portillas dominanter Rekonstruktion eines aztekischen philosophischen Monotheismus. (...) Seine Interpretation wird postkolonial und diskursiv dekonstruiert und eine religionsästhetisch inspirierte Neuinterpretation eines Teilaspekts, dem Göttertitel Yohualli Ehecatl, vorgeschlagen. (shrink)

In this paper I critique two popular, non-scientific attitudes toward genetically engineered foods. In doing so, I will be employing the concepts of ambiguity, purity/impurity, control/resistance, and unity/diversity as developed by Latina feminist metaphysicians. I begin by casting a critical eye toward a specific anti-biotech account of transgenic food crops, an account that I will argue relies on an anti-feminist metaphysics. I then cast that same critical eye toward a specific pro-biotech account, arguing that it also relies on such an (...) anti-feminist metaphysics. I will argue further that this metaphysics yields a less accurate account of genetics. I end by arguing that if we adopt a Latina feminist metaphysics we can more accurately understand plants, genetics, and genetic engineering. (shrink)

With the originality and energy that have marked his earlier works, Eric Wolf now explores the historical relationship of ideas, power, and culture. Responding to anthropology's long reliance on a concept of culture that takes little account of power, Wolf argues that power is crucial in shaping the circumstances of cultural production. Responding to social-science notions of ideology that incorporate power but disregard the ways ideas respond to cultural promptings, he demonstrates how power and ideas connect through the medium of (...) culture. Wolf advances his argument by examining three very different societies, each remarkable for its flamboyant ideological expressions: the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, the Aztecs of pre-Hispanic Mexico, and National Socialist Germany. Tracing the history of each case, he shows how these societies faced tensions posed by ecological, social, political, or psychological crises, prompting ideological responses that drew on distinctive, historically rooted cultural understandings. In each case study, Wolf analyzes how the regnant ideology intertwines with power around the pivotal relationships that govern social labor. Anyone interested in the history of anthropology or in how the social sciences make comparisons will want to join Wolf in _Envisioning Power_. (shrink)

This article discusses the poem written by Joseph Brodsky shortly after the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s. It compares this poem with other pieces by the same author that deal with the paradigm of “independence vs. imperial unity.” These poems present a difference, which is striking at first glance: Brodsky welcomes Lithuanian independence, while simultaneously denying the same rights to Ukrainians and Aztecs. As for Afghanis … his disdain is even more palpable. The proposed explanation is (...) the concept of “Cultural Empire,” which the poet considers to be the ultimate good. This article briefly mentions the general problem of de-imperializing classical Russian literature in the context of post-colonial studies. (shrink)

This book introduces the central topics of the philosophical traditions of indigenous groups of North-Central America such as the Maya and Nahua (Aztecs), and the current state of the field. It includes references to and quotes from crucial primary and secondary literature in the area.

Can our cultural membership excuse us from responsibility for certain actions? Ought the Aztec priest be held responsible for murder, for instance, or does the fact that his ritual sacrifice is mandated by his culture excuse him from blame? Our intuitions here are mixed; the more distant, historically and geographically, we are from those whose actions are in question, the more likely we are to forgive them their acts, yet it is difficult to pinpoint why this distance should excuse. Up (...) close, historically or geographically, we tend to be less forgiving: few of us excuse the Taliban for what they did to women and homosexuals; and if there is less of an outcry concerning treatment not all that dissimilar in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, this is probably only because these actions are less well publicized. (shrink)

Histories of the conquest of America have long highlighted the role of wonder, possession, and desire in Spanish conceptions of the New World. Yet missing in these accounts is the role that studying nature played in shaping Spain’s imperial ethos. In the sixteenth century, Spanish missionaries revived the practice of natural history to trace the origins of New World nature. In their pursuit of the cultural meanings of natural landscapes, however, Spanish natural historians naturalized their own fears of the demonic. (...) In this article, I argue that naturalist inquiry served as an empirical and spiritual laboratory to develop a contentious narrative of political domination. I focus specifically on the writings of the missionary ethnographer, Bernardino de Sahagún, who compiled the first bilingual account of the peoples of the Aztec empire and used his immersion in Nahua culture to promote indigenous conversion to the Christian faith. Sahagún’s narrative techniques were aimed at the New World’s cultural regeneration, particularly through the study of nature. Yet his intellectual transformation during this journey bears surprising ideological paradoxes. Sahagún’s legacies therefore offer political theorists today a medium to rethink key historiographical assumptions about the anthropolitics of nature and the broader geopolitics of early modern political thought. (shrink)

This article contends that the influence of Australian rock musician Lobby Loyde has been overlooked by Australia’s popular music scholarship. The research examines Loyde’s significance and influence through the neglected sphere of his work (1966–1980) with The Coloured Balls, The Purple Hearts, The Wild Cherries, The Aztecs, Southern Electric, Sudden Electric and Rose Tattoo, and his role as producer in the late-1970s until his death. First, it explores how he has been discussed by his musical peers and respected Australian (...) rock historians. Second, it details Loyde’s musical origins and work with early bands during the period in which he was first referred to as Australia’s first guitar hero. Third, it investigates the career and influence of The Coloured Balls, their relationship with the 1970s youth subculture known as the ‘sharpies’, and the media-fuelled moral panic which surrounded both the band and the sharpies. Fourth, it assesses Loyde’s work as a producer in the 1980s, and late-in-life recognition by the Australian music industry. In doing so, the article shows the nature and importance of Loyde’s contribution to Australia’s popular music industry and discusses why he is only known to a strong but small fraction of the Australian public. (shrink)

Brief consideration of (1) Peirce’s ‘logic of vagueness’, (2) his categories, and (3) the concepts of overdetermination and underdetermination, vagueness and generality, and inconsistency and incompleteness, along with (4) the abrogation of classical Aristotelian principles of logic, bear out the complexity of all relatively rich sign systems. Given this complexity, there is semiotic indeterminacy, which suggests sign limitations, and at the same time it promises semiotic freedom, giving rise to sign proliferation the yield of which is pluralistic, inter-relational semiosis. This (...) proliferation of signs owes its perpetual flowing change in time to the inapplicability of classical logical principles, namely Non-Contradiction and Excluded-Middle, with respect to elements of vagueness and generality in all signs. Hempel’s ‘Inductivity Paradox’ and Goodman’s ‘New Riddle of Induction’ bear out the limitation and freedom of sign making and sign taking. A concrete cultural example, the Spaniards’ world including the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Aztecs world including their Goddess, Tonantzín, are given a Hempel-Goodman interpretation to reveal the ambiguous, vague, and complex nature of intercultural sign systems, further suggesting pluralism. In fact, when taking the ‘limitativetheorems’ of Gödel, Turing, and Chaitin into account, pluralism becomes undeniable, in view of the inconsistency-incompleteness of complex systems. A model for embracing and coping with pluralism suggests itself in the form of contextualized novelty seeking relativism. This form of pluralism takes overdetermination, largely characteristic of Peirce’s Firstness, and underdetermination largely characteristic of Peirce’s Thirdness, into its embrace to reveal a global context capable of elucidating local contexts the collection of which is considerably less than that global view. The entirety of this global context is impossible to encompass, given our inevitable finitude and fallibilism. Yet, we usually manage to cope with processual pluralism, within the play of semiosis. (shrink)

Sixteenth-century Nahua philosophy understands neltiliztli (truth) and tlamitilizli (wisdom, knowledge) nonsemantically in terms of a complex notion consisting of well-rootedness, alethia ,authenticity, adeptness, moral righteousness, beauty, and balancedness. In so doing, it offers compelling a posteriori grounds for denying what Alvin Goldman calls veritism .Veritism defends the universality of correspondence (semantic) truth as well as the universal centrality of correspondence (semantic) truth to epistemology. Key Words: truth • veritism • Nahua philosophy • Aztec philopsophy • mesoamerican philosophy • teotl • (...) Alvin Goldman • Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Movement is crucial to Merleau-Ponty’s effort to comprehend sense, meaning as generated within being. This requires a new concept of movement, not as a dislocation within an already determinate space- or time- frame, but as a deeper, more fundamental change that first engenders space and time as determinate contexts in which movement can follow a sensible course. This poses a novel challenge: conceptualizing determinate space and time as contingently arising from a deeper sort of change, which I call templacement. I (...) address this challenge by turning to the Mexica/Aztecs because the most basic term of their ontology is motion-change, and it is obvious to them that motion-change does not occur in an abstract space-time container. Instead, time-place is woven out of ‘prior’ motion-change. This study leads to a deeper lesson for phenomenology, regarding ‘obvious’ presuppositions about what time and philosophy obviously are – and how these presuppositions go hand in hand.La question du mouvement est cruciale dans l’effort de Merleau-Ponty pour comprendre le sens, la signification telle qu’elle se produit dans l’être. Cela requiert un nouveau concept du mouvement, qui n’est pas compris comme un déplacement dans un cadre spatial – ou temporel – prédéterminé, mais plutôt comme un changement plus profond et fondamental, qui, avant tout, produit l’espace et le temps comme des contextes déterminés dans lesquels le mouvement peut suivre un cours sensible. Cela pose un nouveau défi : conceptualiser un espace et un temps déterminés qui résulteraient, de manière contingente, d’un type de changement plus profond, que j’appellerai templacement. Je lance ce défi en me tournant vers les Mexicas/Aztèques parce que le terme le plus élémentaire de leur ontologie est le mouvement-changement, et il est naturel pour eux que le mouvement-changement n’ait pas lieu dans un conteneur spatio-temporel abstrait. Au contraire, le temps-lieu est tissé sans mouvement-changement « préalable ». Cette recherche conduit à un enseignement encore plus profond pour la phénoménologie, concernant au sujet des présupposition “évidentes” sur le temps et sur la philosophie, et elle nous montre aussi comment ces présuppositions sont étroitement liées.Il movimento è un elemento cruciale nello sforzo di Merleau-Ponty di comprendere il senso, il significato in quanto generato all’interno dell’essere. Questo sforzo richiede un nuovo concetto di movimento, da intendere non come movimento-spostamento nell’ambito di una cornice spazio-temporale predefinita, ma come più profondo e più fondamentale mutamento che inaugura lo spazio e il tempo, in quanto contesti nei quali il movimento stesso può esprimere una traiettoria dotata di senso. Si pone quindi una nuova sfida: quella di concettualizzare lo spazio e il tempo come generati da una forma più radicale di mutamento, che propongo di definire templacement. Per affrontare questa sfida, mi rivolgo ai Mexica/Aztechi poiché il termine più basilare della loro ontologia è quello del moto-mutamento, e poiché essi ritengono ovvio che questo moto-mutamento non si verifichi all’interno di un contenitore spazio-temporale astratto: al contrario, lo spazio-tempo è per loro un intreccio che risulta da un moto-mutamento “precedente”. Questo studio permette di ricavare una lezione più profonda per la fenomenologia, che concerne le sue “ovvie” presupposizioni riguardo a che cosa siano “ovviamente” il tempo e la filosofia – e a come queste presupposizioni siano strettamente connesse. (shrink)

The flames of Alexandria continue to rage. After twenty centuries, they still dazzle us, as though the Mouseion were the only massacred library. One would believe that Julius Caesar, Theophilus of Antioch and Omar (the three pyromaniacs, the pagan, the Christian and the Moslem) had had no predecessors or imitators. But the race of incendiaries is as numerous as the waves of the sea. It is monotonous, it is indestructible, it is equal to that of the ants. It was born (...) at the same time as the first Babylonian tablets. In 1988, it continues its work. All over the world and in all times, the incendiaries were there with their torches. They burned parchments, wood or clay tablets, leather manuscripts, papyrus or folios. The same warriors who profaned temples set fire to incunabula. The same ones who slaughtered the Aztecs threw their firebrands into the collection of codices. What is it, this unleashed fury of prince and priest, judge and soldier against these small monuments of clay or paper, against these sepulchres in which the dead say that they have lived and loved, suffered and hoped? (shrink)

Comparative philosophy is an important site for the study of non-Western philosophical traditions, but it has long been associated with “East-West” dialogue. Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies shifts this trajectory to focus on cross-cultural conversations across Asia and Latin America. A team of international contributors discuss subjects ranging from Orientalism in early Latin American studies of Asian thought to liberatory politics in today's globalized world. They bring together resources including Latin American feminism, Aztec teachings on ethics, Buddhist (...) critiques of essentialism, and Confucian morality. Chapters address topics such as educational reform, the social practices surrounding breastfeeding, martial arts as political resistance, and the construction of race and identity. Together the essays reflect the philosophical diversity of Asia and Latin America while foregrounding their shared concerns on issues of Eurocentrism and coloniality. By bringing these critical perspectives to bear on the theories and methods of cross-cultural philosophy, Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies offers new insights into the nature and practice of philosophical comparison. (shrink)

The philosopher and author of How Should We Live? presents “a clear and provocative discussion of issues such as boredom, hypocrisy, evil, and innocence”. In this book, John Kekes draws on anthropology, history, and literature to offer practical insights into the common predicaments we all face in our daily lives. Each chapter offers new ways of thinking about a common, fundamental problem, such as facing difficult choices, uncontrollable contingencies, complex evaluations, the failures of justice, the miasma of boredom, and the (...) inescapable hypocrisies of social life. In each case, Kekes discusses how others in different times and cultures have approached similar issues. Kekes examines what is good, bad, instructive, and dangerous in the Hindu caste system, Balinese role-morality, the sexually charged politics of the Shilluk, the religious passion of Cortes and Simone Weil, the fate of Colonel Hiromichi Yahara during and after the battle for Okinawa, the ritual human sacrifices of the Aztecs, and the tragedies to which innocence may lead. In doing so, he enlarges our understanding of the possibilities available to us as we struggle with the common obstacles of modern life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Vexed Pharmacopeia: Musings on Two Thousand Years of Scholarship Regarding the Ancient Spice Trade ROGER MICHEL ALEXY KARENOWSKA GEORGE ALTSHULER MATTHEW COBB Alice went back to the table. She found a little bottle on it, and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but (...) the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not.” However, the bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off. “What a curious feeling!” said Alice. —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) যে ব্যামোর দেখবেন সাতান্ন রকমের ওষুধ, বুঝে নেবেন, সে ব্যামো ওষুধে সারে না।1 —Syed Mujtaba Ali, চাচা কাহিনী (1955) introduction Mankind’s fascination with spice dates back at least 8,000 years—both culinary and medicinal herbs are referenced in the Vedas, Hinduism’s oldest religious text. Spice is also peppered throughout the Old Testament.2 The Song of Solomon recites: “Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikearion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 2 a vexed pharmacopeia nard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.”3 Every one of these fruits, plants and spices remained popular in the West throughout antiquity, into the Middle Ages, and beyond. As early as 3000 bc, trade routes had connected the Mediterranean to the near east. Courtesy of this “Spice Road,” ancient Mediterranean civilizations had access to a wide range of horseradishes, mustards, peppers, gingers and other spices. The Greeks and Romans had a special relationship with black pepper—so much so that four out of five recipes in Apicius’s famous 1st century cookbook4 called for a sprinkling of this sometimes-costly commodity. It is perhaps not coincidental that black pepper contains heat-producing alkaloids very similar to those found in New World chili peppers. Much has been written about the important role of chilis in South and Central American culture—a region that, by the Middle Ages, was in many respects the equal of Europe in “artistic sensibility, social complexity, and political organization.”5 The habanero and its capsainoid cousins were at the heart of the culinary and ceremonial customs of Mesoamerica, their biting heat and florid livery an apt metaphor for the “extravagant feats of human butchery”6 —very much in the tradition of the spectacular venationes of ancient Rome—for which the Aztecs at least were well known. To what extent was hot spice also a significant part of the culinary, medical and cultural landscape of the Old World? At a conference hosted by the Institute for Digital Archaeology at the University of Oxford last December, experts from Europe and North America examined the literary, historical, archaeological and scientific evidence around these questions. Their inquiry received a boost from new and rapidly developing techniques for examining the physical evidence of ancient diet and food production—laboratory techniques not available even five years ago. There was also fresh medical evidence to consider: significant research is being done in the area of chemosensation in the context of spicy foods. This Roger Michel, Alexy Karenowska, George Altshuler, Matthew Cobb 3 includes trying to understand how different so-called “TRP channels” in the nervous system process spice information— in particular, the connection between spice and endorphin levels. It appears that many of the hot spices available in antiquity could potentially trigger the same TRP channels as the capsaicin-charged Mesoamerican peppers. This creates a nice connection between old and new world spice that helps to explain and contextualize both. However, in the end, firm conclusions at the Oxford conference were scarce. It quickly became clear that more work, a greater diversity of viewpoints, better refined questions, and a change of venue were required to make additional progress. To paraphrase William Boot, the accidental protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s autobiographical Scoop (wherein events around... (shrink)

Many items of culture which are conveyed from one culture to another may take verbal form, and then constitute what Jakobson called “translation proper.” If such diffusions involve a co-occurrent change of semiotic systems, they are of such a different nature, that we better reserve another term for it: transposition. Whether or not accompanied by transpositions, such as pictures, translational events may play an important part in the encounter between cultures, not only in the negative sense of deformations as postulated (...) by the Tartu school. Particularly, when such transpositions make up a massive occurrence, as was the assimilation of the Greek-Muslim heritage in Middle Age Europe, or the more extended process by means of which Europe took on of the experience of the so-called New World several centuries later, such processes may actually enrich the homeculture. In this paper, we will study the latter process, zeroing in on a single, if protracted, event, the creation of the work ascribed to Bernardino de Sahagún, which really involved the collaboration of many scholars, many of them bearers of Aztec culture, exclusively or in combination with Western culture. This case interests us in particular, also because it involved the transposition of pictures, not, in the sense, of Western pictures being substitued for single pre-Hispanic picture, but rather as a kind of semiotic means contributing in different ways to the process of constitution. (shrink)

This collection of new essays focuses on metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons can add to contemporary discussions of the foundations of morality. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the (...) Mexica (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony, naturalism, moral perception, and the nature of moral realism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy. (shrink)

This article responds to the new and major work on Lobby Loyde by Paul Oldham. It focuses on the middle period of Loyde’s career, from the Chicago-period Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs through to Lobby’s work with Sharpie band (was it?) Coloured Balls, and connects and compares Lobby’s trajectory to that of the post-Lobby Aztecs, as expressed in Sunbury, the 1972 parallel Australian event to Woodstock. Who led these processes, the bands or the crowds? If the crowd claimed (...) a band, what happened to musical autonomy in this process? This was a moment when mass audience response became tribal, and opened the possibility that musicians were no longer in charge of their art. Trying to escape from the wiles of the music industry, these musicians instead seem to have become captive to their audiences. (shrink)

What basis do we have for condemning the Aztec custom of human sacrifice, the Chinese tradition of foot-binding, or the African practice of female genital mutilation? What can we learn from the moral traditions of other cultures? Addressing such questions, Moral Measures is a clear, fresh and accessible introduction to ethics which carefully illuminates the difficult issues surrounding cross-cultural ethics and moral thought. By examining Eastern and Western moral traditions, J. E. Tiles explores the basis for determining ethical measures of (...) conduct across different cultures. Drawing on a rich array of ethical thinkers, including Aristotle, Kant and Confucius, Tiles argues that ethical problems are shared by apparently opposed moral traditions and that there is much to be learned by comparing them. (shrink)

Published to coincide with the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus's ‘discovery’ of the New World, the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko's apocalyptic 1991 novel, Almanac of the Dead, is a harsh indictment of five hundred years of colonialism, racism and genocide in the New World. Silko clearly links this inhuman(e) history to the contemporary social policies of a range of nation states within the Americas, to present a variety of political issues that are of crucial significance to contemporary tribal communities (...) and other multi-national disenfranchised groups. Among others, this includes the significance of gender to constructions of American settlement and Federal-Indian relations, and to Silko's own status, and choice of literary topics, as a female (and Native) writer. This essay analyses Silko's disruption of authorized and sanitized state narratives, and of accepted (and acceptable) narratives of settlement; and considers Silko's use of the almanac form – the codex – of the pre-contact Aztec and Mayan libraries as a means to assert indigenous literacy, and to challenge the Euro-American claims to ‘civilization’ that are the basis for New World settlement. Most significantly, as its title suggests, Almanac of the Dead emphasizes the presence of the dead, both indigenous peoples and African slaves, to expose the real costs of settlement, and to actively un-settle the Euro- American reader. Consequently, Almanac of the Dead presents the powerful alternative histories of a range of dispossessed social and ethnic groups throughout the Americas, while relocating and reconsidering the US within the context of the Americas as a continental and historical whole, and emphasizing the positive potential of political activism. (shrink)

SummaryThe problem of converting the Amerindian world to Catholicism was given a radically new solution, both at a theoretical and a missionary level, by the Jesuit Acosta: since American societies were of a completely different nature to Mediterranean ones, the preaching of the Gospel, too, had to be different from the classical approach. He gave a new definition to both preaching and American societies, especially the latter's religion and social organisation. Acosta's approach to American sauvagerie was pioneering; he conceptualised ideas (...) that had never been thought of before. There existed societies which were neither barbarous nor political (like the empires of Incan Peru and Aztec Mexico), which nonetheless had social organisation. With regard to their religious life, Acosta maintained that cult and belief without faith was not a sign of atheism, but of an early form of religion. These two reassessments gave rise to a new image of the savage society, which attained enormous success, even outside the missionary world. Fitting the theological structure into the secularised theories of radical enlightenment, both Locke and Hume had recourse to the ethnologic aspects which Acosta had set out. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 65-76 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Identity, Aesthetics, ObjectsGustavo GuerraIn September 1990 UCLA's Wright Art Gallery opened an exhibition entitled Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation 1965-1985 (now usually referred to as CARA). While CARA was one of several national events displaying nonmainstream art, it was also distinctive in its politics of self-representation. The artists participating in CARA insisted that they be described as (...) members of a Chicano art movement. With the term Chicano they hoped to step beyond labels preferred by the dominant culture—labels such as Mexican American, Latino, or Hispanic. For these artists, the word Chicano was appealing because it represented a complexity of meanings that they understood as being integral to both their identity and to the art they produced. The word Chicano, as Alicia Gaspar de Alba discusses in Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master's House,1 embraces multiple meanings and axes of cultural identity; it derives from the Nahuatl pronunciation of Mexicano, often referring to a person of Aztec descent but including, as well, Native American heritage, Mexican roots, and Catholic faith. The CARA artists also embraced the label's association with a politics of liberation, popular protest, and working-class creativity. From the outset, then, the CARA exhibition was more than an art exhibition.By some lights, however, CARA was too much more than an art exhibition. When the organizers realized they needed funds, they applied for a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) grant and were initially turned down. While an NEH rejection might mean a number of things, the language of the rejection reports in this case narrows the possibilities down [End Page 65] to an issue that I mean to consider in this article. One rejection report states thatThe panelists understood that Chicano art arose from a variety of political movements and social causes, and therefore the political aspect of this proposal is appropriate to the subject matter.... Even so, the panelists worried that the project makes a political statement, that it is politics masquerading as culture, and that the proposal contains jargon and rhetoric and reads like a manifesto. 2Other reviewers objected to the general language of the report along similar lines. While Chicano artists made a point of representing themselves in complex, multidimensional terms, the NEH found such complexity and multidimensionality perplexing and thus their art not worthy of funding. One referee, for instance, claimed that the terminology used in the proposal was too narrow; he complained that defining Chicano in terms of struggle was too restrictive and excluded other Chicano artists for whom struggle was not a major concern. But later the same reporter objected that some of the concepts in the proposal were not inclusive enough, as they failed to include issues and topics that are central to the Chicano community. Thus the complexity and cluttered characterization that the artists felt was central to their sense of identity was dismissed as either too excessive or as too restrictive. According to the NEH, Chicano artists failed not because of their art (which the referees did describe as "visually compelling") but because of the way in which they chose to identify themselves—because, in other words, of their "rhetoric and jargon." Whatever it was that the NEH found compelling in the Chicano art they found uncompelling in the description of the Chicano artists' lives.After the organizers revised their proposal and reapplied for the grant, they were once again turned down. This second rejection highlights even more clearly the nature of the problem. This second report argues that "[T]here is a disjunction between the organizers' intentions and the exhibition. The proposal does not differentiate clearly between Chicano art and Hispanic art and, in its dependence on self-referential analysis rather than a comparative perspective, the exhibition does not place art in the bigger picture." 3I would like to consider what is at issue when descriptions of identity are said not to work, or when descriptions of art are likewise accused of failure and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34
ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes INDEX TO RUSSELL’S THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY R H Summerfields, The Glade Escrick, York  , .. @.. he edition of the richly allusioned The Impact of Science on Society Tindexed here is that of George Allen and Unwin, published in London in . The pagination of Simon and Schuster’s edition (New York, ) is (...) different and spans pages – instead of the first British edition’s –. The very first edition of the book (New York: Columbia U. P., ) contained two paragraphs comparing Catholicism and Communism that were overlooked for the British and all subsequent editions. Russell regarded them as important, and Sir Stanley Unwin wrote him that they would be incorporated in the next printing. The next printing was not until , and the paragraphs were again overlooked. They belong just before the paragraph on page  beginning “Every fanatical creed” in Chapter , “Science and Values”. These paragraphs are not indexed.—Ed. I meet many people who think that the evils of Communism can be combated by Catholicism. This seems to me a dangerous error. What are the evils of Communism as it has developed? First, adherence to a rigid and static system of doctrine, of which part is doubtful and part demonstrably false. Second, persecution as a means of enforcing orthodoxy. Third, a belief that salvation is only to be found within the Church and that the True Faith must be spread throughout the world, by force if necessary. (These are the beliefs of Communists.) Fourth, that the priesthood, which alone has the right to interpret the Scriptures, has enormous power, physical east of the Iron Curtain and spiritual over the faithful in partibus. Fifth, that this power is used to secure an undue share of wealth for the priesthood at the expense of the rest of the population. Sixth, that bigotry, and the hostility that it engenders, is a potent source of war. Every one of these evils was exhibited by the Catholic Church when it had power and would probably be exhibited again if it recovered the position it had in the Middle Ages. It is therefore irrational to suppose that much would be gained if, in the defeat of Communism, Catholicism were enthroned in its place. (Pp. –) russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34    Abraham  absolute monarchy  Adler, Alfred  adventure, impulse to ,  vs. rashness  aeroplanes  Africa cotton market  North, and Romans  age, average, in West – agriculture effects of  in history of man  integration into larger economy – wasteful of natural resources – see also soil conservation air power and governments  Alexander the Great and superstition  ambassadors, independence of  America see United States anaesthetics  anarchy  Anaxagoras ,  animals, and man  anthropology  apathy  Arab-Israeli conflict – Arabian Nights slaves of lamp in  Arabs and scientific technique  Archimedes , ,  Argentina agriculture  Arians  Aristotle  and causation – movement of heavenly bodies  armed forces and civil authorities  international, as concentration of power ,  perceptions of own/other nations’  in Russia –,  artillery  arts: authors and artists independence of –, –,  ascetic mentality  Asia: population and prosperity  astrology – astronomers Greek  prospects for life on earth  astronomical events indicating disaster  Atlantic Pact  atom bomb , , ,  atomic energy –, ,  Attica, history  Attlee, Clement  Augustine, Saint scientific argument against astrology – Auschwitz  Australia aborigines ,  agriculture  federal government  Austria: war with Prussia  Authority and the Individual (BR)  authority vs. observation –,  autonomy of physical world , – Aztecs and cannibalism  and infanticide  Babylonians and eclipses  Bacon, Francis and witchcraft  bacteriological war  Baltic–White Sea canal  barbarians, and late Roman Empire ,  Barbarossa (Frederick I)  , independence of  Bede, the Venerable on comets  belief(s) on basis of authority, as unscientific – science as determinant  in superstition  uncivilized peoples  benefits of scientific technique – _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34 Index to Impact of Science on Society  Bentham , ,  Bergson, Henri  Bible, false statements in  see also individual books of biological conditions of stability (of society) –, – biology technique(s) from – birth control and population , , – birth rate, low ,  Black Death , – Blimps, Col., Romans as  breeding, scientific – Bright, John  Britain, happiness in  British Empire... 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This article develops the new concept of environing media against the case of Mexico’s complex history over the past five centuries. To do this, it stakes out a theoretical development consisting in a shift in understanding from media as content-delivery systems to data processors, combining it with a processual understanding of environment as an ongoing and historical process of environing. In addition, the article discusses examples of indigenous media, an area that has so far received very little attention. The Aztec (...) empire was as dependent on media forms as the Spanish colonizers who replaced it, and there are numerous cases of knowledges and practices surviving in hybrid forms, for example as part of maps. For much of its history, the field of media studies has been biased toward questions of (1) ideological or attitudinal influence caused by (2) modern or emergent technologies. This article goes in another direction by thinking about media as (1) environing and (2) residual. Media are agencies of civilizational and environmental order. The rise of digital media in recent decades has reinforced the fundamental logistical role of media as agencies that arrange, catalog, organize, network, and index people, places, and things. Our understanding of media as fundamental constituents of organization joins the recent interest in infrastructures. Calendars, clocks, towers, names, addresses, maps, registers, arms, and money are all infrastructural media. Such media become second nature, morphing biorhythms and altering ecosystems. Today’s planetary digital infrastructure builds upon the long legacy of resource management via databases. We argue for a longer genealogy of the nature shaping logistical role of media that is so evident today. In this article, we refine and exemplify these claims via a case study of some environing media in Mexico, a country with a deep and rich media history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Violence and Birthday PartiesA Girardian Analysis of the PiñataDominic Pigneri (bio)The piñata is a tradition most commonly associated with Latin America, but this party game has a mysterious origin. Some suppose that the origin of the practice was brought to the Americas by the Spanish, who received the custom from the Italians.1 Some say that the Italians, through Marco Polo, appropriated the ritual from the Chinese.2 Others see (...) the Mexican piñata as originating locally in an Aztec religious ritual.3 But looking at this festival activity through a Girardian lens we can see that wherever a custom came into being, it seems that its origins lie in the lethal practice of collective violence. The following description may serve as an exemplar of the tradition:In Mexico, a plain, round clay cooking pot called an olla is decorated and finally almost entirely concealed by ruffles and streamer coverings shaped into animals, stars, etc. It is filled with nuts, sugar cane, fruits and small toys and is hung overhead from a rope. One participant in the game is blindfolded and given a long stick with which he or she tries to hit the pot. Several people (usually children) take turns at being blindfolded and swinging the stick, and finally when someone hits the pot [End Page 209] hard enough to break it, the other players scramble on the ground for the scattered prizes. It is a kind of noisy and happy version of a grab-bag, and the game goes on for quite a few minutes, since a controlling cord is used to swing the pot out of reach of the batters. There are several sing-song chants which the children say as the game goes on with each new target.4While the clay pot is the most traditional, piñatas are also made from other materials, including papier-mâché and cane plants.5 Furthermore, the piñata has a place in many different festivals; it is especially associated with Christmas, Easter, and birthday parties all over the Americas where there is a Latin influence.While the ritual of the piñata contains no explicit violence, the ritual itself contains many of the elements of the scapegoat mechanism René Girard describes in Violence and the Sacred. What Girard describes here is the banding together of society as they focus their internal animosity onto an arbitrary third-party victim. The peace that arrives after this violence is so profound that it is instinctually associated with the divine. This peace inspires a reenactment of this violence as a religious ritual. Therefore, religion functions as the force that keeps internal violence from turning all members of a society against one another. This controlled violence is the safety valve that releases the violence that would otherwise rend the social fabric of a community.6 Religion also veils the violence, which grants peace. It is important that the violence be expressed, but also hidden. Girard says, "Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a very clear idea of this violence, and it is possible that the survival of all human societies of the past was dependent on this fundamental lack of understanding."7 This is the significance of the ritualism of cultic sacrifice.This relates to our current question of the piñata in the sense that the practice is reminiscent of a sacrificial ritual, especially when the piñata takes the shape of a being like an animal or human person. First, destruction is the initial aim of the activity. The piñata, like the oblation, must be destroyed in some way. This is what grants the ritual its efficacy. Second, there is a need for rubrics, a carefully followed procedure for the desired effect to come about. In cultic sacrifice, this can take place in a variety of ways, from ritualistic washing of the priest and the victim to the exact procedure and order for dissecting the victim. Similarly, as we saw in the description of the piñata above, there is a procedure. The piñata is... (shrink)