Die Rekonstruktion von Brentanos Analyse des Zeitbegriffes zeigt, daß der Zeitbegriff sich nicht in mathematischen bzw. physikalischen Darstellungen erschöpfen kann, sondern vielmehr einer phänomenologischen bzw. epistemologischen Analyse bedarf Brentanos Theorie des Zeitlichen liefert hierfür ein Ordnungsschema, mit dessen Hilfe der Unterschied wie der Zusammenhang zwischen mathematisch-physikalischen und phänomenologischen Erkenntnisebenen erfaßt werden kann.

Die Rekonstruktion von Brentanos Analyse des Zeitbegriffes zeigt, daß der Zeitbegriff sich nicht in mathematischen bzw. physikalischen Darstellungen erschöpfen kann, sondern vielmehr einer phänomenologischen bzw. epistemologischen Analyse bedarf Brentanos Theorie des Zeitlichen liefert hierfür ein Ordnungsschema, mit dessen Hilfe der Unterschied wie der Zusammenhang zwischen mathematisch-physikalischen und phänomenologischen Erkenntnisebenen erfaßt werden kann.

Erwin Schroedinger has been described as one of the greatest figures of theoretical physics, but there is another side to the man: not only did his work revolutionize physics, it also radically changed the foundations of our modern world-view, modern biology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the mind, and epistemology.

Grundlagenfragen wissenschaftlicher Theorien zählen zu den "nicht leicht" beantwortbaren Problemen, bietet doch bereits ihre Formulierung ein Feld des Disputes, und gelangen erst recht die Lösungsvorschläge nur selten in den Rang generell akzeptierter Annahmen. Natürlich gibt es verschiedene Gründe und Gründe verschiedenen Gewichtes, warum Philosophen und Physiker gemeinsam versuchen, bestimmte Fragen zu behandeln. Und es ist nur zu bekannt, daß einige solcher Fragen eher von Physikern und einige eher von Philosophen gestellt werden, ohne daß man sich auf diesem Gebiet über klare (...) Grenzen des wissenschaftlichen Kosmos einig wäre. Aber sicherlich werden einige Probleme von beiden "Seiten" aufgeworfen und dies nicht zuletzt und bisweilen in der Hoffnung, sie auch vereint am ehesten einer Lösung näher bringen zu können. Ob solche Hoffnung rational berechtigt ist, mag hier nicht untersucht werden. Obiichermaßen wird die Meinung akzeptiert, daß theoretische Probleme selbst auf metatheoretischer Ebene analysiert werden. Aber seit gewisse Elemente der kanoni schen Auffassung empirisch-wissenschaftlicher Theorien in zunehmendem Maße be zweifelt werden und entsprechend dem Prinzip 'ab esse ad posse valet iIIatio' auch be zweifelt werden 'können', fragt es sich, ob eine Charakterisierung des Verhältnisses von Theorie und Metatheorie angemessen ist, die den Objektbereich durch das Zweisprachen modell empirisch-theoretischer Begriffe abbildbar annimmt. Durch dieses Modell - ganz unabhängig von seinen verschiedenen Ausformungen und Deutungen - sollte ja der seman tische Bezug des Geltungsanspruches erfahrungswissenschaftlicher Theorien gesichert und transparent gemacht werden, der für die erklärten Hauptziele der Theorienbildun- nämlich Voraussage und Erklärung von Ereignissen - bedeutsam ist. (shrink)

Die Gedenkschrift zu Ehren von Elisabeth und Werner Leinfellner spannt einen Bogen von aktuellen philosophischen Diskursen zum Werk und Leben des 2010 verstorbenen Wissenschaftler-Ehepaares. Fur viele sind beide untrennbar mit der Osterreichischen Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft (OLWG) und dem Internationalen Wittgenstein Symposien in Kirchberg am Wechsel verbunden. Die Artikel in diesem Band befassen sich mit aktueller Wittgensteinforschung und der Sprachkritik (Mauthner und Wittgenstein) ebenso wie dem Wirken von Elisabeth und Werner Leinfellner. Daruber hinaus geben sie Einblicke in das Werden der OLWG (...) und das osterreichische Geistesleben in der zweiten Halfte des 20. Jhdts. Mitarbeiter des Buches: Marco Bastianelli, Christian Erbacher, Johann Gotschl, Peter Kampits, Christian Kanzian, Peter Keicher, Eckehart Kohler, Camilla R. Nielsen, Klaus Puhl, Mary Snell-Hornby, Ilse Somavilla, Joseph Wang, Anja Weiberg, Paul Weingartner und Franz M. Wuketits. Herausgeber sind Sascha Windholz und Walter Feigl.". (shrink)

Unter den Versuchen Fichtes, sein Denken allgemeinverständlich darzustellen, zählt diese 1800 erschienene Schrift zu den inhaltlich abgerundetsten und aufschlußreichsten; bei den Zeitgenossen stieß sie jedoch auf vehemente Kritik, Hegel sah in ihr gar einen besonders illustrativen Text für den Aufweis der Haltlosigkeit der von Fichte in der Wissenschaftslehre vertretenen Position einer auf das Ich als Tathandlung gegründeten Philosophie. Darum vermag allein schon die Lektüre von Fichtes Bestimmung des Menschen und ihrer kritischen Rezeption in Hegels Glauben und Wissen einen Einblick in (...) die Gründe zu vermitteln, warum bis ins 20. Jahrhundert die Philosophie Fichtes weitgehend als ein merkwürdiger Mosaikstein auf dem Wege "Von Kant bis Hegel" oder, im Hinblick auf den "Endpunkt" dieses Wegs wohl genauer, in der "Entwicklung des Spinozismus" betrachtet wurde. Deutlich wird einer neuen Lektüre aber auch, wieviel noch zu tun bleibt, um die wichtigen Erkenntnisse, die im Deutschen Idealismus auf so getrennten Bahnen gewonnen wurden, im Blick auf die gemeinsamen Grundprobleme einer "Ersten Philosophie" ohne Rückfall in die traditionellen Feindbilder wahrzunehmen und kritisch in die pluralistische Diskussion heutigen Philosophierens einzubringen. (shrink)

What moral reasons, if any, do we have to ensure the long-term survival of humanity? This article contrastively explores two answers to this question: according to the first, we should ensure the survival of humanity because we have reason to maximize the number of happy lives that are ever lived, all else equal. According to the second, seeking to sustain humanity into the future is the appropriate response to the final value of humanity itself. Along the way, the article discusses (...) various issues in population axiology, particularly the so-called Intuition of Neutrality and John Broome’s ‘greediness objection’ to this intuition. (shrink)

Whatever ethical stance one takes in the debate regarding the ethics of human enhancement, one or more reference points are required to assess its morality. Some have suggested looking at the bioethical notions of safety, justice, and/or autonomy to find such reference points. Others, arguing that those notions are limited with respect to assessing the morality of human enhancement, have turned to human nature, human authenticity, or human dignity as reference points, thereby introducing some perfectionist assumptions into the debate. In (...) this article, we ask which perfectionist assumptions should be used in this debate. After a critique of views that are problematic, we take a positive approach, suggesting some perfectionist elements that can lend guidance to the practice of human enhancement, based on the work of Martha Nussbaum's Capability Approach. We suggest that the central capabilities can be used to define the human aspect of human enhancement and thereby allow a moral evaluation of enhancement interventions. These central capabilities can be maximized harmoniously to postulate what an ideal human would look like. Ultimately, the aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to make explicit the perfectionist assumptions found in the debate and eliminate those that are problematic. Second, the paper clarifies an element that is often neglected in the debate about human enhancement, the view of the ideal human towards which human enhancement should strive. Here, we suggest that some central capabilities that are essential for an ideal human being can be maximized harmoniously and can therefore serve as possible reference points to guide human enhancement. (shrink)

Johann Gottfried von Herder is one of the most important German philosophers of the eighteenth century, who had enormous influence on later thinkers such as Hegel, Schleiermacher and Nietzsche. His wide-ranging ideas were formative in the development of linguistics, hermeneutics, anthropology and bible scholarship, and even today they retain their vitality and relevance to an extraordinary degree. This volume presents a translation of Herder's most important and characteristic philosophical writings in his areas of central interest, including philosophy of language, (...) philosophy of mind, philosophy of history and political philosophy, as well as his general philosophical program. An introduction sets the writings in their historical context and examines their philosophical achievement. (shrink)

This book critically examines what role, if any, should the notion of perfection play in the debate regarding the ethics of human enhancement. It defends that the concept of -human perfection- needs to be central when morally assessing human enhancements.".

This article provides an original reappraisal of the notion of Minnemystik in the work of the 13th-century Flemish beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp, with specific reference to its Trinitarian and Christological orientations. After an introduction to the nature and origins of Hadewijch’s work, relating to the discovery of four extant manuscripts in Belgium in 1838, followed by an elucidation of the experience-driven epistemology of the Victorians Richard of St Victor and Hugo of St Victor as her key early scholastic influences, Hadewijch’s (...) Minnemystik is distinguished from Wesenmystik, as encountered in the mystical work of her French contemporary and beguine counterpart, Marguerite Porete. From this discursive basis, Hadewijch’s Minnemystik is reassessed and represented as pertinently Trinitarian and Christological in orientation, and therefore as a theological presentation from the 13th century. (shrink)

This article investigates the palimpsest reception of Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 500) in the metaphysics of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). The article covers Cusa’s political theory and metaphysics, which are intertwined. Reading Cusa against the backdrop of an analysis of Pseudo-Dionysius’ metaphysics in a preceding article, the author, in a synthetic conclusion, isolates seven Dionysic ‘trails’ (S1 to S7) in Cusa’s metaphysics: the interpretation of transcendence as bound to immanence; the affirmation of God’s transcendence in the world (or a metaphysics of ‘creation (...) as teophany’); the radical transcendence and simultaneous radical immanence of God (that is, God as ‘Beingness’); fundamental restrictions of language and the analogical ‘Naming’ of God; creation as a system of dialectical symbols about God; the analogical participation of the subject in creation; and unification (reditus, the ‘flowing of things back to God’). The Dionysic trails in Cusa’s metaphysics are described as a noteworthy, if not important, palimpsest in the corpus of late Medieval philosophy and is indicative of what the author puts forward as ‘discursive memory’, which is presented as a modern-critical concept. (shrink)

Foucault’s sodomite’: Damian’s Liber gomorrhianus (1049) reopened. Taking Michel Foucault’s famous statement about the difference between the ‘Medieval sodomite’ and the heteronormative ‘19th century homosexual’ as its cue, this article surveys the discursive source of that statement in the work of Peter Damian (1007–1072) with regard to his obscure, yet consequential text, Liber gomorrhianus (presented in 1049 to Pope Leo IX, preceding the Council of Reims). Drawing on the recent research by Ranft and because Damian is such an understated figure (...) in the corpus of Medieval philosophy, an overview of Damian’s life and work is presented, especially in terms of Damian’s 11th century reforming labour ethics. Only then the article proceeds to reopen Damian’s text, indicating that the ‘Medieval sodomite’ is far removed from an elementary precursor to the modern scientia sexualis homosexual, but is indeed presented by Damian as a complex and gender-inclusive licentious person, within the context of the disintegration of sexual morality (especially within the domains of celibacy and confession) in the middle to late 11th century church and monasteries. Cross-referencing the own translation of the Latin text with the translation of Payer, the article disseminates and critiques the key concepts in Damian’s argument for the summarily deposition of lapsi [fallen priests] and the expulsion of promiscuous monks (and nuns) from the orders, especially with regard to Damian’s concepts of contra-natural and irrational fornication. Pope Leo’s deeply pastoral and insightful answer to Damian ( Ad splendidum nitentis ) is presented in the last part of the article, including his sanctioning of Damian’s complex concept of sodomy, which on that ground, became the conceptual source for the council of Reims (1049), and subsequent Medieval councils dealing with the ‘problem of sodomy’ in the church and monasteries. The canons of those councils were indeed the source of Foucault’s analysis of Medieval sexuality – yet the more fundamental source was Damian’s obscure text. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to present an overview, based on the most recent specialist research, of Neoplatonist developments in the Cologne tradition of the later Middle Ages, with specific reference to a unique Proclian commentary presented by the German Albertist Dominican, Berthold of Moosburg (ca. 1300–1361). Situating Berthold in the post-Eckhart Dominican crisis of the 1340s and 1350s, his rehabilitating initiative of presenting this extensive (nine-volume) commentary on the Neoplatonist Proclus Lycaeus’ (412–485) Elements of Theology in his Expositio (...) super Elementationem theologicam Procli, the only of its kind from the Middle Ages, is contextualised with reference to Berthold’s discursive indebtedness to his Dominican predecessors, Albert the Great (ca. 1200–1280), Ulrich of Strasbourg (ca. 1220–1277) and Dietrich of Freiberg (ca.1250 – ca.1310), as well as two Dutch-Cologne successors, the Albertist Heymeric of Camp (1395–1460) and the Carthusian Thomist Denys de Leeuwis (1402–1471). Berthold’s unique contribution to the philosophical discourse of the Middle Ages is indicated therein that the Expositio provided a synthesis of the late Medieval version of Neoplatonism and contemporaneous German–Dominican theories. By contextualising the work of his Cologne predecessors and successors in the broad idea-historical landscape of antiquity and Neoplatonism, the article argues that Berthold succeeded in linking the Neoplatonic legacy with Cologne Albertism and provided an impetus for the overall consolidating ability of the Cologne tradition. By juxtaposing Berthold and his Expositio with the more conventional legacies of Ulrich, Dietrich, Heymeric and Denys, this exceptional Latin-Western intellectual tradition from Cologne is expanded and enriched with regard to its notable Neoplatonic contributions to philosophy in the later Middle Ages. Contribution: This article contributes to scholarship in Medieval philosophy by presenting an overview of Neoplatonist developments in the Cologne tradition of the later Middle Ages, with specific reference to the Proclian commentary presented by the German Albertist Dominican, Berthold of Moosburg (ca. 1300–1361). By contextualising the work of Berthold’s Cologne predecessors and successors in the broad idea-historical landscape of antiquity and Neoplatonism, the article indicates that Berthold succeeded in linking the Neoplatonic legacy with Cologne Albertism and provided an impetus for the overall consolidating ability of the Cologne tradition during the later Middle Ages. (shrink)

In the winter of 1807, while Berlin was occupied by French troops, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented fourteen public lectures that have long been studied as a major statement of modern nationalism. Yet Fichte's _Addresses to the German Nation_ have also been interpreted by many as a vision of a cosmopolitan alternative to nationalism. This new edition of the _Addresses_ is designed to make Fichte's arguments more accessible to English-speaking readers. The clear, readable, and reliable translation is accompanied (...) by a chronology of the events surrounding Fichte's life, suggestions for further reading, and an index. The groundbreaking introductory essay situates Fichte's theory of the nation state in the history of modern political thought. It provides historians, political theorists, and other students of nationalism with a fresh perspective for considering the interface between cosmopolitanism and republicanism, patriotism and nationalism. (shrink)

Edelmann (1698-1767) war ein fruher Vorbote der deutschen Aufklarung. Er trat offen ein fur die englischen Deisten und ihre Vernunftreligion, die er mit der Logosidee und dem Liebesgebot verbindet. Er berief sich als erster auf Spinoza und dessen radikale Bibelkritik. Edelmann stritt heftig gegen alle Orthodoxie und verneinte schliesslich den historischen christlichen Glauben. Seine Streitschriften bieten Beispiele klassischer Polemik. Im Verlauf des Edelmann'schen Streites wurden seine Bucher vom Henker verbrannt. Uber die Brudergemeinde und die Mitarbeit an der Berleburger Bibelubersetzung kam (...) Edelmann zu einer immer freieren Stellung gegenuber der Schrift und zu einem rein menschlichen Christusbild. Diese Ausgabe der Werke enthalt samtliche von Edelmann selbst veroffentlichten Schriften in Faksimile-Neudrucken der Originalausgaben, ferner einen Neudruck der Selbstbiographie sowie bislang unveroffentlichte Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Walter Grossmann gibt zu jeder Schrift eine Einleitung. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"This work is a model of what a philosophical text should be."--Reinhard Lauth "Breazeale's translation is fluent, precise, and perhaps most important of all... it is readable.... This is an excellent translation by the ranking Fichte scholar working in English at present, accompanied by a full, useful scholarly apparatus, likely to be of interest to Fichte scholars and all those concerned with the development of German idealism."--Review of Metaphysics "The publishing of this volume in English... provides us with a wealth (...) of new material, not just about Fichte's development, but about the essentially Cartesian project that first gave rise to phenomenology in our own century."--International Philosophical Quarterly. (shrink)

The ever-increasing dominance of English within analytic philosophy is an aspect of linguistic globalisation. To assess it, I first address fundamental issues in the philosophy of language. Steering a middle course between linguistic universalism and linguistic relativism, I deny that some languages might be philosophically superior to others, notably by capturing the essential categories of reality. On this background I next consider both the pros and cons of the Anglicisation of philosophy. I shall defend the value of English as a (...) lingua franca, while denying both the feasibility and the desirability of English as the sole universal language of philosophy. Finally I turn to the linguistic inequality in contemporary analytic philosophy. While it does not per se amount to an injustice, there is a need to level the playing field. But the remedy does not lie in linguistic academic sectarianism. Instead, what might be called for are piecemeal measures to reduce explicit and implicit biases against analytic philosophers on the geographic fringes, biases that are only partly connected to the predominance of English. (shrink)

This article, by analysing, annotating en interpreting the most recent research in all relevant departments, provides a fresh and updated overview of the Neoplatonic metaphysics of Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 500). After providing an introduction to Dionysius’ metaphysics in terms of the contributions of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism, the article explores his broader philosophical system. A number of traits that are uniquely Dionysic-metaphysical, are eventually isolated: the interpretation of transcendence as bound to immanence; the affirmation of God’s transcendence in the world (that (...) is, a metaphysics of ‘creation as teophany’; following E.D. Perl); the radical transcendence and simultaneous radical immanence of God (that is, God as ‘Beingness’); fundamental restrictions of language and the analogical ‘Naming’ of God; creation as a system of dialectical symbols about God; the analogical participation of the subject in creation; and unification (reditus, the ‘flowing of things back to God’). These traits are utilised to reappraise the metaphysics of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) in a subsequent article. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

The world is undeniably full of injustice. Many feel that much political philosophy is practically impotent and engaged instead in overly abstract theorising insufficiently sensitive to the realities of the world. One response to this concern is David Miller’s influential model of evidence-based political philosophy, which claims to be sensitive to empirical evidence from the social sciences, takes seriously people’s opinions, and defends the role of facts in grounding normative principles. Using various examples from the field of global justice, one (...) of Miller’s key areas of work, I show that Miller’s method is unconvincing on two levels. His theoretical argument for fact-dependence is flawed, and his practical argument for an opinion-sensitive political theory is either guilty of status quo bias or, in an attempt to escape it, becomes self-defeating. While the paper is primarily critical, I endeavour also to draw out the implications of my critiques for the role of the ‘real world’ in theorising. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, Fichte's thought marks a crucial transitional stage between Kant and post-Kantian philosophy. Fichte radicalized Kant's thought by arguing that human freedom, not external reality, must be the starting point of all systematic philosophy, and in Foundations of Natural Right, thought by many to be his most important work of political philosophy, he applies his ideas to fundamental issues in political and legal philosophy, covering such topics as civic freedom, rights, private property, contracts, family relations, and (...) the foundations of modern political organization. This volume offers the first complete translation of the work into English, by Michael Baur, together with an introduction by Frederick Neuhouser that sets it in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

1. Erstes bis drittes Wäldchen. Viertes Wäldchen. Paralipomena -- 2. Kommentar. Register.

Authority is an important feature of military life. Political and military superiors claim the power to give binding orders to their subordinates. If they have the authority they claim (and that many citizens and soldiers take them to possess), then the subordinates are morally required to do as commanded. Tadros’ To Do, To Die, To Reason Why challenges the authority claims that political and military superiors make in giving orders: the kinds of considerations ordinarily thought to underpin their authority – (...) in particular, the instrumental benefits of authoritative decision-making in politics and military life – cannot justify it. Tadros’ claim is not that subordinates are never required to do what their superiors order. Trivially, superiors may order subordinates to do what they are anyway required to do. (The captain orders the privates not to kill the prisoners.) Less trivially, superiors’ orders may change the subordinates’ factual or epistemic circumstances, which results in their having duties that they would otherwise have lacked. (The captain orders a private to jump into the sea. His order startles a child on the shore so it loses its balance and plunges into the water. The private may now have a duty to jump in to save the child, and he may have that duty because the superior gave the order.) Yet this way of changing the subordinates’ duties is not, for Tadros, a genuine exercise of authority: authority brings about normative change directly, rather than by changing the subordinate’s factual or epistemic circumstances. It is authority so understood that, according to Tadros, military and political superiors claim and yet lack. Tadros offers two complementary arguments for this anarchist conclusion. First, he argues that superiors have practical authority over subordinates only if the subordinates have duties to obey (or follow) the superiors’ orders, rather than merely to conform with them (by doing something which happens to be what they were ordered to do). There must be a suitable link between order and action. But, Tadros argues, soldiers don’t have a duty to obey their superiors’ orders. (Call this the Obedience Claim.) So military superiors lack practical authority vis-à-vis their subordinates. (Call this the Authority Claim.) Second, Tadros argues that authority is either unjustified or otiose. Exercises of practical authority, by imposing duties, restrict their subjects’ freedom. Moral duties are difficult to justify precisely because they are freedom-restricting in this way; and only certain kinds of considerations suffice to make an action morally obligatory. Tadros argues that there are sufficient reasons for a superior to have and exercise the power to make ving morally obligatory by issuing a directive only if there are already sufficient reasons for ving being independently morally obligatory. (We call this the No Duty, No Authority Claim.) We challenge both arguments. Sections 2 and 3 show that, even if the Obedience Claim is true, it does not entail the Authority Claim. Section 4 casts doubt on the No Duty, No Authority Claim. (shrink)

Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation. Taking his reading of Romans 1:26–27 and Genesis 19 as its hermeneutical key, an idea-historical interpretation of the views of the Western church father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) on female homoeroticism is presented in this article. The accentuation of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) on the overall significance of Augustine in the Western history of sexuality, in his posthumous Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de (...) la chair, under editorship of Frédéric Gros, 2018 ), is used to contextualise Augustine’s views on sexual desire as the ‘form of the will’, here positioned specifically within a female homoerotic context. Drawing on the substantial studies of John Boswell (in 1980) and Bernadette Brooten (in 1996), which, although relatively dated, are still without equal in Medieval research, the article subsequently explores Augustine’s views on intimate relations between women, both in monasteries and in secular society. It is shown that intimate relations between women must have transpired in fifth-century monasteries and that female homoeroticism was for the next two centuries dealt with with restraint rather than with forms of exclusion and punishment, despite the negative portrayals of same-sex relations by some of Augustine’s patristic contemporaries (particularly John Chrysostom [ca.347–407]), yet precisely on the basis of Augustine’s understated approach. Although Augustine renounced homoerotic relations as a form of ‘unnatural’ (for him, expressly, all ‘non-procreative’) sex, he dealt with the incidence of female same-sex relations with understatement. Given his general authority in the early Middle Ages, one effect of Augustine’s non-homophobic approach was that female homoeroticism was de facto bypassed as a ‘moral problem’ in the fifth and sixth centuries, until handbooks of penance, that prohibited all forms of same-sex relations, started circulating at the end of the sixth century. Contribution: This article contributes to the ongoing study of Medieval female sexuality, and particularly of female homoeroticism in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, by exploring Augustine’s views on same-sex relations between women around the early fifth century, while concurrently contributing to ongoing analyses of Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the church and desert fathers in the (edited) fourth volume of Histoire de la sexualité ( Les aveux de la chair ), published in 2018. (shrink)

This article presents a contextualisation of Belgian philosopher and historian of psychiatry and sexuality, Patrick Vandermeersch’s (1946–), unpublished analysis of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) interpretation of Methodius of Olympus’ (d.ca.311) views on virginity and chastity, in Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de la chair ), published in February 2018 at Gallimard in Paris under the editorship of Frédéric Gros. The article contributes to the reception and the ongoing analyses of Les aveux de la chair by exploring (...) Foucault’s reading while highlighting both the importance of Vandermeersch’s analysis and the sexological-historiographical significance of his broader oeuvre that spans over four decades. Vandermeersch shows that Foucault, as many other commentators of Methodius, did not substantially engage Methodius’ explicit indebtedness and persistent references to Plato (already evident in the title Symposium but especially regarding the Phaedrus ). Platonic homoeroticism is, according to Vandermeersch, as a consequence often too hastily, and therefore problematically, transposed on contexts of female virginity. Likewise, Foucault, when indicating already at the end of Histoire de la sexualité 2 ( L’usage des plaisirs 1984), the particular relevance of homoeroticism in the development of Western sexuality, seemed to adhere to this transposition. Could ‘beautiful boys’ truly be transposed onto ‘female virgins’ without severe sexual-discursive complications? And could Methodius’ encomium of virginity in any way be understood independent of his understanding of the ‘resurrection of the body’, with the integrity of its (virginised) sexual desire intact? These are among Vandermeersch’s valid and challenging questions to both Foucault and his contemporary readership. Contribution: Foucault’s reading of the church- and desert fathers in Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de la chair ) impacts early Medieval philosophy, early Medieval history, church history, patristics, philosophy of religion, psychology of religion and sociology of religion. Since these proximate disciplines are drawn towards Foucault’s text, they may well note its ongoing examinations. Foucault’s direct impact on these disciplines is illustrated in Vandermeersch’s significant analysis of Foucault’s reading of Methodius in Les aveux de la chair. Vandermeersch’s broader oeuvre in philosophy, theology, psychiatry, psychology, psychology of religion and the history of sexuality is concurrently contextualised as of ongoing contemporary importance for these disciplines. (shrink)