Summary This article aims to examine the turbulent course of the Aetolian League in the confused years after the Antiochian War up until 160/159, when its leader at the time, Lykiskos, passed away. Military defeats, political developments and economic problems will be studied together in order to form an accurate interpretation of the internal strife inside the Koinon. In addition, the factor of Rome also needs to be taken into consideration, as the new power seems to have adopted a cautious (...) stance, intervening in the League’s internal politics only when it was considered necessary. Prominent Aetolians of this era, like Thoas and Lykiskos, as well as their crucial political roles, are also analysed. (shrink)

Jon Stewart’s recent book offers an opportunity to re-explore one of the richest areas of Hegel’s cultural research during the Berlin period, the wide-ranging study of world religions developed in the second part of his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. While this treatment of world religious traditions has often been taken as out-of-date and narrowly Eurocentric, there are, as Stewart suggests, important contributions within Hegel’s developing work on pre-classical and Asian religions that remain of interest to contemporary philosophers of (...) religion, art and history. This paper compares the changes Hegel makes in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion to those in the Aesthetics lectures belonging to the same period; and examines in particular how Hegel’s view of the relation between Athens and Jerusalem changed with developing knowledge of Egyptian and other near Eastern cultures. (shrink)

Given that Nick Land is one of the central influences on certain strands of accelerationism, xenofeminism, and inhumanism, it is important to understand how he himself first developed and deployed the concepts of acceleration, the feminine, and the inhuman, which others would go on to appropriate for their own purposes. This article will trace the four feminine figures throughout Land's philosophical trajectory, which he sees as agents for accelerating the transcendental critique of both anthropocentrism and phallocentrism: the slave turned lesbian; (...) the sister; the sexborg; and the Sphinx. Having elucidated the importance of these figures for Land's thought, this article will conclude by drawing upon the younger Land's feminist resources to immanently critique the disappearance of women from his more recent neoreactionary philosophy in favor of concessions to patriarchal traditionalists. (shrink)

Through a series of 144 short texts on twelve key subjects, this text introduces the reader to some of the central perplexities of human life.

Riddles of the Sphinx CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. § i. The attempt nowadays to solve afresh the world-old problems of philosophy will doubtless be thought to ...

Unhappy with a recent submission of mine, a referee for a journal specialising in the history of philosophy wagged a finger at what he or she called my ‘hermeneutical principles’. Though I am no stranger to the collegial woodshed, my initial reaction was nonetheless one of surprise. For had I then been asked about interpretive methodology I would have scoffed. The construer’s best course, I would have said, is to nose about the texts until some rough shape begins to emerge (...) from the murk, and to inch forward in an effort to block in details, frequently doubling back for more nosing about. Isn’t this —fill, back, adjust, refill, back again, re-adjust—a counsel of anti-method? (shrink)

Unhappy with a recent submission of mine, a referee for a journal specialising in the history of philosophy wagged a finger at what he or she called my ‘hermeneutical principles’. Though I am no stranger to the collegial woodshed, my initial reaction was nonetheless one of surprise. For had I then been asked about interpretive methodology I would have scoffed. The construer’s best course, I would have said, is to nose about the texts until some rough shape begins to emerge (...) from the murk, and to inch forward in an effort to block in details, frequently doubling back for more nosing about. Isn’t this —fill, back, adjust, refill, back again, re-adjust—a counsel of anti-method? (shrink)

Unhappy with a recent submission of mine, a referee for a journal specialising in the history of philosophy wagged a finger at what he or she called my ‘hermeneutical principles’. Though I am no stranger to the collegial woodshed, my initial reaction was nonetheless one of surprise. For had I then been asked about interpretive methodology I would have scoffed. The construer’s best course, I would have said, is to nose about the texts until some rough shape begins to emerge (...) from the murk, and to inch forward in an effort to block in details, frequently doubling back for more nosing about. Isn’t this —fill, back, adjust, refill, back again, re-adjust—a counsel of anti-method? (shrink)

This paper presents two accounts of how Oedipus might have arrived at the answer to the Sphinx's riddle by proceeding methodically.

The Riddling between Oedipus and the Sphinx, Ontology, Hauntology, and Heterologies of the Grotesque probes the polemic status of the other and the dubious nature of the subject from a heterodox perspective of an emblematic grotesque figure, the Sphinx—the mystical trickster and the guardian of sacred knowledge in Egyptian culture.

I. Aufklärung und anthropologischen Wende - Goethe, Kant, Schiller, Novalis und Herder über Ägypten -- II. Hegel über Ägypten - Zu den Quellen -- III. Zur Geschichtstheorie und -philosophie -- IV. Zur Religion -- V. Zur Kunst und Ästhetic -- VI. Hegel als Inspiration- Typologie und Semiotik -- VII. Geistesepochen?- Moderne und postmoderne Hegellektüren -- Schluss- Abschied vom Imperium der Rationalität.

Ces pages servent de présentation à l’artiste allemand Konrad Klapheck en se proposant de centrer son approche sur les aspects les plus pertinents de sa fameuse série de « machines », particulièrement celui relatif à l’imaginaire, si proche de Lautréamont, des « machines à coudre ». Klapheck, auquel André Breton dédie en 1965 le dernier des écrits publiés dans Le surréalime et la peinture, a élaboré depuis les années soixante une oeuvre de difficile adscription stylistique. En références aux propres déclarations (...) réalisées par l’artiste dans La machine et moi (1997), ses recherches abordent les relations du motif du Sphinx et ses explorations par Gustave Moreau, et, le composant d’étrangeté cultivé dans la reproduction d’objets quotidiens à partir d’un fort sentiment d’identification avec les machines. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Freud between Oedipus and the Sphinx MIRIAM LEONARD Areproduction of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s neo-classical painting Oedipus and the Sphinx famously hung over Freud’s couch in his consulting room at Berggasse 19 [figure 1]. Nobody doubts the significance of the figure of Oedipus to the development of Freud’s thought, arion 28.3 winter 2021 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, (1780–1867). Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808. Oil on canvas. Photo Credit : Scala/ (...) Art Resource, NY. 132 freud between oedipus and the sphinx but the presence of the Sphinx in this picture raises a series of questions about Freud’s interests which have not been as extensively explored. Indeed, this is far from being the only depiction of the Sphinx which graced Freud’s study. A large etching of the Sphinx at Giza was displayed amongst his bookshelves and a terracotta figurine was amongst his most prized objects.1 These representations of the Sphinx testify to Freud’s broader fascination with Egyptian culture—a fascination which, as we have seen, manifests itself both in his writings and his collection of antiquities. Judith Butler and George Steiner have wondered: “what would happen if psychoanalysis were to have taken Antigone rather than Oedipus as its point of departure?”2 I want to reformulate their question to ask, what would happen if Freud had taken the Sphinx rather than Oedipus as his point of departure? With this counterfactual, I hope to deepen the exploration already undertaken in the previous two articles about Egypt as an origin myth for psychoanalysis—an origin both for the development of the self and for the history of humanity. One possibility, suggested by Edward Said in his last work, Freud and the Non European, is that Freud’s turn to Egypt opened psychoanalysis to a less Eurocentric perspective. For Said, Freud’s foregrounding of Egypt and his interest in the crossover of “non-European” and “European ” cultures testified to his openness and his frustration with the nationalist and racist theories which were so prevalent at the end of his life.3 Said’s claims are compelling but as he would have been the first to note, Freud’s Egyptomania could equally be captive to orientalizing fantasies.4 In what follows I trace the evidence for Freud’s fascination with Egypt and, reading it hieroglyphically (as he would invite us to do), I speculate about its possible impacts on psychoanalysis as art and / or science. Ingres’s first version of Oedipus and the Sphinx—the painting whose reproduction Freud displayed—was completed in 1808. Ingres originally painted the picture in Rome where Miriam Leonard 133 he was studying at the French Academy. In common with other students at the academy, Ingres was required to produce figure studies and the original version of this painting was focused on Oedipus and the representation of his bodily form. Ingres had asked his model to use the same pose as the classical statue of Hermes with the Sandal which is displayed in the Louvre. As François de Vergnette writes: “The clarity of the contours, the muted use of chiaroscuro and the slight surface relief given to the figure of Oedipus add an archaic flavor to the picture. This archaism had its roots in Ingres’s taste for Greek vases.”5 But it is the impact of a different Mediterranean culture which can be felt in Ingres’s depiction of Oedipus’ counterpart. While Oedipus embodies the Winckelmannian Hellenic ideal, the Sphinx is represented in all her oriental glory. Ingres painted this image just ten years after Napoleon had lead his troops and “savants” into Egypt. Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign gave rise to a widespread fascination with ancient Egyptian culture and its impact on the arts was immense. In choosing to represent Oedipus in his encounter with the Sphinx, Ingres was able to draw on this new aesthetic of orientalism.6 Even before Napoleon ’s expedition, the Sphinx had become a potent visual representation of the mystery of ancient Egypt and of ancient Egypt as mystery. Ingres reworked this image during the course of his career and gave the Sphinx an ever greater prominence. In Ingres ’s depiction, the Sphinx’s orientalism... (shrink)

Une hydrie à figures rouges offre une scène mythologique inédite : un satyre fait face à Héraclès, agenouillé. Autour d’eux, une sphinx et des oiseaux semblent observer la scène. Découvert en 1955 à Apollonia d’Illyrie, ce vase est aujourd’hui exposé au musée archéologique du site. Cet article propose une analyse détaillée de l’iconographie et des modèles qui ont pu influencer le peintre, afin d’en affiner l’analyse, mais aussi la datation et d’en déterminer l’origine, probablement locale.

This paper presents an obvious explanation for why Oedipus even attempted to solve the Sphinx’s riddle, given the high cost of failure.

Standard virtue ethics approach to environmental issues do not go far enough because they often lack significant attachment to local environments. Place provides the necessary link that enlarges the arena of moral action by joining human well-being to a place -based goal of wildness or biotic harmony. Place defines a niche for human activity as part of nature. Virtuous action, then, is understood as deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world; respect and gratitude are examples (...) of this type of deliberation. (shrink)