Pathogenesis in tauopathies involves the accumulation of tau in the brain and progressive synapse loss accompanied by cognitive decline. Pathological tau is found at synapses, and it promotes synaptic dysfunction and memory deficits. The specific role of toxic tau in disrupting the molecular networks that regulate synaptic strength has been elusive. A novel mechanistic link between tau toxicity and synaptic plasticity involves the acetylation of two lysines on tau, K274, and K281, which are associated with dementia in Alzheimer's disease (AD). (...) We propose that an increase in tau acetylated on these lysines blocks the expression of long‐term potentiation at hippocampal synapses leading to impaired memory in AD. Acetylated tau could inhibit the activity‐dependent recruitment of postsynaptic AMPA‐type glutamate receptors required for plasticity by interfering with the postsynaptic localization of KIBRA, a memory‐associated protein. Strategies that reduce the acetylation of tau may lead to effective treatments for cognitive decline in AD. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay considers the implications of a shift in focus from ideas to practices in the history of alchemy. On the one hand, it is argued, this new attention to practice highlights the diversity of ways that early modern Europeans engaged alchemy, ranging from the literary to the entrepreneurial and artisanal, as well as the broad range of social and cultural spaces that alchemists inhabited. At the same time, however, recent work has demonstrated what most alchemists shared—namely, a penchant (...) for reading, writing, making, and doing, all at the same time. Any history of early modern alchemy, therefore, must attend to all of these practices, as well as the interplay among them. In this sense, alchemy offers a model for thinking and writing about early modern science more generally, particularly in light of recent work that has explored the intersection of scholarly, artisanal, and entrepreneurial forms of knowledge in the early modern period. (shrink)

Respecting patient autonomy through the process of soliciting informed consent is a cornerstone of clinical ethics. In pediatrics, until a child becomes an adult or legally emancipated, that ethical tenet takes the form of respect for parental decision-making authority. In instances of respecting religious beliefs, doing so is not always apparent and sometimes the challenge lies not only in the healthcare provider’s familiarity of religious restrictions but also their knowledge of medical interventions themselves which might conflict with those restrictions. We (...) examine a case of a newborn receiving animal-derived surfactant, a common scenario in neonatology, and present considerations for providers to weigh when confronting when such an intervention might conflict with parent’s religious beliefs. We end with strategizing ways to address this issue as a medical community. (shrink)

As nursing professionals, we believe access to healthcare is fundamental to health and that it is a determinant of health. Therefore, evidence suggesting access to healthcare is problematic for many Indigenous peoples is concerning. While biomedical perspectives underlie our current understanding of access, considering alternate perspectives could expand our awareness of and ability to address this issue. In this paper, we critique how access to healthcare is understood through a biomedical lens, how a postcolonial theoretical lens can extend that understanding, (...) and the subsequent implications this alternative view raises for the nursing profession. Drawing on peer‐reviewed published and gray literature concerning healthcare access and Indigenous peoples to inform this critique, we focus on the underlying theoretical lens shaping our current understanding of access. A postcolonial analysis provides a way of understanding healthcare as a social space and social relationship, presenting a unique perspective on access to healthcare. The novelty of this finding is of particular importance for the profession of nursing, as we are well situated to influence these social aspects, improving access to healthcare services broadly, and among Indigenous peoples specifically. (shrink)

Health equity is a global concern. Although health equity extends far beyond the equitable distribution of healthcare, equitable access to healthcare is essential to the achievement of health equity. In Canada, Indigenous Peoples experience inequities in health and healthcare access. Cultural safety and trauma‐ and violence‐informed care have been proposed as models of care to improve healthcare access, yet practitioners lack guidance on how to implement these models. In this paper, we build upon an existing framework of equity‐oriented care for (...) primary healthcare settings by proposing strategies to guide nurses in operationalizing cultural safety and trauma‐ and violence‐informed care into nursing practice at the individual level. This component is one strategy to redress inequitable access to care among Indigenous Peoples in Canada. We conceptualize barriers to accessing healthcare as intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural. We then define three domains for nursing action: practicing reflexivity, prioritizing relationships, and considering the context. We have applied this expanded framework within the context of Indigenous Peoples in Canada as a way of illustrating specific concepts and focusing our argument; however, this framework is relevant to other groups experiencing marginalizing conditions and inequitable access to healthcare, and thus is applicable to many areas of nursing practice. (shrink)

Inequities in access to oncology care among Indigenous peoples in Canada are well documented. Access to oncology care is mediated by a range of factors; however, emerging evidence suggests that healthcare providers, including nurses, play a significant role in shaping healthcare access. The purpose of this study was to critically examine access to oncology care among Indigenous peoples in Canada from the perspective of oncology nurses. Guided by postcolonial theoretical perspectives, interpretive descriptive and critical discourse analysis methodologies informed study design (...) and data analysis. Oncology nurses were recruited from across Canada to complete an online survey (n = 78). Nurses identified a range of barriers experienced by Indigenous peoples when accessing oncology care, yet located these barriers primarily at the individual and systems levels. Nurses perceived themselves as mediators of access to oncology care; however, their efforts to facilitate access to care were constrained by the dominance of biomedicine within healthcare. Nurses' constructions of access to oncology care highlight the embedded narrative of individualism within nursing practice and the relative invisibility of racism as a determinant of equitable access to care among Indigenous peoples. This suggests a need for oncology nurses to better understand and incorporate structural determinants of health perspectives. (shrink)

Employment and Employee Rights addresses the issue of rights in the workplace. Although much of the literature in this field focuses on employee rights, this volume considers the issue from the perspective of both employees and employers. Considers the rights of both employees and employers. Discusses the moral and legal landscape and traditional assumptions about right in employment. Investigates arguments for guaranteeing rights, particularly for employees, which are derived from relational, developmental, and economic bases. Explores new dimensions of employment including (...) a model that incorporates growing workplace diversity, builds upon our understanding of the legal landscape, and expands upon our justifications for recognizing and protecting rights. (shrink)

_Employment and Employee Rights_ addresses the issue of rights in the workplace. Although much of the literature in this field focuses on employee rights, this volume considers the issue from the perspective of both employees and employers. Considers the rights of both employees and employers. Discusses the moral and legal landscape and traditional assumptions about right in employment. Investigates arguments for guaranteeing rights, particularly for employees, which are derived from relational, developmental, and economic bases. Explores new dimensions of employment including (...) a model that incorporates growing workplace diversity, builds upon our understanding of the legal landscape, and expands upon our justifications for recognizing and protecting rights. (shrink)

Many people appear to attach great value to sad music. But why? One way to gain insight into this question is to turn away from music and look instead at why people value sad conversations. In the case of conversations, the answer seems to be that expressing sadness creates a sense of genuine connection. We propose that sad music can also have this type of value. Listening to a sad song can give one a sense of genuine connection. We then (...) explore the nature of this value in two experimental studies. The results suggest a striking relationship between music and conversation. People see something distinctively musical in works that express precisely those emotions that they think most create connection within conversation. (shrink)

Recognizing gaps in our present understanding of leader apologies, this investigation examines how followers appraise leader apologies and how these perceptions impact work-related outcomes. Results indicate that followers who viewed their leader as trustworthy or caring before a leader wrongdoing were more likely to perceive their leader’s apology to be sincere, as compared to followers who previously doubted their leader’s trustworthiness and caring. Attributions of apology sincerity affected follower reactions, with followers perceiving sincere apologies reporting greater trust in leadership, satisfaction (...) with supervision, leader–member exchange quality, affective organizational commitment, and forgiveness than those reporting insincere or no apologies. A mediation model was supported, showing that attributions of apology sincerity fostered perceptions of humility, which enhanced perceptions of transformational leadership, and consequently garnered more positive follower reactions. (shrink)

Plant-based milk alternatives–or mylks–have surged in popularity over the past ten years. We consider the politics and consumer subjectivities fostered by mylks as part of the broader trend towards ‘plant-based’ food. We demonstrate how mylk companies inherit and strategically deploy positive framings of milk as wholesome and convenient, as well as negative framings of dairy as environmentally damaging and cruel, to position plant-based as the ‘better’ alternative. By navigating this affective landscape, brands attempt to make mylk as simultaneously palatable and (...) disruptive to the status quo. We examine the politics of mylks through the concept of palatable disruption, where people are encouraged to care about the environment, health, and animal welfare enough to adopt mylks but to ultimately remain consumers of a commodity food. By encouraging consumers to reach for “plant-based” as a way to cope with environmental catastrophe and a life out of balance, mylks promote a neoliberal ethic: they individualize systemic problems and further entrench market mechanisms as solutions, thereby reinforcing the political economy of industrial agriculture. In conclusion, we reflect on the limits of the current plant-based trend for transitioning to more just and sustainable food production and consumption. (shrink)

The Mathematical Intelligencer recently published a note by Y. Sergeyev that challenges both mathematics and intelligence. We examine Sergeyev’s claims concerning his purported Infinity computer. We compare his grossone system with the classical Levi-Civita fields and with the hyperreal framework of A. Robinson, and analyze the related algorithmic issues inevitably arising in any genuine computer implementation. We show that Sergeyev’s grossone system is unnecessary and vague, and that whatever consistent subsystem could be salvaged is subsumed entirely within a stronger and (...) clearer system. Lou Kauffman, who published an article on a grossone, places it squarely outside the historical panorama of ideas dealing with infinity and infinitesimals. (shrink)

The study of ethical leadership has emerged as an important topic for understanding the effects of leadership in organizations. In a study with 845 working adults across multiple organizations, the relationships between ethical leadership with positive employee outcomes were examined. Results suggest that ethical leadership is related to both psychological well-being and job satisfaction in employees, but the processes are different. Employee voice mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and psychological well-being. Feelings of psychological ownership mediated the relationship between ethical (...) leadership and job satisfaction. A discussion of theoretical and practical implications concludes the article. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. According to the genre characteristics, the article is a form of publicizing analytical conclusions from the experience of research in the field of the history of philosophy in the local community of philosophers of Ukraine. The material for understanding was supplied from the environment of educational and scientific professional activity of the authors and was based on the long experience of using a certain type of historical and philosophical sources, which (...) even now constitute the main resource of sources of Ukrainian philosophical education. The article explores the concept of "physical object" in the context of the history of philosophy and examines its relevance for philosophical reflections. It is noted that the variety of interpretations of the term in the history of philosophy creates the need for new methods of revealing its essence M e t h o d s. Problems with establishing the authenticity and verifiability of such sources prompted the search for methods and techniques of source studies in related fields of knowledge, in particular analytical philosophy and philosophy of science. The article uses an analytical approach based on the study of historical and philosophical sources. Methods of source studies are used to solve problems related to the authenticity and reliability of sources R e s u l t s. With this in mind, the purpose of scientific research was to justify the appropriateness of using such a phenomenon as a "physical object" in historical-philosophical research. It was established that, despite the significant unusualness of the presence of a terminological counterpart to this phenomenon in the historical-philosophical realm, its implementation and application has significant creative potential. C o n c l u s i o n s. After a concise inquiry, the authors have reached a consensus that, in contemporary research on the history of philosophy within the Ukrainian philosophical community, it is pertinent and essential to develop a methodology. This methodology should be founded on the imperative of establishing the initial point for comprehensively studying the philosophical primary source, treating it as a "physical object". (shrink)

Perceptual diversity allows human beings to access knowledge through a variety of perceptual processes, rather than merely through everyday waking reality. Many of these perceptual processes are transrational altered states of consciousness (meditation, trance, dreams, imagination) and are not considered valid processes for accessing knowledge by science (which is based primarily upon quantification, reductionism, and the experimental method). According to Erika Bourguignon's (1973) research in the 1970s, approximately 90 percent of cultures have institutionalized forms of altered states of consciousness, meaning (...) that such types of consciousness are to be found in most human societies and are "normal." Now, however, transrational consciousness is being devalued in many societies as it is simultaneously being replaced by the monophasic consciousness of "developed" nations. Not only are we are losing (1) biodiversity (biocomplexity) in environments and (2) cultural diversity in societies, we also are losing (3) perceptual diversity in human cognitive processes. All three losses of diversity (bio, cultural, and cognitive) are interrelated.Cultures that value perceptual diversity are more adaptable than cultures that do not. Perceptually diverse cultures are better able to understand whole systems (because they use a variety of perceptual processes to understand systems) than are cultures that rely only on the scientific method, which dissects systems. They also are better stewards of their environments, because they grasp the value of the whole of biodiversity (biocomplexity) through transrational as well as scientific processes. Understanding through perceptual diversity leads to a higher degree of adaptability and evolutionary competence.From the perspective of an anthropologist who has worked with development organizations, development will continue to destroy perceptual diversity because it exports the dominant cognitive process of "developed" nations, i.e., monophasic consciousness. Destroying perceptual diversity, in turn, leads to the destruction of cultural diversity and biocomplexity. Drawing from research I conducted among traditional healers in Namibia, I conclude that development organizations need to listen to those who use transrational perceptual processes and also need to find a way to incorporate and validate perceptual diversity in their theoretical and applied frameworks. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Herbrand's Theorem, in the form of $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle-}$}}{\exists } $$ -inversion lemmata for finitary and infinitary sequent calculi, is the crucial tool for the determination of the provably total function(al)s of a variety of theories. The theories are (second order extensions of) fragments of classical arithmetic; the classes of provably total functions include the elements of the Polynomial Hierarchy, the Grzegorczyk Hierarchy, and the extended Grzegorczyk Hierarchy $\mathfrak{E}^\alpha $ , α < ε0. A subsidiary aim of the paper is to show (...) that the proof theoretic methods used here are distinguished by technical elegance, conceptual clarity, and wide-ranging applicability. (shrink)

Mentoring Away the Glass Ceiling in Academia: A Cultured Critique describes how women of diverse backgrounds perceive their mentoring experiences or the lack of mentoring experiences in the academy. This book provides a space for envisioning strategies and practices to improve mentoring practices and the collegiate environment.

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

The Carnegie Mellon Proof Tutor project was motivated by pedagogical concerns: we wanted to use a "mechanical" (i.e. computerized) tutor for teaching students..

Creativity is an important quality that has been linked with problem solving, achievement, and scientific advancement. It has previously been proposed that creative individuals pay greater attention to and are able to utilize information that others may consider irrelevant, in order to generate creative ideas (e.g., Eysenck, 1995). In this study we investigated whether there was a relationship between creativity and greater learning about irrelevant information. To answer this question, we used a self-report measure of creative ideation and a blocking (...) task, which involved learning about irrelevant stimuli. We failed to find evidence for this association, with a Bayes Factor indicating support for no relationship between these measures. While it is possible that a different measure of creative ideation, for example one which does not rely on self-report, may produce different results, a more lucrative research direction may be focusing on the link between creativity and cognitive flexibility, in line with suggestions by Zabelina and Robinson (2010). (shrink)

Since perestroika, popular interest in the ideas of Pavel Florenskii has declined, but scholarly interest in them has increased steadily. In Russia an authoritative four-volume collection of his works came out in 1994-99 and a fifteen-volume collection has been planned. His largest and most important work, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth [Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny] was reprinted in Moscow in 1990 and was translated into English in 1997. An Italian translation has been available since 1974 and a French (...) one since 1975. A German translation is under way. The first three volumes of a ten-volume German collection of his works have come out. There is a dearth of English translations and studies of Florenskii's work. The only book-length study is R. Slesinski's Pavel Florensky: A Metaphysics of Love. The most solid and extensive research on Florenskii is done in Germany and it is fully covered by M. Hagemeister's bibliographies, which appear among the papers of two international conferences on Florenskii. The papers of the first conference, which took place in 1988 in Bergamo, were published as PA. Florenskij i kul'tura ego vremeni / P.A. Florenskij e la cultura della sua epoca in 1995 and those of the second conference, which took place in Potsdam in 2000, as Pavel Florenskij—Tradition und Moderne in 2001. Our journal has published a translation of Florenskii's "Avtoreferat " and two articles on him— one on his relation to contemporary Orthodox theology and one on his importance to the future Russian culture. (shrink)

Dieser Titel aus dem De Gruyter-Verlagsarchiv ist digitalisiert worden, um ihn der wissenschaftlichen Forschung zugänglich zu machen. Da der Titel erstmals im Nationalsozialismus publiziert wurde, ist er in besonderem Maße in seinem historischen Kontext zu betrachten. Mehr erfahren Sie.

— via appropriate substitutions — syntactically identical. The method can be applied directly to quantifierfree formulae and, in this paper, will b e extended in a natural and strai ghlforward way to quantified formulae.

Chytaty Skovorodu -- Filosof u konteksti mitolohiĭ ta interpretat︠s︡iĭ -- Dyvovyz︠h︡i baroko -- Z︠H︡ytii︠e︡ mandrivnoho starchyka -- Istyna beznachalʹna -- Vidhomin davnʹoho filosofuvanni︠a︡ -- Miz︠h︡ berehamy mistyky ĭ rat︠s︡ionalizmu -- Mandrivka do rai︠u︡.

In his classic paper On Computable Numbers Turing analyzed what can be done by a human computor in a routine, “mechanical” way. He argued that mechanical op-erations obey locality conditions and are carried out on configurations satisfying boundedness conditions. Processes meeting these restrictive conditions can be shown to be computable by a Turing machine. Turing viewed memory limitations of computors as the ultimate reason for the restrictive conditions. In contrast, Gandy analyzed in his paper Church’s Thesis and Principles for Mechanisms (...) what can be done by “discrete deterministic mechanical devices” and appealed to physical considerations to motivate restrictive principles. These devices include, crucially, ones that carry out parallel processes, e.g., cellular automata. Following Turing’s methodological ways and guided by Conway’s “Game of Life” as a paradigm, Gandy formulated four restrictive principles and proved that devices satisfying them are computationally equivalent to Turing machines. (shrink)

The combative metaphor of Oscience warsO has taken on a predominant position within the collective conscious, from being featured on the programs of scientific meetings to being splashed across the pages of leading national magazines and newspapers. Some in the scientific community perceive their profession to be under siege by members of the academic left, radical environmentalists, religious fundamentalists, eco-feminists, and others. This book, based on in-depth interviews with sixty members of groups with alleged Oanti-scienceO attitudes, examines how pervasive and (...) uniform these critiques are. The research is designed to examine two conflicting hypotheses: 1) that anti-science attitudes reflect a general cynicism about all major social institutions, and 2) that anti-science views are not broadly based but are reflective, instead , of the particular interests of a given social grouping. In the final analysis, Perrucci and Trachtman dig at the root of the so-called Oscience warsO by presenting evidence that the wars are not the product of an overarching suspicion of the institutions at the core of our society, but are instead the product of organized interest groups, which shape the attitudes and beliefs of their respective members. (shrink)

Aristotle Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historial Introductions and Philological Commentaries. Edited by Leonardo Tarán and Dimitri Gutas. Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 338. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiii + 536. $226, €162.

Biton’s Construction of Machines of War and Catapults describes six machines by five engineers or inventors; the fourth machine is a rolling elevatable scaling ladder, named sambukē, designed by one Damis of Kolophōn. The first sambukē was invented by Herakleides of Taras, in 214 BCE, for the Roman siege of Syracuse. Biton is often dismissed as incomprehensible or preposterous. I here argue that the account of Damis’ device is largely coherent and shows that Biton understood that Damis had built a (...) machine that embodied Archimedean principles. The machine embodies three such principles: (1) the proportionate balancing of the torques on a lever (from Plane Equilibria, an early work); (2) the concept of specific gravity or density (from Floating Bodies, a late work); and (3) the κοχλίας, i.e., a worm drive (invented ca 240 BCE), with the toothed wheel functioning as the horizontal axis of rotation of the elevated ladder. Moreover, the stone-thrower of Isidoros of Abydos (the second machine in Biton) also embodies the κοχλίας. (shrink)

In the pathbreaking essays collected here, Neumann and Kirchheimer demonstrate that the death of democracy and the rise of fascism during the first half of the twentieth century suggest crucial lessons for contemporary political and legal scholars. The volume includes writings on constitutionalism, political freedom, Nazism, sovereignty, and both Nazi and liberal law. Most important, the Frankfurt authors point to the continuing efficacy of the rule of law as an instrument for regulating and restraining state authority, as well as ominous (...) evidence of the rule of law's fragility in modern liberal democracy. (shrink)

This paper offers an intellectual discourse for destination managers by exploring alternative branding approaches used during the colonial period in Kenya, now that the image is under siege both internally through socio-economic instability and unprecedented levels of poaching, and externally through travel warnings, outright trafficking in big game trophies, the constant threat of terror attacks, and poor global rankings in the Travel and Tourism Competitive Index. The paper conforms to the mission of thought and practice by identifying practical ways of (...) promoting tourist destination Kenya through an in-depth analysis of historical experiences. (shrink)

The introductory revised essay, "Horses of Wrath: Recent Critical Lessons," followed by nine reprinted essays, pits the Christian Rationalist, Wimsatt, an aroused Horse of Instruction, against the Tigers of Wrath, Blakean Myth critics led by Northrop Frye. Their battleground is the relation of poetry to life: what for the Blakeans is the fearful symmetry of poetry as the apocalypse of life is for Wimsatt the hateful siege of contraries, both an anarchy of life and a confusion of poetic limits. Wimsatt (...) supports the classical and Christian notion that harmony comes "in spite of" the conflict of good and evil, not "because of" that conflict, as the Blakeans would claim. For Wimsatt, poetry's unique kind of cognition is the analogous perspective it establishes toward contraries, namely the perspective of drama and metaphor in which is created a mock substance of the human condition. But after Wimsatt's analysis, we are left with a dualism which can be itself a hateful contrary: the more poetry performs its perspective function, the more it destroys its subject matter. It is also to the credit of Wimsatt's theoretic hesitancy that he will not let us forget these contraries.—E. S. T. (shrink)

A. F. Norman has recently suggested that a hitherto overlooked passage in Suidas is a fragment from the history of Eunapius of Sardis. He is clearly correct in referring the passage to an incident at the siege of Maiozamalcha during the Persian campaign of the emperor Julian, but I am not so sure that he is right in ascribing it to Eunapius, or in the conclusions he draws from this ascription. I give in parallel columns the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus, (...) Zosimus, and the passage from Suidas, together with a further version of the incident, unfortunately without names, from the pen of Libanius. (shrink)

A. F. Norman has recently suggested that a hitherto overlooked passage in Suidas is a fragment from the history of Eunapius of Sardis. He is clearly correct in referring the passage to an incident at the siege of Maiozamalcha during the Persian campaign of the emperor Julian, but I am not so sure that he is right in ascribing it to Eunapius, or in the conclusions he draws from this ascription. I give in parallel columns the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus, (...) Zosimus, and the passage from Suidas, together with a further version of the incident, unfortunately without names, from the pen of Libanius. (shrink)

The introductory revised essay, "Horses of Wrath: Recent Critical Lessons," followed by nine reprinted essays, pits the Christian Rationalist, Wimsatt, an aroused Horse of Instruction, against the Tigers of Wrath, Blakean Myth critics led by Northrop Frye. Their battleground is the relation of poetry to life: what for the Blakeans is the fearful symmetry of poetry as the apocalypse of life is for Wimsatt the hateful siege of contraries, both an anarchy of life and a confusion of poetic limits. Wimsatt (...) supports the classical and Christian notion that harmony comes "in spite of" the conflict of good and evil, not "because of" that conflict, as the Blakeans would claim. For Wimsatt, poetry's unique kind of cognition is the analogous perspective it establishes toward contraries, namely the perspective of drama and metaphor in which is created a mock substance of the human condition. But after Wimsatt's analysis, we are left with a dualism which can be itself a hateful contrary: the more poetry performs its perspective function, the more it destroys its subject matter. It is also to the credit of Wimsatt's theoretic hesitancy that he will not let us forget these contraries.—E. S. T. (shrink)

An examination of new forms of alienation in our never-off, plugged-in culture—and a clarion call for a “conspiracy of estranged people.” We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times... —from The (...) Soul at Work Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the Soul—language, creativity, affects—is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value—while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens. In this, his newest book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi—key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari—addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness. The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

C. F. Gellert's 1748 novel "Leben der schwedischen Gräfin von G***" portrays the moral actions of Jews as a result of good Christian conduct. In reaction, G. E. Lessing disputes this depiction in his one-act-play "Die Juden" from 1749. The recognition that a Jew could fulfill the ideals of the Enlightenment helped overcome the prejudices of Christian stage characters and of the audience, but it failed in the social circumstances of the time. Christian reception understood a "noble Jew" to be (...) a violation of the poetic principle of probability - and even for Lessing such a figure was the exception. Moses Mendelssohn, however, believed that Judaism was especially well-suited for fostering the development of certain virtues. In light of far-reaching interreligious concepts on the one hand and religiously motivated conflicts on the other, Lessing's early works reveal today the persistent value of self-critical examination concerning hidden prejudices towards religious and cultural minorities. (shrink)