Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of (...) a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

To find out more information about Rowman & Littlefield titles please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

An infinite binary sequence X is Kolmogorov–Loveland random if there is no computable non-monotonic betting strategy that succeeds on X in the sense of having an unbounded gain in the limit while betting successively on bits of X. A sequence X is KL-stochastic if there is no computable non-monotonic selection rule that selects from X an infinite, biased sequence.One of the major open problems in the field of effective randomness is whether Martin-Löf randomness is the same as KL-randomness. Our first (...) main result states that KL-random sequences are close to Martin-Löf random sequences in so far as every KL-random sequence has arbitrarily dense subsequences that are Martin-Löf random. A key lemma in the proof of this result is that for every effective split of a KL-random sequence at least one of the halves is Martin-Löf random. However, this splitting property does not characterize KL-randomness; we construct a sequence that is not even computably random such that every effective split yields two subsequences that are 2-random. Furthermore, we show for any KL-random sequence A that is computable in the halting problem that, first, for any effective split of A both halves are Martin-Löf random and, second, for any computable, nondecreasing, and unbounded function g and almost all n, the prefix of A of length n has prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity at least n−g. Again, the latter property does not characterize KL-randomness, even when restricted to left-r.e. sequences; we construct a left-r.e. sequence that has this property but is not KL-stochastic and, in fact, is not even Mises–Wald–Church stochastic.Turning our attention to KL-stochasticity, we construct a non-empty class of KL-stochastic sequences that are not weakly 1-random; by the usual basis theorems we obtain such sequences that in addition are left-r.e., are low, or are of hyperimmune-free degree.Our second main result asserts that every KL-stochastic sequence has effective dimension 1, or equivalently, a sequence cannot be KL-stochastic if it has infinitely many prefixes that can be compressed by a factor of α<1. This improves on a result by Muchnik, who has shown that were they to exist, such compressible prefixes could not be found effectively. (shrink)

We prove that the continuous function${\rm{\hat \Omega }}:2^\omega \to $ that is defined via$X \mapsto \mathop \sum \limits_n 2^{ - K\left} $ for all $X \in {2^\omega }$ is differentiable exactly at the Martin-Löf random reals with the derivative having value 0; that it is nowhere monotonic; and that $\mathop \smallint \nolimits _0^1{\rm{\hat{\Omega }}}\left\,{\rm{d}}X$ is a left-c.e. $wtt$-complete real having effective Hausdorff dimension ${1 / 2}$.We further investigate the algorithmic properties of ${\rm{\hat{\Omega }}}$. For example, we show that the maximal (...) value of ${\rm{\hat{\Omega }}}$ must be random, the minimal value must be Turing complete, and that ${\rm{\hat{\Omega }}}\left \oplus X{ \ge _T}\emptyset \prime$ for every X. We also obtain some machine-dependent results, including that for every $\varepsilon > 0$, there is a universal machine V such that ${{\rm{\hat{\Omega }}}_V}$ maps every real X having effective Hausdorff dimension greater than ε to a real of effective Hausdorff dimension 0 with the property that $X{ \le _{tt}}{{\rm{\hat{\Omega }}}_V}\left$; and that there is a real X and a universal machine V such that ${{\rm{\Omega }}_V}\left$ is rational. (shrink)

Drawing from ethnographic, empirical, and historical / cultural perspectives, we examine the extent to which visual aspects of music contribute to the communication that takes place between performers and their listeners. First, we introduce a framework for understanding how media and genres shape aural and visual experiences of music. Second, we present case studies of two performances, and describe the relation between visual and aural aspects of performance. Third, we report empirical evidence that visual aspects of performance reliably influence perceptions (...) of musical structure and affective interpretations of music. Finally, we trace new and old media trajectories of aural and visual dimensions of music, and highlight how our conceptions, perceptions and appreciation of music are intertwined with technological innovation and media deployment strategies. (shrink)

We examined whether facial expressions of performers influence the emotional connotations of sung materials, and whether attention is implicated in audio-visual integration of affective cues. In Experiment 1, participants judged the emotional valence of audio-visual presentations of sung intervals. Performances were edited such that auditory and visual information conveyed congruent or incongruent affective connotations. In the single-task condition, participants judged the emotional connotation of sung intervals. In the dual-task condition, participants judged the emotional connotation of intervals while performing a secondary (...) task. Judgements were influenced by melodic cues and facial expressions and the effects were undiminished by the secondary task. Experiment 2 involved identical conditions but participants were instructed to base judgements on auditory information alone. Again, facial expressions influenced judgements and the effect was undiminished by the secondary task. The results suggest that visual aspects of music performance are automatically and preattentively registered and integrated with auditory cues. (shrink)

In _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who (...) attempt to deny or delimit it._ In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion—Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable _will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition. "William Franke is an articulate spokesman for what cannot be said not only with regards to modern European poetry but also with respect to contemporary theology. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable _is essential reading for everyone working in religion and literature and in modern theology." — Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia __ "By now, it would seem that there could be no more to say about not-saying. Apophatic language and negative theology have been accused of meaninglessness, nihilism, and even ill-concealed ontologies. In this lovely and surprising book, William Franke not only deftly undoes these criticisms but shows that apophasis underlies and strangely grounds all language and thought, even of those very discourses that most vigorously reject it. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_ demonstrates with elegance that there is indeed more to say, and more that is both meaningful and important." — Karmen MacKendrick, Le Moyne College__ "William Franke is an eminent scholar in comparative literature, who is schooled in philosophy and religion. He is recognized as one of the most creative contemporary thinkers working at the double intersection of philosophy and literature and philosophy and theology. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_ shows an intellectual grasp of a dizzying array of discourses and sheds real light on all thinkers who are discussed." — Cyril O'Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame_. (shrink)

In the case of Jean-Marie Guyau, declared humanist and sociologist, there is the debt of a French thinker to English thought, ...

An edited transcript of the great Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce's last year-long course in metaphysics, given at Harvard in 1915-1916.

_An edited transcript of the great Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce's last year-long course in metaphysics, given at Harvard in 1915-1916._.

This essay represents part of an effort to rewrite the history metaphysics in terms of what philosophy never said, nor could say. It works from the Neoplatonic commentary tradition on Plato's Parmenides as the matrix for a distinctively apophatic thinking that takes the truth of metaphysical doctrines as something other than anything that can be logically articulated. It focuses on Damascius in the 5—6th century AD as the culmination of this tradition in the ancient world and emphasizes that Neoplatonism represents (...) the crisis of Greek metaphysics on account of the inability to give a rational account of foundations for knowing and of the ultimate principle of beings. Neoplatonism discovered how all such ultimate principles were necessarily beyond the reach of reason and speech. This apophatic insight is drawn out with the help of contemporary criticism of Neoplatonic philosophy, defining also some points of divergence. The essay then discusses the motives for thinking the unsayable in postmodern times on the basis of this parallel with Neoplatonic thought. Discourse's becoming critical of itself to the point of self-subversion animates them both. However, the tendency in postmodern thought to totally reject theology, including negative theology, is a betrayal of its own deepest motivations. This tendency is debated through an examination of the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy. While any traditional discourse can be negated, the negating and self-negating capacity of discourse itself is infinite, and this is where a perennial negative theological philosophy of the unsayable is to be located. Language, eminently the language of philosophy, as infinitely open, points in a direction which becomes equally and ineluctably theological. (shrink)

On the one hand, we find secularized approaches to theology stemming from the Death of God movement of the 1960s, particularly as pursued by North American religious thinkers such as Thomas J.J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, Charles Winquist, Carl Raschke, Robert Scharlemann, and others, who stress that the possibilities for theological discourse are fundamentally altered by the new conditions of our contemporary world. Our world today, in their view, is constituted wholly on a plane of immanence, to such an extent (...) that traditional appeals to faith in an other world become difficult to take as more than self-deception and willful blindness to our human reality. On the other hand, we hear the assertion of a new lease on life for theology and its traditional affirmation of divine transcendence over and against the putative arrogance of all claims of human autonomy. This claim is advanced particularly by theologians grouped under the banner of the so-called Radical Orthodoxy. Emanating from England, originally from the University of Cambridge in the 1980s and 1990s, this movement includes such theological thinkers as John Milbank, Graham Ward, Rowan Williams, and Catherine Pickstock. It has also explicitly styled itself “post-secularist.” I propose that both approaches are based on not very fully acknowledged and often explicitly denied premises in negative theology, which surprisingly emerges as key to fostering genuine possibilities for dialogue among apparently antagonistic theological approaches. (shrink)

All or nothing? Nature in Chinese thought and the apophatic occident -- Nothing and the poetic making of sense -- Immanence: the last word? -- Universalism, or the nothing that is all -- An extra word on originality -- Intercultural dia-logue and its apophatic interstices -- Analytic table of contents.

Anarchism is by far the least broadly understood ideology and the least studied academically. Though highly influential, both historically and in terms of recent social movements, anarchism is regularly dismissed. Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach is a welcome addition to this growing field, which is widely debated but poorly understood. Occupying a distinctive position in the study of anarchist ideology, this volume, authored by a handpicked group of established and rising scholars, investigates how anarchists often seek to sharpen their message and (...) struggle to determine what ideas and actions are central to their identity. Moving beyond defining anarchism as simply an ideology or political theory, this book examines the meanings of its key concepts, which have been divided into three categories: Core, Adjacent, and Peripheral concepts. Each chapter focuses on one important concept, shows how anarchists have understood the concept, and highlights its relationships to other concepts. Although anarchism is often thought of as a political topic, the interdisciplinary nature of Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach makes it of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities. (shrink)

Franke reads the Divine Comedy through the insights into interpretation developed by hermeneutics, and at the same time uses Dante's poem, with its interpretive praxis based on a theological vision, to challenge prevailing assumptions about interpretation today. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Societal problems are not solved by individualistic interventions, but nor are systemic approaches optimal given their neglect of the social psychology underpinning group dynamics. This impasse can be addressed through a group-level analysis (a “g-frame”) that social identity theorizing affords. Using a g-frame can make policy interventions more adaptive, inclusive, and engaging.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bibliography of the New Rhetoric ProjectDavid A. Frank and William DriscollScholars do not have access to a complete bibliography of the new rhetoric project. We have redressed this problem by compiling what we believe is the most comprehensive bibliography to date of the works of Chaïm Perelman and of those he coauthored with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The bibliography includes all the English and French titles, as well (...) as titles that saw first publication in other languages. Translations we believe Perelman may have authorized or endorsed are included.With this bibliography, scholars can now better understand how the new rhetoric project was conceived and how it unfolded. Within the larger constellation of the project, Perelman's bibliography is the most extensive, numbering almost three hundred entries. The trajectory of Perelman's scholarship reveals the origins of the new rhetoric project and how it evolved between the time of his announcement in 1949 that he and Olbrechts-Tyteca had embarked on a program designed to rehabilitate reason and the period of his final articles in the 1980s. A review of the articles and books that came out of the Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca collaboration reveals both a phase of conceptualization and development of the project and a phase of culmination. In the first phase, commencing with Rhétorique et philosophie, the authors established the need for a rhetorically grounded philosophy. As they built toward the publication of the Traité, [End Page 449] the culmination of their ten-year effort, they wrote articles elaborating on "notions" in argumentation (1955) and on the tenets of the "new rhetoric" (1956). In 1958, the year the Traité appeared, they published articles on classical and romantic loci in argumentation and on time in argumentation. With the exception of a 1983 tribute to the theorist Pareto, they did not write together after 1958 but instead pursued separate lines of research out of their collaboration. A significant number of theses entries rehearse and embellish notions introduced between 1947 and 1958, the years of the genesis, development, and culmination of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's new rhetoric project.AbbreviationsChALe champ de l'argumentationDMPDroit, morale, et philosophieEDEthique et droitIJPAThe Idea of Justice and the Problem of ArgumentJLAJustice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal ReasoningNRHThe New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays on Rhetoric and Its ApplicationsJJusticeJRJustice et raisonRPRhétorique et philosophie pour une théorie de l'argumentation en philosophieBibliography1931 "Esquisse d'une logistique des valeurs." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 36 (3–4): 486–96. Google Scholar1932 "A propos de la philosophie de M. Dupréel." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 37 (3): 385–99. Google Scholar1933 "De l'arbitraire dans la connaissance." Archives de la Société belge de philosophie 5 (3): 5–44. Google Scholar"Le statut social des jugements de vérité." Revue de l'Institut de sociologie 13 (1): 17–23. Google Scholar1935 "Réflexions sur l'assimilation." La tribune Juive 12:51–52. [End Page 450]Google Scholar1936 "L'antinomie de M. Gödel." Bulletins de l'Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique 22 (6): 730–36. Google Scholar"Les paradoxes de la logique." Mind 45 (178): 204–8. Google Scholar1937 "L'équivalence, la définition et la solution du paradoxe de Russell." L'enseignement mathématique 36 (5–6): 350–56. Google Scholar"Metafizyka fregego." Kwartalnik filozoficzny 12 (2): 121–42. Google Scholar"Réponse à MM. Grelling et Beth." Mind 46 (182): 278–79. Google Scholar"Une solution des paradoxes de la logique et ses conséquences pour la conception de l'infini." In Congrès Descartes: IXe Congrès international de philosophie, 6:206–10. Paris: Hermann. Google Scholar1938 "Etude sur Frege." PhD diss., Université Libre de Bruxelles.1939 "Etude sur Gottlob Frege." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 44 (2): 224–27. Google Scholar"De logica en het vrije onderzoek." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 44 (2): 209–19. Google Scholar"La morale des forts et la morale... (shrink)

The humanities represent a type of knowledge distinct from, and yet encompassing, scientific knowledge. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics in the tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften, as well as on the Latin rhetorical tradition and on Greek paideia, this essay presents humanities knowledge as "involved knowing." Science, in principle, abstracts from the subjective, psychological conditions of knowing, including its emotional and willful determinants, as introducing personal biases, and it attempts also to neutralize historical and cultural contingencies. Humanities knowledge, in contrast, focuses attention (...) on precisely these subjective and historical factors as intrinsic to any knowledge in its full human purport. In particular, poetry, which historically is the matrix of knowledge in all fields, including science, deliberately explores and amply expresses these specifically human registers of significance. The poetic underpinnings of knowledge actually remain crucial to human knowing and key to interpreting its significance in all domains, including the whole range of scientific fields, throughout the course of its development and not least in the modern age so dominated by science and technology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 29.1 (2005) 73-88 [Access article in PDF] Virgil, History, and Prophecy William Franke Vanderbilt University Virgil has been very widely acclaimed as a prophet, but the grounds of this acclaim have shifted in the course of history. From ancient and especially from medieval times, this recognition was traditionally accorded him first and foremost, if not exclusively, on the basis of a passage from the Fourth (...) Eclogue celebrating the birth of a new progeny ("progenies nova") from heaven and the consequent renewal of the world.1 This passage lent itself to Christian messianic interpretations, thanks especially to its reference to a Virgin ushering in a return of the golden age of peace on earth ("iam redit et uirgo, redeunt Saturnia regna"). Historical research reveals Virgil to have, in all probability, intended in this text to hyperbolically hail the birth of a son to a particular Roman consul.2 Yet, even apart from historical intentions and inevitable doubts about them, to pin Virgil's claim to being a prophet to this text is to miss the momentous discovery that makes him truly a prophet in a way unprecedented in pagan antiquity.Modern treatments of Virgil as prophet have not remained beholden to this Christian medieval framework and have opened suggestive avenues for more accurate elucidation of Virgilian prophecy, particularly in terms of its own historical context and the role of the Latin vates in Imperial Rome.3 What I wish to propose, however, is not a more accurately historicized understanding of prophecy in Virgil, but rather a philosophical interpretation of the conception of history as prophetic that is realized in the text of the Aeneid. This is actually analogous to the medieval Christian misprision of Virgil in that it focusses on Virgil's potential significance in a new and different historical context, our own. The justification for this approach lies in the fact that historical research into prophecy during the Augustan Empire cannot exhaustively [End Page 73] explain the significance of Virgil's text in its astonishing creation of an original conception of history as prophetic, nor in its potential to illuminate the nature of prophecy as it may concern us today. Study of Virgil can help make the concept of prophecy vital to reflection on history and the structure of time in our own post-Heideggerian era.The question of whether Virgil foresaw the birth of Christ concerns prophecy only in the relatively banal sense of being able to foretell the future. In this, Virgil would be no different from myriad seers and divines and sorcerers with which the ancient world was rife. But the originality of Virgil, his particular claim to being an authentic prophet rather than simply, like many other major Roman authors, to have incorporated prophetic topoi into his works rests on his surpassing prophecy in precisely this sense. It is Virgil's single-handed invention, as if out of nowhere, of a genuinely prophetic mode of understanding history that is the seeming miracle on which his justly deserved fame as a prophetic poet has every right to rest.Whereas the certainly rather forced Christian interpretation of the Fourth Eclogue concerns "prophecy" only in a surface sense of factually foretelling the future, the deep meaning of prophecy as it develops in Virgil and Dante and the whole lineage of prophetic poets they foster down through Tasso, Spenser, Milton, and Blake, concerns rather the interpretation of history from its endpoint and seen as a whole, so that every moment in that history receives new meaning in light of a synoptic vision. In the biblical prophetic tradition, this perspective extends even beyond history and time altogether, and this marks a crucial difference from Virgil, whose end-vision is envisaged primarily as intrahistorical rather than as eschatological or as beyond the end (eschaton) of history. Still, in Virgil, just as in the Bible, the prophetic vantage point transcends history in order to understand it as a whole. This transcendence is expressed, among other ways, in the claim to divine inspiration. Whether this claim to inspiration be understood as a figure for heightened human potency or... (shrink)

With this book Allan Wolter makes available the essential writings of Duns Scotus on the will and morality. The book fills a major lacuna in medieval and Scotistic studies. In making the book Wolter tells us that his primary purpose was twofold. First of all, he wished to "correct common misconceptions that arose because of [Scotus's] voluntarist notion of God's relationship to creatures". The means he chose toward this therapeutic end in the history of philosophy is simply a matter of (...) putting forth an accurate and complete report of Scotus's teaching. The second purpose was "to show the unity of [Scotus's] ethical system based on right reason". Measured by these criteria, I would judge the book to be remarkably successful. Duns Scotus on Will and Morality gives a complete view of Scotus's ethical system. The selections are made carefully and generously so that the reader can appreciate the fullness of Scotistic moral teachings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 137-153 [Access article in PDF] Metaphor and the Making of Sense: The Contemporary Metaphor Renaissance William Franke Metaphor has gained a new lease on life through the revival of rhetoric in recent decades. For promoters of "la nouvelle rhétorique," such as Gérard Genette and Roland Barthes, rhetoric came to coincide with a total science of language that is practically coextensive with all social (...) and human knowledge, while in the Anglo-Saxon world, Wayne Booth, in the wake of Kenneth Burke, repristinated rhetoric as, not just a technical discipline, but a moral one, and, in fact, an all-embracing criticism of the humanities. 1 The fortunes of metaphor have revived and flourished in tandem with those of rhetoric as a whole. Over the more than two millennia of a progressive eclipse of rhetoric, during which it shrank from its original primacy as the master art of persuasion in law, literature, and politics and, moreover, as the general framework of culture, to the status of an ancillary art of elocution of exclusively formal import, metaphor was eventually confined to being just one particular instance within the schemes of classifications of tropes. It became an affair of style, an ornament of decorative discourse, as rhetoric came to be identified with mere elocutio and was no longer essentially also inventio--the finding of arguments, in which metaphor's role is actually paramount--and dispositio--the ordering of discourse into its syntactic parts, such as exordium, narration, discussion, peroration. As the originally tripartite art and science of rhetoric was amputated of two of its main divisions in the classical model established on the basis of Aristotle's three-book treatise, 2 metaphor became a merely formal enhancement and lost its roles as substantive and structuring for knowledge and discourse.The decline of interest in philosophical, Aristotelian rhetoric had much to do with metaphor's reduction to a merely technical or decorative device. But with the recent widening practically without limit of the terrain of rhetoric, and particularly with its restoration to its original standing as a philosophical discipline comprehending the substance of argument, metaphor [End Page 137] has once again acquired cognitive status and, moreover, has tended to become the name for figurative language in general and even, emblematically, for the rhetorical or rhetoricity as such. Where the power of rhetoric to reshape cognitive meaning and even to reinvent, or at least reconfigure, reality was once again recognized as irresistible throughout all the realms of discourse, the source and unity of this power seemed to require a name, and more often than not metaphor--on account of the transformative, inventive power associated particularly with it--has been adopted to serve this purpose.Today, under the aegis of metaphor, the power of figurative language, arguably the originating power at the source of all language and even of an articulated world as such, has newly become an object of research and general theoretical speculation. This extension of the concept of metaphor is bound up with a renewed view of figurative language in general as not only a substantive bearer of the content of discourse, but also as ontologically constitutive of the world, as operative at the origins of things and their identities. It has become possible to view all language as being metaphorical, and accordingly metaphorical operations of transfer and redefinition have been recognized as being the very essence of language and of all that comes to articulation through it. Furthermore, as witnessed by burgeoning publications and conferences, metaphor has become a topic onto which practically all the classic philosophical problems of ontology and epistemology are projected and appear in a new, specifically linguistic, light. 3This new ascendency of metaphor is certainly not uninflected or uncontested, even within the camps of the new rhetoricians. Genette, in "La rhétorique restreinte" (1972), resists the "inflation of metaphor" to become the trope of tropes and the figure of figures in a wide range of writers epitomizing modern poetics--particularly Marcel Proust, Roman Jakobson, and Michel Deguy (1969). Genette argues against reduction of... (shrink)

“Any writer worth his salt knows that what cannot be spoken is ultimately the thing worth speaking about; yet most often this humbling awareness is unsaid or covered up. There are some who have made it their business, however, to court failure and acknowledge defeat, to explore the impasse of words before silence. William Franke has created an anthology of such explorations, undertaken in poetry and prose, that stretches from Plato to the present. Whether the subject of discourse is (...) All or Nothing does not matter: the struggle of speech to name the unnameable is the same. This ambitious two-volume undertaking demonstrates a preoccupation as old as Western civilization itself: the limits of language and the virtue of being at a loss for words. How long we have been raiding the Inarticulate!” —Peter S. Hawkins, Boston University “Developments in critical theory during the past two decades have led to renewed interest in negative theology. Books like _Languages of the Unsayable_, _Negation and Theology_, _Derrida and Negative Theology _, and _The Otherness of God _ have signaled the resurgence of this ancient tradition. William Franke’s distinctive contribution is to provide the background and texts from which these recent developments have emerged.” —Mark Taylor, Williams College Apophasis has become a major topic in the humanities, particularly in philosophy, religion, and literature. This monumental two-volume anthology gathers together most of the important historical works on apophaticism and illustrates the diverse trajectories of apophatic discourse in ancient, modern, and postmodern times. William Franke provides a major introductory essay on apophaticism at the beginning of each volume, and shorter introductions to each anthology selection. The first volume, _Classic Formulations_, offers excerpts from Plato, Plotinus, Damascius, the Bible, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, Rumi, Thomas Aquinas, Marguerite Porete, Dante, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and more. (shrink)

“Any writer worth his salt knows that what cannot be spoken is ultimately the thing worth speaking about; yet most often this humbling awareness is unsaid or covered up. There are some who have made it their business, however, to court failure and acknowledge defeat, to explore the impasse of words before silence. William Franke has created an anthology of such explorations, undertaken in poetry and prose, that stretches from Plato to the present. Whether the subject of discourse is (...) All or Nothing does not matter: the struggle of speech to name the unnameable is the same. This ambitious two-volume undertaking demonstrates a preoccupation as old as Western civilization itself: the limits of language and the virtue of being at a loss for words. How long we have been raiding the Inarticulate!” —Peter S. Hawkins, Boston University “Developments in critical theory during the past two decades have led to renewed interest in negative theology. Books like _Languages of the Unsayable_, _Negation and Theology_, _Derrida and Negative Theology _, and _The Otherness of God _ have signaled the resurgence of this ancient tradition. William Franke’s distinctive contribution is to provide the background and texts from which these recent developments have emerged.” —Mark Taylor, Williams College Apophasis has become a major topic in the humanities, particularly in philosophy, religion, and literature. This monumental two-volume anthology gathers together most of the important historical works on apophaticism and illustrates the diverse trajectories of apophatic discourse in ancient, modern, and postmodern times. William Franke provides a major introductory essay on apophaticism at the beginning of each volume, and shorter introductions to each anthology selection. The second volume, _Modern and Contemporary Transformations_, contains texts by Hölderlin, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Rilke, Kafka, Rosenzweig, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Weil, Schoenberg, Adorno, Beckett, Celan, Levinas, Derrida, Marion, and more. (shrink)

The idea of translating Gerdil into English is brilliant, the translation is very good and the introduction of William Frank precise and inspiring.... Rousseau proposes a complete break with tradition. A new man will arise who is severed from the whole heritage of the past. With him the history of mankind begins anew. In one sense we have here a transposition in the field of philosophy of education of the Cartesian cogito. The subject begins with himself. To this (...) philosophical project Gerdil opposes the idea of tradition. We have not made ourselves. Our parents have procreated us. The parents do not only procreate their offspring, they also introduce them into the natural and social reality, that is they educate. No education is possible without a lively dialogue with history and society. Since the beginning man stands in a close relationship to others, is made for the human society.... In these our times one form of modernity is collapsing and the mood of the day is an unclear postmodernity that in some of its versions could well be a return to barbarianism. All the more important is then that another form of modernity be rediscovered and brought to the attention of the American public. - Rocco Buttiglione, University of St. Pius V, Rome A timely translation of a compelling 18th century critique of Rousseau by the neglected Italian author, Hyacinth S. Gerdil. Gerdil's Anti-Emile may have been written as a critique of Rousseau's Emile, but it can equally be read as a critique of the philosophy embraced by the American educational establishment. Through the influence of John Dewey, Rousseau came to inform much of the educational theory regnant in the United States, with disastrous consequences, now acknowledge by nearly all. In a valuable preface to his translation, Professor Frank, drawing upon his experience both here and abroad, not only places Emile in context, but defends Gerdil's time-transcending, classical view of education against its modern detractors. "Gerdil," Frank tells us, "addressed his Anti-Emile to elders responsible for education, be they parents, teachers, or political authorities, who might find themselves swayed by the powerful rhetoric of Rousseau's Emile." The same may be said of this translation and its informative prefatory material, for it is clearly a study that will be valued by anyone interested in principled education. - Jude P. Dougherty, Catholic University of America Cover image: "Adam and Eve" by Tintoretto. St. Augustine's Press acknowledges the kind permission granted by la Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, for the use of the image. All rights reserved by la Scuola Grande di San Rocco. (shrink)