This paper presents an approach to the belief system based on a computational framework in three levels: first, the logic level with the definition of binary local rules, second, the arithmetic level with the definition of recursive functions and finally the behavioural level with the definition of a recursive construction pattern. Social communication is achieved when different beliefs are expressed, modified, propagated and shared through social nets. This approach is useful to mimic the belief system because the defined functions provide (...) different ways to process the same incoming information as well as a means to propagate it. Our model also provides a means to cross different beliefs so, any incoming information can be processed many times by the same or different functions as it occurs is social nets. (shrink)

This article argues that the Statesman should be read as a historically informed reflection on the nature and possibility of political rule, and that it presents us with a dilemma precisely in this regard. On the one hand, as indicated by the famous myth on the evolution of the cosmos, politics is only possible today, in the age of Zeus, when man no longer is like a sheep, ruled by a caring herdsman, as he used to be in the age (...) of Cronus. Instead, he has become an expert who is capable of some degree of self-rule. On the other hand, however, as a ‘technocratic’ age, the present is marked by its loss of the ‘natural’ model for statesmanship. More specifically, when politics tends to be identified with technical expertise, it becomes difficult to make sense of the very idea of political rule. (shrink)

From Alfred Stieglitz to Trevor Paglen, photographs of the sky have engaged with the relationship between abstraction and representation. This article argues that Stieglitz’s attempt to convert the ‘natural’ abstraction of the sky into the ‘cultural’ abstraction of the modernist image opens a space through which recent photographers have moved to use the sky photograph as a means of interrogating issues of openness and concealment that are at once aesthetic and political. The invisibility of signs of military-industrial power embedded (...) within airspace is, in Richard Misrach’s and Paglen’s photographs, registered but not exactly shown, since the capacity of the photograph to reveal the unseen is challenged by the effectiveness of contemporary modes of concealment. What is shown in these images, however, is the condition of hiddenness itself, which is encountered by Misrach and Paglen not only through the abstraction of the sky photographs but by situating those images within a discursive field – through the use of titles, captions and an explication of working methods – that regrounds the atmospheric as a spectacular function of power’s open secret. (shrink)

A marxist view on the priority of the function of the stimulation of creativity as compared to the other functions of art 59 2.3.1. ...

El artículo es un esbozo de una estética de los signos de los tiempos, el cual propone en base a la categoría nietzscheana de metáfora, una heurística de los signos de los tiempos en la historia latinoamericana. Este esbozo pretende una lectura de Latinoamérica desde una nueva base epistemológica ‘dejando sin habla’ los supuestos metafísicos mediante una retirada a la metáfora de los signos de los tiempos en su emergencia original. Para lo cual se exponen las metáforas de la infancia (...) como emergencia de una nueva era, entendida como inversión cósmica y epistemológica, las metáforas relativas al martirio y a la señal de Jonás, y finalmente, exponemos metáforas que relacionan revelación y signos de los tiempos, para esto estudiamos las metáforas del ‘pasar a la otra orilla’ y las del ‘enigma’ y la interrogación. The artick is an outüne of an aesthetic of the signs of the times, which proposes the category based on Nietzschean metaphor, a heuristic of the signs of the times in Latín American history. This sketch of an aesthetic seeks a ¿¡/¡constructiva reading that produces a new epistemological basis ‘left speechkss'metaphysical assumptions by a withdrawal to the metaphor of the signs of the times in its original emergency. We describe the metaphors of childhood as emergence of a new era, and understood as cosmic investment epistemohgical metaphors relating to martyrdom and the sign of Jonah, and finally, we present disclosure relate metaphors and signs of the times, for which we study metaphors of pass to the other side’ and the ‘enigma’ and interrogation. (shrink)

Today, data and intervening digital media provide critical lines of communication with our social and business connections. Even those we know personally will typically connect to us via digital means. As a consequence, data and the digital space add a third dimension to the individual: we are now mind, body and digitality. This essay considers how digitality affects outcomes for the individual by exploring the mechanisms of digital influence. By using Peirce’s theory of semiosis to explain the process of digital (...) translation, this essay demonstrates how digitality influences the development of the individual, undermines personal autonomy and changes the nature of legal personhood thereby providing points for future legal intervention. (shrink)

A leading young Italian semiologist scrutinizes today's cultural phenomena and finds the prevailing taste to be "neo-baroque"--characterized by an appetite for virtuosity, frantic rhythms, instability, poly-dimensionality, and change. Omar Calabrese locates a "sign of the times" in an amazing variety of literary, philosophical, artistic, musical, and architectural forms, from the Venice Biennale through the "new science" to television series, video games, and "zapping" with the remote control device from channel to channel! Calabrese admits that he begins the book with (...) a refusal to distinguish between "Donald Duck and Dante." Avoiding hierarchies or ghettos among works, he takes his readers on a fast-paced expedition through contemporary culture that closes with an elegant essay on evaluation and classical form. According to Calabrese, the enormous quantity of narrative now being produced has led to a new situation: everything has already been said, and everything has already been written. The only way of avoiding saturation has been to turn to a poetics of repetition. The author shows that pleasure in texts is now produced by tiny variations, and a certain kind of citation from other works has taken on a central importance that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. In describing this development, and others shared by both avant-garde and mass media, he makes us aware of the rapid shrinkage in the once ample space between "highbrow" and "lowbrow." Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The creative imagination changes itself and the world in ways we cannot anticipate. This restless creativity gathers not just refutable facts; it hunts self-transforming revelations, semiotic prizes acclaimed and defended in the realms of inner awareness and political power. So doing, it eludes final description in any one set of signs. This means, I argue here, that sign systems must themselves give chase. Texts of this kind will not be the fixed embalmed arrays of signs and symbols that (...) have sustained our civilizations to date. These texts will be a new kind of artificial life, creative agents that rewrite and re-express themselves on-the-fly, in ways unpredictable by their founding authors. The deconstructive turn in postmodern theory sought interpretive vistas and strange loops to be teased, once upon a time, from each embalmed text. Beyond postmodernity is an aesthetics and a critical theory of empowered texts — sign arrays never quite the same and that, like time itself, sit still for no one. After an initial push by us, they self-evolve. Human sociobiology, asking how culture rewrites the agenda of replicating genes, provides a first glimpse of this new adventure in semiotics and human self-discovery. (shrink)

Peter Wollen _Signs and Meaning in the Cinema_ Expanded and revised edition London: British Film Institute, 1998 ISBN 0-85170-646-0 hbk; 0-85170-647-9 pbk 188 pages.

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played (...) by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Discerning the Signs of the Times: Recognizing the Dangers of Reckless Social Justice and Advocating With Responsibility, Christian.

This paper offers a speculative elaboration on downward workplace mobbing – the intentional and repeated inflictions of physical or psychological harm by superiors on subordinates within an organization. The authors cite research showing that workplace mobbing is not a marginal fact in today's organizations and that downward workplace mobbing is the most prevalent form. The authors also show that causes of and facilitating circumstances for downward workplace mobbing, mentioned by previous research, match current organizational shifts taking place within a context (...) of globalisation. This paper argues that it is not the organizational shifts themselves which are to "blame", but an inadequate transformation of leadership and power in reaction to those shifts. Using Foucault's power-knowledge-rules of right triad, the authors offer an explanation for downward workplace mobbing beyond the organizational changes themselves. More precisely, as the organizational changes can be characterized by a new power/knowledge bond calling forth new rules of right, downward workplace mobbing could be seen as manifestations of power outside of the delineations drawn by these new rules of right. In other words, downward workplace mobbing is pathology of current organizational shifts, resulting from not acting out the full ethical potential of the discourse of excellence, adventure, creativity and responsibility, which characterizes these shifts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guibert of Tournai's Letter to Lady Isabelle:An Introduction and English TranslationLarry F. Field, Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Guibert of TournaiIntroductionGuibert, from the noble family of As-Piès, was born near Tournai around 1200. From his hometown he traveled to Paris for his art degree, and completed the curriculum in theology there before entering the Franciscan Order around 1240. He may have participated in Louis IX's crusade of 1248, (...) but, if so, was surely back in Paris by 1254 at the latest, since he preached a cycle of sermons de dominicis et de sanctis to the university community before summer 1255.1 His regency as Franciscan master of theology at Paris was probably around 1259–1261,2 about the time he [End Page 31] completed his Eruditio regum et principum for Louis IX,3 and began his most substantial work, the Erudimentum doctrinae.4 Other significant treatises include his De pace et animi tranquillitate (ca. 1275)5 written for Marie de Dampierre, and the Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae, prepared for the Second Council of Lyon.6 Guibert died in Tournai on 7 October 1284.7Sometime around 1254, Guibert wrote a long letter of spiritual advice to Isabelle (1225–70), the sister of King Louis IX.8 Isabelle was herself a remarkable figure. She had rejected several proposals of marriage, including that with Conrad, the heir to Emperor Frederick II, in 1243, in spite of pressure from her family and Pope Innocent IV. But following a bout of serious illness at about that time,9 her family accepted her [End Page 32] decision to remain unwed. There is no evidence, however, that Isabelle ever pronounced a formal vow of virginity. Through the 1250s she simply remained at the Capetian court as a virgin princess with an increasing reputation for piety and indeed holiness, praised in lavish terms by Innocent IV in 1253 and Alexander IV in 1256.10 This piety took a distinctly Franciscan turn by 1254, when Pope Innocent IV granted her request for Franciscan confessors,11 which would ultimately result in her foundation of Longchamp, a house of Sorores minores just west of Paris, by 1260.12 Guibert's letter shows no awareness of such a project, indicating that it must have been written before spring 1255, by which time the land for Longchamp was being purchased on Isabelle's behalf.13 Guibert thus wrote at the moment when Isabelle was forming her first ties to the Franciscans, but well before her move to Longchamp, where she lived out the 1260s as resident lay patron (but never a nun).Guibert's Letter is really a short treatise of spiritual and moral advice, tailored to a celibate princess. It is organized around Psalm 44:14–15, All the glory of the king's daughter is within in golden fringes, clothed around with varieties. In a five-part structure, the king's daughter stands for a heavenly inheritance; glory within represents internal purity; gold indicates virginity; the fringes are a sign of humility; and clothed around with varieties points to honest comportment. The resulting "royal garment," however, is rather unequally woven together, with section one on the "heavenly inheritance" and the intertwined sections three and four on virginity and humility receiving by far the most space. In fact, section one forms a sort of treatise-within-a-treatise, organized as a ten-step ascent to the heavenly inheritance awaiting the daughter of the king. [End Page 33]The Letter to Lady Isabelle was first edited by Alphonse de Poorter in 1931, from a manuscript which contained only part of the text.14 The full text was brought into print by Sean Field in 2003,15 and translated into French by Jacques Dalarun in 2014.16 Yet in spite of these advances, the Letter has remained little noticed by scholars. Anne-Hélène Allirot offered several perceptive pages in 2010, stressing the way Guibert's treatment of hereditas implies that female members of the royal family might be particularly able to embody Capetian claims to holiness.17 That same year, in the only recent article dedicated specifically to this Letter, Rina Lahav... (shrink)

Se muestra cómo K. Marx establece en el marxismo y en la filosofía política en general una ambivalencia constitutiva entre la crítica y la imaginación política, pues desarrolla un realismo político que derrumba los artificios del idealismo al denunciar los intereses dominantes que lo sostienen, y que constituye una nueva figura del presente. En El Capital y en los Grundrisse lleva a cabo un desmontaje de las apariencias del mundo de las mercancías, y al mismo tiempo indica cómo los montajes (...) colectivos constituyen la manera en que la realidad y la praxis proletaria no pueden dejar de aparecer. The article shows how K. Marx stablishes a constitutive ambivalence between critique and political imagination in Marxism and in political philosophy in general, for he develops a political realism which overthrows idealism's artifices as he denounces the dominant interests which support it. In this way, he reveals a new figure from the present. In Capital and the Grundrisse, he carries out a disassembly of the world of merchandises' appearances and at the same time, he points out how the collective assemblies constitute the way in which reality and proletarian praxis can not stop appearing. This constitutes a big problem which is waiting to be resolved by political theory an practice. (shrink)

This article describes present day reaction of Ukrainian Baptist community on the current geopolitical situation in Ukraine and its reflection in first modern independent theological steps of named Late Protestant denomination. It is stressed, that complete process of theology creation is a maker of healthy and protected, factually free religious life in certain boundaries of country or land. Also it’s shown that in Ukrainian case for present day’s start of the modern Baptist theology discourse the trigger factor was Revolution of (...) dignity 2013-2014 and de-facto Russian-Ukrainian ongoing war. Ideas and practices raising up in their environment mark how all this impacts the whole Ukrainians and members of Ukrainian Baptist Churches, do they feel themselves as responsible citizens of their country, would they react or not on realities of their country life or not, and do they think about question of their identity. This entire things signal about deeper processes of final institutionalization of named denomination, its entry into democratic era together with state. (shrink)

A century and a half after the Kulturkampf in Germany, and three decades after James Davison Hunter’s account of the “culture warriors,” this book review examines what Nietzsche might have to say to us today about our understanding of the past and our relation to the future. It considers two studies of the four essays of Nietzsche’s Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen taken as a whole, one study of Nietzsche’s second essay on history, one on Nietzsche’s general conception of decadence and culture, and (...) a collection of essays on Nietzsche’s views of history and memory. Taken together, these studies not only complement each other in respect of their readings of the Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen and the question of culture, they also throw light on other aspects of Nietzsche by reminding us of the rootedness of Nietzsche’s thought in the outlook of Weimar classicism and highlighting the vitalist aspects of Nietzsche’s thought. The review concludes that Nietzsche is more timely than ever, not least because of his critique of education, as well as his attention to such key themes as identity politics, Erinnerungskultur, and museumization; it is still possible to agree with Nietzsche’s sentiments as expressed in a motto from an early notebook of July 1862: “I prefer the past to the present; but I believe in a better future.”. (shrink)

James Matlock’s Signs of Reincarnation discusses important issues related to the belief in reincarnation. These include the historical and social prominence of this belief in various cultures around the world, especially its place in spiritual and religious communities. Matlock also explores data seemly suggestive of reincarnation and attempts to develop a theory of reincarnation that can account for the data collected by parapsychological investigators and researchers. In this way, Matlock aims to show that belief in reincarnation is defensible as (...) a conclusion drawn from what he calls “signs” of reincarnation. Matlock does a good job mapping out the wide range of beliefs about reincarnation across time and culture. His description of various case studies and their salient features is highly informative. And his effort to develop a theory of reincarnation—what he calls a “processual soul theory”—is a laudable attempt at trying to accommodate the various details of interesting case studies and a core idea of reincarnation in the spiritual traditions of the world. Unfortunately, this is where my praise ends. Like many other books on the topic, Matlock’s book suffers from a variety of serious defects. The cavalcade of poor scholarship, conceptual confusion, and impoverished argumentation is particularly egregious given that Signs is allegedly based on the lecture notes for Matlock’s course on reincarnation pitched at the advanced undergraduate or Masters-level graduate seminar. In what follows, I’ll explain why Matlock’s book is paradigmatic of nearly everything that’s wrong with survival research over the past thirty years. (shrink)

Property is a complex sign in semiotics. It is also the source of tension and conflict in law. This paper examines property in triadic terms consisting of what Charles S. Peirce would identify as the icon (firstness), the index (secondness), and the symbol (thirdness). From this perspective the paper explores the ideas of place, space, and time at the iconic level of the sign of property. Discussion addresses the way in which property serves as a coded system for communicating information (...) about a given community’s values and its cultural-interpretive hierarchy. Much like an aboriginal songline, property functions as a way of imprinting the land with impressions of social ordering related to place, space, and time. In the context of global trade we therefore observe property conflicts which are sometimes not so much about the technical language of property as they are about tensions among the embedded values in competing signs of property. (shrink)