Text and Context: Quran and Contemporary Challenges is a compilation of Arif Mohammed Khan s thought-provoking articles published in various newspapers and magazines. It is a comprehensive understanding of the Message and Spirit of Quran and Prophetic Tra.

_Evolution and Human Culture_ surveys disciplines of evolutionary studies to posit that hominin evolved moral sentiments have been integral to the development of artistic culture.

This is a second major text on ancient Daoism, one with multiple aspects and dimensions.

This paper is an adaptation of a paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in August 1998. It reports on a study on reading pedagogy and metacognition in six classrooms in Leeds and six classrooms in Dublin. The evidence is based on 12 teacher interviews, 43 separate lesson observations and school/class, policy/lesson documents. The paper analyses the teachers' thinking and their classroom practices with reference to inter-related themes, tasks, texts and contexts, and it draws (...) out the implications for the development of metacognitive awareness among the g-year-old children that these teachers reach. It attempts to explain practice with reference to teachers' conceptions of teaching, the learner and reading. (shrink)

We have seen that a musical score is in a notation and defines a work; that a sketch or picture is not in a notation but is itself a work; and that a literary script is both in a notation and is itself a work. Thus in the individual arts a work is differently localized. In painting, the work is an individual object; and in etching, a class of objects. In music, the work is the class of performances compliant with (...) a character. In literature, the work is the character itself. And in calligraphy, we may add, the work is an individual inscription. (shrink)

The contrast between the reception of Anselms argument in the prior acceptance of univocal or analogical accounts of being. 1 P. A. Daniels argued that the prerequisites for Bonaventureontologicals argument among the first scholastics of the thirteenth century depended upon their allegiance to Augustinian or Aristotelian traditions. 3 Anton Pegis did the same when he insisted that recovery of the Anselmian argument in its original form involved stripping away the Aristotelian framework in terms of which the Proslogion has been read (...) since Thomas. 4. (shrink)

Lars Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered aims to overthrow what he labels the textbook-myth of Leninism through a comprehensive reconstruction of Lenin’s relationship, both to the Kautskyite orthodoxy that dominated the international socialist movement, and more local polemics. While the resulting rereading of Lenin’s early Marxism is a powerful counter to the ‘textbook-interpretation’ of Leninism, Lih has perhaps ‘bent the stick’ too far in an attempt to prove Lenin’s orthodoxy. Importantly, he misconstrues Lenin’s critique of ‘economism’ through a too-narrow reading of ‘economism’. (...) Lih would have been better served to recognise the importance of Lenin’s polemic as an attempt, not simply to paint his opponents on the Russian Left as ‘economists’, but, more importantly, to grasp the organic nature of reformism and thus the true scale of the difficulties involved in challenging its hegemony within the workers’ movement. (shrink)

The Koan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. Edited by Steve Heine and Dale Wright. Oxford University Press, New York 2000. xii, 322 pp. £30.00, 13.95. ISBN 0-19-511748-4, 0-19-511749-2.

Self-Hypnosis: The Complete Manual for Health and Self-Change, 2nd ed offers a step-by step guide to using hypnosis to better well-being and stronger self-control. For over two decades renowned therapist and author Brian Alman showed thousands of individuals how to use self-inductive techniques for relief from pain, stress, and discomfort. Self-hypnosis assists in meditation and fosters positive self-regard. The exercises in Self-Hypnosis are clear, concise and easily attainable. As an effective therapy in alleviating the pain of childbirth, medical and dental (...) surgery, burns, and accidental injuries, hypnosis is practiced widely. Hypnosis in pain relief is a noninvasive and natural healing process. Self-Hypnosis makes this healing technique available to the lay reader. (shrink)

This book is an unconventional articulation of the political thinking in India in a refreshingly creative manner, in more than one way. Empirically, the book becomes innovative by providing an analytically more grasping contextual interpretation of Indian political thought evolved during the nationalist struggle against colonialism. Insightfully, it attempts to unearth the hitherto unexplored yet vital subaltern strands of political thinking in India as manifested through the mode of numerous significant socio-economic movements operating side by side, and sometimes as part (...) of the mainstream nationalist movement. This book articulates the main currents of the Indian political thought by locating the text and themes of the thinkers within the socio-economic and politico-cultural contexts in which such ideas were conceptualized and articulated. The book also tries to analytically grasp the influences of the various British constitutional devices that appeared as the responses of the colonial government to redress the genuine socio-economic grievances of the various sections of Indian society. The book breaks new ground in not only articulating the main currents of the Indian political thought in analytically more sound approach of context-driven discussion but also provokes new research in the field by chartering a new course in grasping and articulating the political thought in India. This volume will be useful to the students, researchers and faculty working in the field of political science, political sociology, political economy, and post-colonial contemporary Indian politics in particular. It will also be an invaluable and interesting reading for those interested in South Asian studies. (shrink)

All of Derrida’s texts on Joyce together under one cover in fresh, new translations, along with key essays covering the range of Derrida’s engagement with Joyce’s works. -/- Bringing together all of Jacques Derrida’s writings on James Joyce, this volume includes the first complete translation of his book Ulysses Gramophone: Two Words for Joyce as well as the first translation of the essay “The Night Watch.” In Ulysses Gramophone, Derrida provides some of his most thorough reflections on affirmation and the (...) “yes,” the signature, and the role of technological mediation in all of these areas. In “The Night Watch,” Derrida pursues his ruminations on writing in an explicitly feminist direction, offering profound observations on the connection between writing and matricide. Accompanying these texts are nine essays by leading scholars from across the humanities addressing Derrida’s treatments of Joyce throughout his work, and two remembrances of lectures devoted to Joyce that Derrida gave in 1982 and 1984. The volume concludes with photographs of Derrida from these two events. (shrink)

Scholars of Jewish history have paid consistent and devoted attention to the Barcelona Disputation of 1263. Records of this event preserve contemporary Jewish and Christian responses to the proceedings, which pitted Nahmanides, the most important exegete and teacher of the region, against a convert from Judaism to Christianity, took place in the royal court before an illustrious audience. This essay traces trends in scholarly treatments of the Barcelona Disputation from the early days of the Wissenschaft des Judentums to the present. (...) By examining challenges of veracity posed by the documentary sources as well as foundational assumptions about what the medieval authors intended to achieve with their accounts, this article provides broad overview of the historiography that has developed around the Barcelona Disputation. (shrink)

Are any conclusions to be had? We have shown how, at all levels, the system of Soviet literature, has both persisted and fallen into disrepair. The rigid model of socialist realism that took hold during the Ždanovist period no longer exists. However, its presence is still felt not only as a constant negative point of reference, but through the numerous structures that grew out of it. Changes set in motion during the thaw continue at an accelerated pace for the sake (...) ofperestrojka. All the same, five years later the latter has yet to achieve its literary revolution.There is one fundamental change. It would be an anachronism to organize today a conference on “One or two Russian literatures?,” as in Geneva some years ago. But will this merging of the separate branches of Russian literature go beyond confusion in the direction of a development describable as “organic”? Will the different components of the transformed system become compatible?Only time will tell and, it is hoped, dispell our doubts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Opening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters, and: The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen BuddhismEric Sean NelsonOpening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters. By Steven Heine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 200 pp.The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. Edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 322 pp.The Zen koan is mysterious to many and its significance remains (...) disputed by scholars. Is it a challenging therapeutic device, to be left behind like a raft after crossing the river, or a self-transparent statement of the liberated mind? Is it a logic-defying paradox or does it have its own performative rationality? Is it a spontaneous and often irreverent oral expression or a complex and staged literary form understandable within its context? Is it a narrative with multiple levels of meaning or something that potentially interrupts the work of meaning, narrative coherence, and conventional understanding?Although paradoxical and even shocking language occurs in other traditions, these two provocative volumes illustrate the uniqueness, significance, and interpretive difficulty of one of Zen's primary practices. Both works are valuable contributions to understanding the context, development, and meaning of the koan from its origins and growth in T'ang and Sung China to later Japanese developments.Steven Heine's Opening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters includes translations of sixty koan cases, selected traditional commentary, and his account of each case. This rich work gathers significant koans about Zen's encounter with its "other" from a variety of koan collections compiled in Sung China and Kamakura Japan.The volume is organized around the theme of "opening a mountain." Masters opened up mountains for Zen by confronting and converting local spirits, hermits, and other forces that would prevent or endanger its practice. It refers more broadly to the confrontation and contest between Zen masters and figures representing supernatural forces, indigenous and popular religiosity, and rival forms of practice such as that of the isolated hermit without vows and outside the Buddhist community.The koans are presented and discussed in five sections concerning: (1) supernatural mountain landscapes; (2) irregular rivals such as hermits, wizards, and dangerous women; (3) supernatural experiences in which bodhisattvas, demons, and magical animals are encountered in dreams and visions; (4) the use of symbols of authority and transmission such as the flywhisk; and (5) experiences of confession, repentance, self-mutilation, death, and the afterlife.Heine argues that emphasizing the ritual, symbolic, and cultural dimensions of the koan complements understanding it as using paradoxical language to free one from the reification of language through aporia and double-binds. He insightfully shows through his translations and discussions the often ignored mythological and religious dimension of many koans. Even when koans use mythic or supernatural elements ironically, it is still in reference to such a context of belief. Since the outcomes [End Page 284] of these confrontations between Zen iconoclasm and irregular practices and unconventional beings are often uncertain, the koan embodies these tensions between supernaturalism and iconoclasm, ritual and meditative clarity, devotion and enlightenment. Zen masters are not always unambiguously victorious in their confrontations and competition with popular religion in these stories of opening mountains and taming and converting spirits, shamans, hermits, unconventional and rival women (such as the "Zen grannies" and the nuns of cases 23-26), and other irregular practitioners and dangerous forces.Zen iconoclasm is best exemplified by Lin-chi (J.:Rinzai), known for his advice to kill the Buddha and the patriarchs, who forbade travel to Mount Wu-t'ai, where popular devotional Buddhists believed Mañjus´rī appeared (see cases 13-15). Lin-chi's Mañjus´rī cannot be seen on sacred mountains but is manifested in your own activity. However, even some koans involving Lin-chi focus on his ambiguous success in dealing with P'u-hua (cases 16, 57), an irregular practitioner attributed with magical powers. Despite such warnings, the bodhisattva of compassion's sacred mountain continued to appeal to ordinary Buddhists and even Zen practitioners. In these koans, Zen is not simply demythologizing. It is playing a dangerous game of ironic ambiguity and... (shrink)

This work, edited by Henry Rosemount, Jr, is Volume I in the series of "Critics and Their Critics". Angus C. Graham is the leading translator and interpreter of Chinese philosophical texts; he has written philosophical works of his own, he has written at length and in detail on early Chinese grammar and philology, he has translated Chinese poetry, and he has published some of his own poetry. Graham's polymathic achievement explains the polygenous nature of his collection, which has some essays (...) ranging broadly over aesthetics, ethics, religion, and epistemology; others providing concentrated discussion of specific problems in early Chinese syntax, semantics, etymology, and paleography; and yet others being admixtures, moving by turns through etymology, epistemology, and problems of the translation, interpretation, and dating of Chinese texts. (shrink)

Resumo: Chuang Tzu (《庄子》), como um cânone tradicional chinês, foi traduzido para o inglês por mais de 100 anos, desde 1881, conquistando com sucesso um nicho no reino da literatura mundial, que se tornou um evento cultural devastador na academia de sinologia ultramarina e literatura mundial. Segundo as estatísticas, o livro foi traduzido em 12 traduções completas, 50 traduções selecionadas e duas adaptações. No processo de metamorfose da “tradução completa - tradução profunda - retradução diversificada”, passou por quatro fases, nomeadamente (...) fases religiosas, literárias, filosóficas e reinterpretações diversificadas. Assim, na perspectiva da visão de Damrosch a respeito da literatura mundial, o artigo resume as características de diferentes estágios, com base em diferentes contextos espaço-temporais. À luz da forma tradutória, dos resultados tradutórios e do modo de leitura tradutória, especifica-se o caminho pelo qual Chuang Tzu entrou no campo da literatura mundial, para apreender o mecanismo operacional de promoção da literatura nacional à literatura mundial, que se dedica ao esclarecimento para o trabalho prático de tradução da introdução da literatura chinesa no exterior. Enquanto isso, revisando a história das traduções inglesas de Chuang Tzu, o artigo resume as deficiências das atuais atividades de tradução e pesquisa, com a tentativa de fornecer sugestões construtivas, bem como apontar a direção para o desenvolvimento futuro de estudos de Chuang Tzu no exterior. (shrink)

This paper analyses the paradigms of interpretation and the evolution of the creative processes in music and law. Whether it is matter of a score or a law, the text is reborn through the work of the interpreter who, in dealing with the epistemological problem of the understanding, has to harmonize the purity of the philological reconstruction of the object with the need to actualize its sense. Moving from the creative character of every interpretation—neither the musician can be reduced to (...) a mere executor of a concatenation of musical symbols on the staff as Stravinsky wanted nor the judge may be conceived as a bouche de la loi according to Montesquieu’s theory—this work, after having discussed Gadamer and Betti’s hermeneutical approaches to music and law, focuses on the issue of the limits to the interpreters’ freedom. The interpretation here proposed revolves around improvisation, seen as a typical cultural practice of the aesthetic dimension of music. Improvisation, which from baroque to jazz does not correspond to the realm of absolute freedom, is used as a trait d’union in order to make a comparison with legal experience. This is particularly true with the development of case law, which becomes increasingly problematic especially in the light of “liquid modernity”, where the “polytheism of values” has been gaining strength. Seen from this perspective, the comparison between the judge and the musician in their activity as interpreters of a formalized system of signs highlights the controversial relationship between form and creativity, the accuracy of the text and the requisites deriving from the social context, certainty and justice. (shrink)

In 1997 the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that school officials at West High School did not violate Rachel Bauchman's constitutional rights by including Christian religious music as part of its curriculum, or by staging school performances at religious sites. Three philosophical questions are investigated in this paper: whether the performance of religious text constitutes a religious practice, the ways in which instructional and performance context can affect the performance of sacred music, and how music teachers can (...) avoid coercion when teaching religious music. Conclusions suggest that music educators must carefully consider the historical and cultural context of texts utilized in choral music. Certain contemporary devotional texts intended primarily for worship may prove problematic in a classroom setting. In addition, the instructional context in which religious music is presented can greatly impact how students understand the music's significance. Music educators should carefully articulate clear pedagogical reasons for staging performances in houses of worship to avoid the appearance of endorsement, and should refrain from asking students to participate in organized worship services. Finally, music educators should be sensitive to the problems religious texts present to individual students, taking responsibility for facilitating a classroom environment that respects a diversity of viewpoints. (shrink)

The motif of women becoming men, taking on manly characteristics, or being made male appears in several Christian Apocryphal texts. This essay investigates the reasons behind this motif in terms of the cultural context without evaluating whether the attitude towards women which this particular motif might be understood to reflect demonstrates that Christian communities were more or less misogynistic than the rest of society. The ‘becoming male motif can reasonably be expected, because of its oddity relative to modern views (...) of gender and its distinctly late-antique roots, to help to reveal the relevant social and cultural assumptions about the relationship between gender and spiritual authority which lie behind its appearance in Apocryphal texts. These assumptions in turn explain why the motif is one of ambivalence rather than equality or neutralization. (shrink)

Public discourse on religious matters is a sensitive issue in Romania. It has raised heated debates for at least two reasons: on the one hand, the repressive policy of the Communist regime concerning religion created a strong boomerang-effect, a religious renaissance after 1989; on the other hand, there is a deep cleavage between the “two Romanias:” the urban and the rural, the modernized and the traditionalist, the liberal and the conservative. Religion still serves as a major cultural marker of national (...) identity, and the church is one of the most trusted institutions in Romania. We are exploring the hypothesis that the 2006-2007 religious icon scandal in Romania is a typical example of heated public debate in a transitional society. (shrink)