This article proposes an analysis of Plato’s Sophist that underlines the bond between the logical and the emotional components of the Socratic elenchus, with the aim of depicting the social valence of this philosophical practice. The use of emotions characterizing the ‘elenctic’ method described by Plato is crucial in influencing the audience and is introduced at the very moment in which the interlocutor attempts to protect his social image by concealing his shame at being refuted. The audience, thanks to Plato’s (...) literary strategy, realizes the failures of the interlocutor even as he refuses to accept them. As a result, his social image becomes tarnished. Purification through shame reveals how the medium is strictly related to the endorsement of specific ethical and political goals, making the Platonic dialogs the tools for the constitution of a new paideia. (shrink)

In The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault criticizes modern historiography for presupposing a factitious theory of the subject. Foucault rejects this presupposition and pursues an alternative style of historiography, organized by the analysis of epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”). Aiming his criticism solely at its theory of the purified subject, Foucault overlooks the deeper structural incoherence of modern historiography. This oversight leads Foucault to an uncritical embrace of a style of historiography that enacts its own form of (...) class='Hi'>purification. In the reading developed here, Foucault systematically purges the history of class struggle from the analysis of self-care. This essay introduces the outlines of a Marxian approach to ancient practices of care of the self that is nonreductive and nondeterminist in and through a reading of Foucault. In this approach, the organization of classes and the practices of care of the self that materialize within a society are to be understood historically as constantly shaping and influencing one another. (shrink)

In the aftermath of WW2, nationalism was regarded by many political philosophers as an afront to civilized values. Yet at the same time nationalism has been an important means by which former colonies have attained and protected their independence. Once this distinction is made, it is clear that there are different types of nationalism, used in different circumstances, and for different purposes, and many political theorists have attempted to distinguish acceptable and unacceptable forms of nationalism. In this paper, I contribute (...) to this debate by distinguishing four functions of nationalism: purification, privilege, pride, and protection. These functions can be mixed together in different ways, and I claim that purification and privilege are both highly problematic, while pride, and especially protection, are far more defensible. (shrink)

It is almost universally believed that in quantum theory the two following statements hold: all transformations are achieved by a unitary interaction followed by a von-Neumann measurement; all mixed states are marginals of pure entangled states. I name this doctrine the dogma of purification ontology. The source of the dogma is the original von Neumann axiomatisation of the theory, which largely relies on the Schrődinger equation as a postulate, which holds in a nonrelativistic context, and whose operator version holds (...) only in free quantum field theory, but no longer in the interacting theory. In the present paper I prove that both ontologies of unitarity and state-purity are unfalsifiable, even in principle, and therefore axiomatically spurious. I propose instead a minimal four-postulate axiomatisation: associate a Hilbert space \ to each system \; compose two systems by the tensor product rule \; associate a transformation from system \ to \ to a quantum operation, i.e. to a completely positive trace-non-increasing map between the trace-class operators of \ and \; evaluate all joint probabilities through that of a special type of quantum operation: the state preparation. I then conclude that quantum paradoxes—such as the Schroedinger-cat’s, and, most relevantly, the information paradox—are originated only by the dogma of purification ontology, and they are no longer paradoxes of the theory in the minimal formulation. For the same reason, most interpretations of the theory interpret the same dogma, not the strict theory stripped of the spurious postulates. (shrink)

The religious value which we are entitled to attach to instances of purification in the Homeric poems is extremely small. It is important at the outset of the inquiry to get away from pre-conceived ideas founded on later religious practice, in the light of which the Homeric examples are instinctively interpreted. Chapter and verse from fifth century and later parallels is not necessarily authority for reading a religious significance into the account of an apparently secular act in Homer.

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of the (...) human being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic. (shrink)

‘The issues surrounding Orestes’ purification are some of the most difficult in all of Aeschylus’ wrote A. L. Brown in 1982. Despite the appearance since then of an overall treatment of pollution and three editions of the play, there continue to be disagreements about the matter. In this paper I suggest that we may be better able to understand the treatment of purification if we focus on the importance of Orestes’ pollution to the particular version of the story (...) constructed in Eumenides. (shrink)

Recombinant adeno‐associated viruses (rAAVs) are promising vectors for the delivery of various genetic constructs into eukaryotic cells. rAAVs have a number of properties that make it possible to successfully use them both in vitro and in vivo. Purification and concentration of rAAV vectors are critical for achieving high viral titer, stability, efficiency, and purity. This review systematically analyses all available purification approaches. The purification methods described in this work differ substantially from each other in mechanisms, efficiency, labor (...) time, and cost. Researchers have to choose a purification algorithm depending on the purpose of their work. We strive to simplify the choice of the necessary and sufficient technique based on the experimental needs and available resources of the laboratory. (shrink)

In Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, engineers work hard to control water flows and provide different sectors with clean and sufficient water. In 2011, only 10 percent of the totality of water used daily by Arequipa’s then close to 1 million people—in households, tourism, industry, and mining—was treated before it was returned to the river where it continues its flow downstream towards cultivated fields and, finally, into the Pacific Ocean. It takes specialized knowledge and manifold technologies to manage water and (...) sustain life in Arequipa, and engineers are central actors for making water flow. Examining the ecology of water management, this article asks to what extent we can talk of a way of knowing and enacting water that is particular to engineers. Through engineering practices, a technical domain emerges as separate from and superior to political and social domains. This production of categories can be understood as practices of purification. However, a purely technical grip on water is never possible. Unruly elements, like weather, contamination, urban dwellers, and competing interests, interfere and make processes of intervention unstable. Water is never completely cleaned, and, equally, the continuous processes of purification of categories and domains take place while other processes work to blur their boundaries. (shrink)

Scholars often take purification to be a concept that persists the same throughout Plato’s dialogues. Generally, they take it to mean the separation of the soul from the body, picking up on Socrates’s account at Phaedo 67c–d. I do not find that this account of purification endures throughout the dialogues. In this paper, I argue that in Symposium Diotima describes purification differently. I argue that her account of purification emphasizes preparedness for encountering the forms, not the (...) eradication of the corporeal. I present this account in three steps. First, I discuss Diotima’s lower and higher mysteries, focusing on the lower mysteries. Next, I examine Diotima’s use of the Eleusinian mysteries as an analogy for her own mysteries. Here, I overview the historical rites at Agrai and the Eleusinian Mysteria. I argue that, mirroring the Agrai rites, Diotima’s lower mysteries are purificatory, and therefore provide an account of purification. Finally, I explain the account of purification Diotima presents in the lower mysteries as the desire to possess the deathless deathlessly. Diotima’s account of purification is importantly distinct from the Phaedo account. In the former, the separation of the soul from the body is in no way important for purification. We must confront the discrepancies between these accounts and recognize that purification is not a doctrine that persists throughout the dialogues. (shrink)

Chapters 10 and 11 are critical to the argument of Metaphysics Zeta: these chapters are concerned with the purification of form. Z.10 introduces the apparatus of part and whole and consists of an argument to the end that form and its parts have priority over the other internal structural components of c‐substances, i.e. matter and the compound of form and matter; while in Z.11 Aristotle argues that form and its parts cannot involve any admixture of matter. Wedin argues that (...) the causal role of form presupposes its purity: if form is to explain why a certain portion of matter constitutes a c‐substance of a given kind, then matter—whether this latter is understood as functional, or remnant matter—cannot already be contained in the form. This is the ‘purity thesis’, as Wedin calls it: matter cannot be included in the definitions of natural organisms, Wedin points out, because that would make the explanandum a part of the principle that explains it. Wedin also argues that form must be sufficiently complex to provide definitions of the natures of particular compounds, which are complex, even though form itself is a kind of universal. (shrink)

Through tracing the articulation, rise and eventual fall of Marxist theory in France, I seek in my dissertation to show the difficulties of wedding Marxist theory to ameliorative political practices.Specifically, I follow the development of French Marxism between 1920--1965 in order to demonstrate how the thought of Althusser is a reaction to and correction of both the crude materialist philosophy of the French Communist Party and of the more sophisticated humanist Marxism of such intellectuals as Cornu, Lefebvre, Garaudy, Sartre and (...) Merleau-Ponty. I do not affect this tracing to show that Marx's notions are untenable or artificial and that they will therefore always lead to problems in their application. Instead, I argue with Louis Althusser that Marx's philosophical insights into the relationship between humans and world remain of value and that they may serve as a guide for political practice. Both my analysis and my critique is intended as a response to those who, citing the apparent theoretical and practical inconsistencies and failures of Marxist practice, would criticize and altogether abandon this project. (shrink)

Scholars disagree about the plausibility of preference purification. Some see it as a familiar phenomenon. Others denounce it as conceptually incoherent, postulating that it relies on the psychologically implausible assumption of an inner rational agent. I argue that different notions of rationality can be leveraged to advance the debate: procedural rationality and structural rationality. I explicate how structural rationality, in contrast to procedural rationality, allows us to offer an account of the guiding idea behind preference purification that avoids (...) inner rational agents. Afterward, I address two pressing challenges against preference purification that emerge under the structural rationality account. (shrink)

Behavioural welfare economics has lately been challenged on account of its use of the satisfaction of true preferences as a normative criterion. The critique contests what is taken to be an implicit assumption in the literature, namely that true preferences are context-independent. This assumption is considered not only unjustified in the behavioural welfare economics literature but unjustifiable – true preferences are argued to be, at least sometimes, context-dependent. This article explores the implications of this ‘critique of the inner rational agent’. (...) I argue that the critique does not support a wholesale shift away from the use of true preferences as an evaluative standard in normative economics; instead, the critique implies that behavioural welfare economists need to inquire into and establish the ‘source’ of particular context-dependent choices in individuals’ decision-making. The source determines the permissibility of correcting individuals’ context-dependent choices and can, in some situations, support decisive welfare judgements. (shrink)

Foucault’s 1970–71 lectures at the Collège de France, The Will to Know, highlight the significance of themes of purity and impurity in Western thought. Reflecting on these themes coincided with the emergence of Foucault’s theory of power. This article presents the first analysis of Foucault’s investigation of purity and impurity in The Will to Know lectures, identifying the distinctive theory Foucault offers of purity as a discursive apparatus addressing correspondence between the subject and the truth through the image of relative (...) integrity or mixture. It then traces Foucault’s subsequent reflections on these themes in his later writings on disciplinary power. The implications of Foucault’s position are considered; the article will close by putting Foucault’s ideas in dialogue with those of Kristeva, and in considering the role that purity and impurity may play in resistance. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to the ongoing investigation of the social significance of biomedicine by examining a very specific site: the activity of bio-containing in Nebraska during the recent Ebola outbreak. We do this by taking up key insights of Mary Douglas and Victor Turner concerning the essential meaning-making tasks of culture. We demonstrate how biocontaining as an activity contributed to the ongoing meaning-making work in U.S. society during the Ebola crisis in 2014. The analysis is based in significant (...) part on fieldwork done at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, study of NBU educational materials, and follow-up conversations with personnel staffing that unit.Biocontaining during the Ebola... (shrink)

En décembre 1992, les trois quarts de la Bosnie, ainsi qu’un tiers de la Croatie avaient été et continuaient d’être purifiés ethniquement, c’est à dire que les communautés définies comme non serbes (à Vukovar il y avait plus d’une vingtaine de communautés différentes, appartenant à des sous-groupes religieux ou nationaux spécifiques) étaient en partie chassées, soit en partie massacrées, soit déportées dans des camps de détention dénoncés par la presse américaine en août 92 : ce systéme conce..

This paper attempts to clarify the processes undergone by the yoga practitioner in the later stages of purification according to the classical Yoga of Pata jali. Through a process termed the sattvification of consciousness, the mental processes of the yogin are remolded, reshaped and restructured leading to a transformation of the mind and its functioning. The mind thus can be seen not only as a vehicle of spiritual ignorance, but of liberating knowledge culminating in authentic identity. Yoga philosophy, far (...) from negating or suppressing human nature, has profound implications for psychological improvement and an embodied understanding of freedom and human integrity. (shrink)

In the ancient Greek world, the concept of 'miasma,' which becomes permanent and has the potential to grow over time due to evil acts such as murder committed in the city, is a concept frequently referred to in many classical tragedies. To the extent that miasma has a bad connotation due to its nature and is a situation that occurs due to evil actions, it can be considered together with the philosophical problem of evil. In this study, we aim to (...) examine the concept of miasma by focusing on the characters in La Jauría, one of the most prominent films of recent South American cinema, rather than a purely conceptual analysis of the concept. Filmed in the jungles of Colombia and directed by Colombian director Andrés Ramírez Pulido, the 2022 film La Jauría is a psychological drama that focuses on the lives of young people involved in crime. The tragic story of Eliu, the protagonist of the film, which takes place mainly in a prison specially designed to rehabilitate inmates, seems to us to be a very suitable focal point for examining the concepts of miasma, catharsis, and ecstasy, which are frequently referred to in ancient Greek tragedy. To do so, we will first address the various contexts in which miasma has been used historically, considering the flow of events in the movie La Jauría. Then, we will look at the relationship of the concept of miasma with the problem of evil. Finally, we will discuss the possibilities of the concept of purification, which is seen as a kind of antidote to miasma. (shrink)

Le présent article propose de réévaluer le rôle de l’analogie entre l’art politique et l’art pastoral dans la philosophie politique de Platon et d’offrir ainsi à l’histoire des arts de gouverner un autre aspect du pastorat que celui que Michel Foucault a cherché hors du monde Grec. On a négligé de lire dans cette perspective le passage des Lois, V, 734e-736b où Platon invoque le gardien du troupeau pour mettre en avant une dimension fondamentale de l’art politique, celle qui consiste (...) à purifier le corps social de ses éléments indésirables, mais aussi celle qui exige de subdiviser celui-ci pour mieux répartir en son sein les ressources et développer ses capacités d’action. On montrera comment Platon, en réactivant l’analogie homérique entre pratiques pastorales et les pratiques militaires, dessine un art de gouverner inspiré par l’art de trier et de répartir des pasteurs d’hommes, comme un art de production de communautés robustes dotées d’une capacité d’agir collective. (shrink)

The Seven Stages of Purification and the Insight Knowledges. Matara Sri Nanarma Mahathera. Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy 1983. xii, 82 pp. $5.00.

Çalışmanın konusunu Seyyid Burhaneddin’de ahlakî arınmanın incelenmesi teşkil etmektedir. İnceleme üç temel soru çerçevesinde yürütülür. İlk soru, kirlerin neler olduğu ve nelerin bu kirlerden arındırılması gerektiğine yöneliktir. Bu bağlamda Seyyid Burhaneddin’in beden, dünya, nefs, gönül, can, ruh vb. hususlarla alakalı görüşleri ele alınmaktadır. Diğer bir soru ise söz konusu arınmanın nasıl gerçekleştirileceğine ilişkindir ki Seyyid Burhaneddin’in mücahede, riyazat, söz, bilgi gibi kavramlara dair görüşleri doğrultusunda bir yanıt verilmeye çalışılır. Arınmanın ve buna binaen yetkinleşmenin sonucu kişinin ulaşacağı mertebe ne olacaktır? Son (...) olarak da bu soru çerçevesinde Seyyid Burhaneddin’in düşüncelerinin değerlendirilmesine çalışılmakta ve insanın beka ve ebediyete kavuşması ve namütenahi bir biçimde Allah’ta seyredişi ele alınmaktadır. (shrink)

This comment is offered in response to Hansen's "A Multidimensional Scale for Measuring Business Ethics: A Purification and Refinement". Five issues arising from Hansen's purification and refinement efforts are addressed. These include the issues of parsimony, predictive validity, collinearity, reliability, and what we see as a confusion between normative and positive theory.

Despite Aristotle’s claim in Topics I that all dialectical argument is either syllogism or epagōgē, modern scholars have largely neglected to assess the role of epagōgē in Platonic dialectic. Though epagōgē has no technical use in Plato, I argue that the method of collection (which, along with division (diairēsis), is central to many of the dialogues’ accounts of dialectic) functions as the Platonic predecessor to Aristotelian epagōgē. An analysis of passages from the Sophist and Statesman suggests that collection is a (...) purificatory practice. I argue that collection is not only Plato’s account of generalization from a sensible many to an intelligible many, as suggested by the Phaedrus, but also functions as a method of diacritical selection that allows inquiry to move from the intelligible many produced by division to the intelligible unity of a definition. This reading contributes a deeper understanding of the mutual relationship of division and collection within Platonic dialectic as well as a way of unifying the accounts of dialectic in the Sophist and Statesman with the otherwise idiosyncratic account of dialectic in the Republic. Finally, this analysis of Platonic epagōgē sheds light on the connection between inquiry and argument present in Aristotle’s use of epagōgē. (shrink)

Focusing on the recent explosion in the use of bottled water, this article—originally written for my NASTS conference presentation—will examine the rhetoric used by the bottled water industry and home purification system providers to affect the public’s idea of clean, pure, dirty, and polluted water. Bottlers argue that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides better regulation of bottled water than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could ever do for tap water, though the EPA and the FDA use basically (...) the same set of guidelines. The EPA and FDA definitions in terms of concentrations of specific substances are very different from the ideas of muddy or “dirty” water. This article will examine the impact of the public’s perception of good drinking water and the perception that if it is off the shelf, it is cleaner and tastier. (shrink)

The main milestones, means, methods and consequences of the practice of «cleansing rituals» faithful Uniate diocese of Chelm during the 1830's - mid 1870's. As an important part of government measures to its incorporation into the Russian Orthodox Church.

This paper addresses the relation between explicitation and translation expertise in the rendition of nominalisation and participles in the legal Qurʾānic verses specific to purification and prayer. It uses a corpus-based method: _The Qurʾānic Arabic Corpus_. The paper argues that most of the expert Qurʾān translators explicitate in rendering nominalisation and participles in the legal verses specific to purification and prayer into English in the said corpus. They explicitate in the form of both addition and specification with varying (...) degrees as the former is adopted twice as much as the latter. The paper claims that most explicitations specific to the rendition of nominalisation and participles in the legal Qurʾānic verses peculiar to purification and prayer in the corpus have been superfluous, albeit justifiable. This may confirm the relation between explicitation and translation expertise in _The Qurʾānic Arabic Corpus_ in the sense that although the meaning of nominalisation and/or participles is wholly translated into English, the Qurʾān translators still explicitate through addition or specification to further facilitate the comprehension process. This paper offers a baseline for examining explicitation exercised on nominalisation and participles in the legal Qurʾānic verses particular to purification and prayer, which may have implications for future studies conducted on the same topic in other similar legal contexts. (shrink)

The work of Gaston Bachelard is known for two crucial concepts, that of the epistemological rupture and that of phenomenotechnique. A crucial question is, however, how these two concepts relate to one another. Are they in fact essentially connected or must they be seen as two separate elements of Bachelard’s thinking? This paper aims to analyse the relation between these two Bachelardian moments and the significance of the concept of phenomenotechnique for today. This will be done by examining how the (...) concepts of Bachelard have been used from the 1960s on. From this historical perspective, one gets the impression that these two concepts are relatively independent from each other. The Althusserian school has exclusively focused on the concept of ‘epistemological break’, while scholars from Science & Technology Studies, such as Bruno Latour, seem to have only taken up the concept of phenomenotechnique. It in fact leads to two different models of how to think about science, namely the model of purification and the model of proliferation. The former starts from the idea that sciences are rational to the extent that they are purified and free from obstacles. Scientific objectivity, within this later model, is not achieved by eradicating all intermediaries, obstacles and distortions, but rather exactly by introducing as many relevant technical mediators as possible. Finally, such a strong distinction will be criticized and the argument will be made that both in Bachelard’s and Latour's thought both concepts are combined. This leads to a janus-headed view on science, where both the element of purification and the element of proliferation are combined. (shrink)

Cette contribution entre dans le cadre d’une série d’études qui porte, essentiellement, sur un lieu d’histoire et de mémoire du corps de la femme. Il s’agit du hammam, dans sa langue d’origine et le bain maure chez les francophones, dans la conception de la population de l’ancienne capitale du Maghreb central et son hawz. Par son passé, il remonte à une date lointaine. Le hammam reprend ses fonctions principales pour prendre une place dans la société arabo musulmane. Très fréquenté par (...) la gent féminine, il est le lieu des pratiques sociales et culturelles pour y rester dans la célébration des événements familiaux. D’ailleurs, l’étude touche directement l’ unité sociale de l’expression du travail du personnel féminin, l’unité sociale de la purification et de l’hygiène corporelles, la culture locale de la purification corporelle, le dernier bain du célibat de la jeune fille, le premier bain de la nouvelle mariée, le premier bain post-couche de la jeune mère, le bain pré pèlerinage. Mots clefs : hammam, bain maure, fonctions sociales, Tlemcen, Ain El Hûts, hawz, événements familiaux, rituels festifs, purification, hygiène corporelle, femmes Esta contribución forma parte de una serie de estudios que tienen como objeto la concepción del hammamo baño turco como un espacio de historia y memoria del cuerpo femenino entre la población de la antigua capital del Magreb central y su hawz. La historia del hammam es larga pero este espacio ha recuperado su funcionalidad hasta hacerse hueco de nuevo en la sociedad árabe musulmana. Muy popular entre las mujeres, es lugar de prácticas sociales y culturales en torno a la celebración de eventos familiares. Por otra parte, nuestro estudio aborda directamente la unidad social de la expresión del trabajo del personal femenino, la unidad social de purificación e higiene corporales, la cultura local de la purificación del cuerpo, el último baño de la joven célibe, el primer baño de la recién casada, el primer baño de la nueva madre y el baño previo a la peregrinación. Palabras clave: hammam, baño musulmán, funciones sociales, Tlemcen, Ain el Hûts, hawz, festejos familiares, purificación, higiene personal, mujeres. (shrink)

At present, the feasibility of using self-purification mechanism to inhibit rumor spreading has been confirmed by studies from different perspectives. This paper improves the classical rumor spreading models with self-purification mechanism, analyzes the correlation between spreading threshold in the model and its self-purification level theoretically, and conducts numerical simulations to study the impact of the changes of model parameters on key indicators in the process of rumor spreading. The simulation results show that changes of model parameters, including (...) self-purification level and forgetting rate, exert significant influences on rumor spreading exactly. (shrink)