Agrippa was the main expounder of the occult philosophy, which is the knowledge of the hidden causes of things and is finalized to their manipulation by magic. Magic, in turn, is the highest form and the end of philosophy. According to his De occulta philosophia, magic is threefold: natural (concerning sublunar world), celestial (concerning stars and heavenly intelligences), and divine (concerning God and higher angels). It consists of the manipulation of concrete objects and of the summoning of intelligences and God, (...) which is performed on the basis of the precepts of the Kabbalah. Agrippa’s overall aim was to purify magic from its necromantic and irrational components: this would enable the restoration of the prelapsarian condition of man (in accordance with the Hermetic ideal of deification) and a Christian reform of culture. The critique of philosophical knowledge and of every science, presented in Agrippa’s De vanitate, and his critique to the subordination of woman typical of Scholastic theology, contained in the De nobilitate foeminei sexus, are functional to these ends. (shrink)

Mensch und Erde.--Bewusstsein und Leben.--Über den Begriff der Persönlichkeit.--Bemerkungen über die Schranken des Goetheschen Menschen.--Wilhelm Jordan--Über Conrad Ferdinand Meyers Gedichte.--Warum bringt es Verderben, den Schleier des Isisbildes zu heben?--Über Sexus und Eros.--Vom Verhältnis der Erziehung zum Wesen des Menschen.--Vom Traumbewusstsein.--Brief über Ethik.--Schröder, H. E. Einführung in das Werk von Ludwig Klages.

Die Sexualethik fragt nach dem Stellenwert von Geschlechtlichkeit oder ‚Sexualität‘, wie sie seit dem 19. Jahrhundert auch heißt (von lat. sexus: Geschlecht), im guten menschlichen Leben. Sie versucht, erfüllte und moralisch akzeptable Formen von weniger erfüllten oder gar moralisch inakzeptablen Formen zu trennen. Im Unterschied zu Liebe, deren zentraler Stellenwert im guten menschlichen Leben unumstritten ist, hat sexuelle Lust oder Wollust in der Geschichte der Philosophie eine überwiegend ‚schlechte Presse‘.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Many scholars have contended that Clare of Assisi’s original intention upon leaving her family home to take up religious life sometime around 1211 was to lead a life essentially like that of the mendicant friars.1 She and the women who soon joined her would be not only poor and penitential, but also itinerant and apostolic. Like the friars their life would be marked by both insertion into the world (...) and seclusion from it as they alternated between active service and recollected contemplation. The important proof text for this claim is a passage in a letter composed by Jacques de Vitry in 1216, just five years after Clare’s conversion. Many scholars, including Paul Sabatier, Luigi Pellegrini, Roberto Rusconi, Marco Bartoli, Ingrid Peterson, Chiara Frugoni, Giovanni Boccali, and Chiara Augusta Lainati believe the text to be the earliest witness to the manner of life led by Clare and her followers during their initial years.2 The letter has been used to argue further that the women were explicitly grouped together with the Lesser Brothers, were known by the parallel title of “Lesser Sisters,” and had the freedom to come and go as they wished during their early years in San Damiano.Since claims about the women’s early likeness to the friars’ mendicant way of life are often made as brief assertions resting on Jacques’s letter, I think it important to consider in a more detained fashion the provocative passage thought to support them. Closer scrutiny of Jacques’s text shows that while none of these claims can be entirely ruled out, importantly, none can be supported with any solid evidence. I agree essentially with scholars such as Lilly Zarncke, Ernest McDonnell, Maria Pia Alberzoni, Jacques Dalarun, and Lezlie Knox who consider the letter’s language too general to know if it refers specifically to Clare and her sisters.3 I suggest, furthermore, that there are reasons to conclude that this is certainly unlikely if the passage is interpreted to mean, specifically, that Clare and her sisters carried on an active apostolate outside of San Damiano.Jacques de Vitry is generally recognized as one of the most astute and forward-thinking observers of his time in terms of recognizing the importance of new religious groups. A Parisian master, canon regular, and bishop, Jacques had the opportunity to live in a variety of settings, including his native France, the Low Countries, Italy, and the holy land.4 In 1216, he traveled from Liège in the Low Countries to Perugia to be consecrated bishop by Honorius III, who himself had just been elevated to the papacy.5 Along with observations about other matters, Jacques shared the following comment about religious men and women in a letter that he sent almost certainly to a group of his friends back in Liège. He was writing in the early days of October 1216 as he was leaving Italy on a boat that would carry him to his new episcopal see in Acre. The letter, the first of six that survive, is prized not only for its reference to the Lesser Sisters, but also as the very first written testimony regarding the Franciscan movement in general. The great nineteenth-century historian Paul Sabatier thought it provided a more vivid and precise description of Francis’s ministry than any single passage contained in his early biographies.6 The passage, which represents less than seven percent of the entire letter, is rendered thus in a widely available English translation:I found one consolation in those parts, nevertheless: many men and women [multi enim utriusque sexus], rich and worldly, after renouncing everything for Christ, fled the world. They are called Lesser Brothers and Lesser Sisters [fratres minores et sorores minores]. They are held in great esteem by the Lord Pope and the cardinals. They do not occupy themselves with temporal affairs, but work each day with great desire and.. (shrink)

그리스도인의 삶은 언제나 정결의 덕을 칭송해왔다. 반면에 성적 유혹은 정결을 위협하는 문제이자 장애물로, 유혹을 이겨내고 정결을 보존하는 것은 우리 시대에도 중요한 가치이다. 특히 덕행의 길에 있어 악마의 유혹은 언제나 존재해왔고, 첫 사람 아담에서 부터 우리들에게까지 건강한 남자라면 성적 유혹을 피할 수 없다. 교회 안에서 널리 존경받는 성 안토니오와 성 베네딕도도 다른 많은 이들처럼 이런 성적 유혹을 겪었지만, 그것을 이겨내었고 정결의 덕을 보존하였다. 이 연구에서는 이 두 성인의 성적 유혹 이야기를 다루려 한다. 두 성인의 유혹 이야기는 오늘날 우리에게도 많은 가르침과 충고를 (...) 준다. 악마의 유혹은 다양하고 언제나 우리를 노리고 있다. 안토니오가받았던 다양한 유혹은 우리에게 매일 일어나는 유혹과 유사하다. 그리고 첫 기적을 했었던 베네딕도도 유혹을 받았다는 것은, 우리가 아무리 강하게 보일지라도, 얼마나 허약한 존재인지 우리에게 일깨워 준다. 성인들이 성적 유혹을 해결하는 방법도 오늘날 우리에게 많은 가르침을 준다. 그들은 다양한 방법으로 유혹을 이겨나갔는데, 안토니오는 기도, 믿음, 단식, 그리스도를 생각함 등 여러 방식으로 유혹을 이겨나갔고, 베네딕도는 외적 고통을 통해서 유혹을 이겨내었다. 그리고 이 모든 해결법들은 하느님에 대한 신앙과 은총 아래에서 이루어진다. 만일 우리가 유혹을 극복하기를 원한다면, 우리는 다양한 방식을 가지고 끊임없이 악마의 유혹을 거슬러 싸워야 하며, 그렇게 싸워 나갈 때, 하느님에 대한 믿음과 그분의 은총 아래에서 유혹을 이길 수 있다: 우리를 위해서 육을 입으신 그리스도의 도우심으로, 우리는 영적 성숙에 나아갈 수 있는 것이다. (shrink)

This article expands Michel Foucault's (1926-1984) reading of the 'confessions of the flesh' in handbooks of penance written during the central Middle Ages in the first volume La volonté de savoir of his (current) four-volume series Histoire de la sexualité. After the posthumous publication of the fourth volume Les aveux de la chair (2018), in which Foucault takes his analysis of the historical foundations of confessional practices in the late 12th century to the first half of the 14th century even (...) further back, to the 'confessions of the flesh' in the patristics of the 3rd to the 5th centuries, it has become sensible to illuminate Foucault's condensed reading of confessional scripts in La volonté de savoir itself. This exposition pertinently applies to Foucault's correct conclusion that sex was prioritised above all other 'sins', 'vices', and 'transgressions' in central Medieval confessional scripts; therefore, as he famously noted, becoming a 'seismograph of subjectivity in Christian cultures'. Against this backdrop, it is considered how thinkers from the central Middle Ages themselves reflected on the sacramentalisation of confession after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 - since Foucault himself did not substantially elaborate on it. The reflections of three philosophers from the central Middle Ages on the relation between sex, confession and absolution are subsequently presented as an expansion of Foucault's reading in La volonté de savoir. Firstly, Alan of Lille's (d.1203) interpretation of the Summae confessorum in his Liber poenitentialis is revisited, concluding that Lille's perspective was 'hermeneutical', in terms of his insistence that the confessor should adjust his interrogations according to seven Aristotelian topoi or detailed questions, designate the context in which the transgression occurred very thoroughly and 'actively participate' in the confessional act, rather than simply recording it. Lille's 'hermeneutical' approach to confession is also reflected in Robert Grosseteste's (ca.1168-1253) De modo confitendi et paenitentias iniungendi, in which a moderate phronetic approach allows for the full discretion of the confessor, rather than following the rigid prescriptions of the Summae confessorum only. Secondly, William of Auvergne's (ca.1180-1249) contribution to the interpretation of the Summae confessorum in his Poenitentia is indicated in his utilitarian ethics, in which the interests of the ethical 'other' is related to the confessing 'self': even though matrimony is for Auvergne the only realm where the other's interests are not necessarily compromised by sexual contact, several considerations regarding 'improper sex', precisely within matrimony, apply according to the relevant penitential guidelines. Thirdly, Paul of Hungary's (ca.1180-1241) De confessione is considered in terms of his reflections on 'paying sexual debt', and on the relation between regulated sexual release and the legitimacy of sexual gratification, again within the context of matrimony. CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to Foucault-scholarship by elucidating and expanding Foucault's condensed reading of 13th-century confessional scripts in La volonté de savoir, with reference to the relevant texts of Alan of Lille (d.1203), William of Auvergne (ca.1180-1249) and Paul of Hungary (ca.1180-1241). (shrink)