Since the official history-writing is a defining aspect for the formation and consolidation of nation-states, it is crucial to explore the attempts to legitimize particular discourses regarding historical atrocities. The selective representations of the past, in this regard, contradict counter-memories and propagate hegemonic patterns of remembrance and/or forgetting of past crimes. This article accordingly addresses how the representations of counter-memories as threats to national security and the silencing of gender-specific experiences and remembrances by sanctioned historical narratives become manifest in (...) the history-making of the Turkish nation-state. By focusing on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as two cases of crimes against humanity, it is intended to discuss the shifting positions and roles that the Turkish state adopts in the remembering and forgetting of historical offences. The article argues that through prioritizing national security and national interests, the securitization of memory reconstructs collective traumas of distinct ethnic and religious groups on the basis of a nation-state’s perceived internal and external threats. It also claims that the competing voices of women and their distinct experiences and patterns of remembrance and forgetting past atrocities are suppressed for the sake of the preservation of national security. By incorporating the issue of gender into the debate on the securitization of memory, this article elucidates the mismatch between positions of femininity and masculinity within the official national historiography of the Turkish state. (shrink)

In 66 CE, the emperor Nero crowned the Parthian prince Tiridates I king of Armenia before the Roman people in the Forum Romanum. Much scholarship on Roman interactions with Parthia or Armenia focuses on histories of military conflict or diplomatic negotiation. Ritual and ceremonial evidence, however, is often taken for granted. This article uses the coronation to highlight a different way in which Rome articulated its relations with Parthia and Armenia to domestic and foreign audiences. It will show how Nero (...) and his regime used the art of public spectacle to project an image of Roman superiority over Parthia and Armenia in spite of Roman military losses in the recent Armenian war. Tiridates, a Parthian prince and a brother of the Parthian king of kings, traveled to Rome to be crowned the first king of Armenia from the Parthian royal family. To receive this title, Tiridates passed by several monuments to Augustan triumphs over Parthia and Armenia in the Forum. He was also surrounded by a group of Roman citizens, who watched him as they would have watched a defeated foreign leader in a triumph. At the culmination of the ceremony, Tiridates performed proskynesis before Nero at the rostra Augusti and was granted his crown. Through Augustus’ monuments, the collective viewing of Tiridates, and his acts of public submission and deference to Nero, the crowning intimated a new narrative about the state of Roman-Parthian/armenian relations. While Augustus had represented Parthian and Armenian defeat in art, Nero had compelled a representative of both Parthia and Armenia to come to Rome and kneel before the emperor. Both states were now subservient to Rome, which remained the dominant power in the East. (shrink)

The category of « postmemory » has been invoked by Marianne Hirsch to refer to a traumatic past which is not directly remembered in first person, but is handed down to later generations and is recalled through the mediation of narratives and images which become “prostheses” for a lack of direct memory. But how is it that these prosthetic recollections do not simply substitute for what lacks but seem to shape the very events they are meant to reproduce ? (...) How come an event continues to haunt the memories of the present, even when no immediate remembrance of it is left ? How to think of an “afterimage” of something that was never seen in the first place? It is only quite recently that the role of prosthetic images has been more widely acknowledged in the construction and creation of memories of collective trauma. The paper will focus on the role of photographic images played in remembrance of the Armenian genocide. It shall be shown how the few pictures that were taken by witnesses of the deportations had an afterlife of their own, being reframed and receiving specific interpretations. In particular, the paper will discuss the case of Armin T. Wegner, a German voluntary serving as Sanitary Officer in the Turkish army who, during his fieldwork in 1915/16 in Anatolia and on the Euphrates in Syria, documented the final stages of deportation, taking pictures of the camps at the desert’s fringes. His photos, which are among the most important visual testimonies of the extermination, only belatedly later made Wegner aware of what he had been witnessing, turning him into a witness après coup and to a defender of the Armenian cause. (shrink)

What has compelled Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of anti-Semitism in Turkey? The dominant historical narrative is that Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire, and then later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then it is hard for us (...) to accept that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians. In this article, the author confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to tease out the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts, but to confront it and come to terms with it. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, the author sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide. (shrink)

У статті аналізуються свідчення вірменських істориків ХІІІ - початку XIV ст. відносно подій хрестових походів 1147 - 1149 рр. і 1189 - 1192 рр.; визначено специфіку традиції історіописання, яка була притаманна середньовічним вірменським хроністам. На основі джерелознавчого дослідження з'ясовано рівень достовірності повідомлень вірменських наративів, ступінь їхньої об'єктивності та інформативності.

The Armenian world was shattered by the 1915 genocide. Not only were thousands of lives lost but families were displaced and the narrative threads that connected them to their own past and homelands were forever severed. Many have been left with only fragments of their family histories: a story of survival passed on by a grandparent who made it through the cataclysm or, if lucky, an old photograph of a distant, silent, ancestor. By contrast the Dildilian family chose to (...) speak. Two generations gave voice to their experience in lengthy written memoirs, in diaries and letters, and most unusually in photographs and drawings. Their descendant Armen T. Marsoobian uses all these resources to tell their story and, in doing so, brings to life the pivotal and often violent moments in Armenian and Ottoman history from the massacres of the late nineteenth century to the final expulsions in the 1920s during the Turkish War of Independence. Unlike most Armenians, the Dildilians were allowed to convert to Islam and stayed behind while their friends, colleagues and other family members perished in the death marches of 1915-1916.Their remarkable story is one of survival against the overwhelming odds and survival in the face of peril. (shrink)

This article discusses how John Dewey's “Report and Recommendation upon Turkish Education” and some of Dewey's related travel narratives reflect “civilizing mission” imperatives and involve multiple utopian operations that have not yet attracted political-philosophical attention. Such critical attention would reveal Dewey's misjudgments concerning issues of diversity, geopolitics, and global justice. Based on an ethicopolitical reading of the relevant sources, the aim here is to expose developmentalist and colonial vestiges, to raise searching questions, and to obtain a heightened view on (...) the stakes of Dewey's utopianism and progressive pragmatism. The article concludes that the acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide constitutes a major challenge to Dewey scholarship. (shrink)

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's _Memory, History, Forgetting_ examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the (...) production of historical narrative. _Memory, History, Forgetting_, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, _Memory, History, Forgetting_ provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's _Time and Narrative_ and _Oneself as Another_ and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events.... It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—_Library Journal _“Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— _New York Times Book Review _. (shrink)

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the (...) production of historical narrative. Memory, History, Forgetting , like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine what is called “diasporic identity.” The complexity related to this research arises due to the inherent uncertainty and indefinability of identity itself, which is further compounded by the additional layer of uncertainty introduced by the concept of diaspora. The diaspora is not a ready-made, indisputable reality; establishing its existence demands substantiating the claim that it possesses a distinct identity. However, merely demonstrating a shared geographical distance from the homeland raises pertinent questions: Why should the negative (...) circumstance of being distanced from one’s homeland serve as a unifying factor, and does this dispersion give rise to an identity transcending national boundaries? Answering these questions involves looking at the historical context of identity and diaspora and introducing concepts that help understand them. The central thesis posited herein asserts that the manifestation of diasporic identity primarily assumes a narrative form, elucidated through both disciplinary discourse and literary works. With specific reference to the Armenian Diaspora, this exposition contends that, in certain instances, reliance solely on academic discourse proves insufficient in establishing a comprehensive comprehension of diasporic identity. It is asserted that literature, with its metaphoric language, emerges as an essential instrument, providing access to the profound layers inherent to the domain, thereby facilitating a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of diasporic identity. (shrink)

When I first read Snow, I was deeply conscious, page by page, of its enormously dense character. It was clear from the outset that this novel was much more than the account of a Westernized Turkish journalist's failed attempt to cover a suicide wave among young girls in the provincial Turkish city of Kars. Almost from the start, the multidimensional narrative about Turkish youth weaved together all sorts of strains of political, religious, and social conflicts in a drama about coming (...) of age in a land whose culture is never far from that of Europe and vice versa. Here was an incredibly sensitive effort to probe the social dynamics of a culture that was scarcely understood in Europe (and scarcely understood at home).Having finished the novel's four hundred and some pages, I was deeply impressed with what I had read but depressed by how little of what I had read I was in a position to comprehend; it was simply too richly detailed and nuanced for me to digest. Too much was going on. For days, if not weeks, after having put Snow down, my mind would drift back to the novel, alighting on a theme or a character from the novel that had left me wondering and moved me further to ponder its meaning. The subtlety that went into writing the book, the confusions implicit in the strivings of its characters, and the consequent hopelessness of their situations hit me like a ton of bricks. In a way that was difficult to articulate, I could experience something of the hopes, fears, and confusions that ran through the minds of those characters. The vicarious experience of a culture that was at once familiar and deeply alien, the comprehension of which was imperative to European society, was powerfully and skillfully expressed without being trumpeted. Thus it was impossible to forget things that did not enter directly into the story but were nevertheless clearly insinuated in the narrative: for example, the continual reference to things Armenian in a place from which Armenians had long since disappeared—but above all the snow, falling silently and gently, scarcely observed by the protagonists, on nearly every page, without ever having the slightest impact on the narrative. The continual dusting of snow on all sorts of scenes, violent, touching, amusing, intriguing, lent the story an almost eerie poetic quality that only a master storyteller could weave into sadness and tragedy (Is this an allusion to Joyce's “The Dead”?). It was clear that one reading would not suffice for me to absorb the content of this novel.About a year later, I decided to tackle the book once again in the hope of obtaining a more ordered sense of the personalities and situations it presents. This time, it was clear that reading the book was of necessity a systematic project. So I decided to read it chapter by chapter, daily, in order to “live” with it. That procedure considerably enhanced the enjoyment involved in the act of reading, but in the end I scarcely grasped much more than I had done originally. When I was finished, I was satisfied with myself for having fulfilled a demanding task, but my lack of further enlightenment on turning the last page left me almost as unsatisfied as I had been the first time. It was not that I had failed to deepen my understanding of difficult and confusing themes that were crucial to comprehending European problems. Still, I was not less aware than after my first reading of the work that much of the Turkish experience described in it was eluding me—so much so that it would be worth my while to pick up Snow a third time. Need I say more? (shrink)

Roman conflict with Parthia in the mid first century for control of Armenia and Domitius Corbulo's exploits in the East, culminating in the Parthian candidate for the throne, Tiridates, receiving his diadem from the hands of the Emperor Nero in Rome, have frequently been studied for what they reveal about military and diplomatic manoeuvres under the later Julio-Claudians. The historiographical investigation of our main source, Tacitus, particularly through comparison with the fragments of Cassius Dio, is also important for the light (...) this sheds on the Roman senator's methods. The intention of this paper is to draw attention to the complexity of Tacitus’ account by indicating his use of multiple and sometimes contradictory viewpoints in his narration of Caesennius Paetus’ unsuccessful Armenian campaign of a.d. 62–63 and to highlight an unrecognized echoing of his predecessor Livy by the historian. The examination of a text that is as elusive as it is allusive will require a careful study of what must have been a debated incident, but, as I hope to show, will give a broader insight into the historian's methods and, perhaps, wider intentions. I begin with an outline of historical events and the sources available to the historian. Next, I present a narratological examination of the text to show how differing viewpoints are highlighted within a contested storyline. I then show how this confusion may appear to be dispelled by a strong plot-line that borrows heavily from Livy, wherein the actions of an older, experienced general are contrasted with those of his subordinate. However, aspects of this account suggest that the tensions within the narrative are not resolved and that this has wider implications for our understanding of the historian and his work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aelius Théon: ProgymnasmataGeorge A. KennedyMichel Patillon, ed., avec l'assistance pour l'Arménien de Giancarlo Bolognesi. Aelius Théon: Progymnasmata. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997. clvii + 229 pp. ( 1-120 double). Price not stated. (Editions Budé)Progymnasmata, handbooks of preliminary exercises in composition, are important sources for understanding Greek and Roman education and rhetoric and equally important in that the exercises they describe, including narrative, [End Page 476]fable, chria, encomium, ekphrasis, (...) synkrisis, prosopopoeia, and others, provided topics for literary genres in prose and poetry. Of the four surviving Greek treatises on progymnasmata, by or attributed to Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus, Pseudo-Hermogenes and Aphthonius were the most influential. There are good editions of them by Hugo Rabe and of Nicolaus by Joseph Felton, all in the Teubner series. Theon's work is the earliest treatment and in some ways the most interesting, for it shows the system of rhetorical education in a developing stage and, since it is addressed to teachers rather than to students, it has much to say about pedagogical method. It has, however, been available only in reprints of Leonard Spengel's Rhetores Graeci(II 59-130), originally published in 1854, and in copies of a dissertation by James R. Butts (Claremont Graduate School, 1986). The new Budé Theon, with its lengthy introduction, French translation, and extensive learned notes, at last makes the work accessible to scholars in its full form.The Greek manuscripts of Theon's treatise break off abruptly in the discussion of the exercise for and against a law and lack chapters at the end where Theon discussed reading aloud, listening, paraphrase, elaboration, and contradiction. In addition, the original order of chapters was altered by some editor in late antiquity to conform better to what is found in Pseudo-Hermogenes and Aphthonius. Forty years ago Italo Lana projected a new edition, restoring the original sequence, and published a valuable study of the Greek textual tradition (Turin 1959), but he never completed the edition. The probable reason is that about that time the existence of a full translation of the work into classical Armenian had come to be known from two manuscripts in the State Library in Erivan, Armenia. Butts was aware of the existence of the Armenian translation but had no direct access to the contents.The Armenian translation was made from a Greek text before the rearrangement of the chapters and before the loss of the concluding pedagogical chapters. Patillon, in collaboration with Bolognesi, has reconstructed the Greek text on which the translation was based. It was so literal as to be almost incomprehensible in itself, but by comparison with the Greek in the large part of the work where both survive it has proved possible to reconstruct the Greek original with some probability. Patillon makes much use of this reconstruction throughout his text and apparatus and prints the Armenian text of the otherwise lost chapters, with French translation but without the Greek reconstruction.On the basis of a notice in the SoudaTheon is probably to be identified with Aelius Theon of Alexandria. There is reference in a newly discovered part of the text (Patillon, p. 106) to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which gives us a date after the first century B.C., and a possible reference to Theon in Quintilian (9.3.76), suggesting Theon may have been writing in the first century after Christ. The name Aelius might indicate a Hadrianic date but probably came into use in Egypt after the prefecture of Aelius Gallus in the Augustan period. [End Page 477]In any event, the work is clearly the earliest of the four major progymnasmatic treatises and has similarities to the Latin discussions of the exercises by Quintilian (1.9) and in Suetonius' De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus.Although there is much that deserves attention in the introduction and notes of this edition, readers will perhaps most want to know about passages where new readings in the Greek make a difference to the meaning and interpretation of passages, and also about the contents of the chapters that survive only in Armenian, here published for the first time. References are to page and line... (shrink)

Forschungsgeschichte - Handbuch/übergreifende Darstellung.

Background: Electroconvulsive therapy is one of the most effective treatments for major depressive disorder. Recently, there has been increasing attention to evaluate the effect of ECT on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. This study aims to compare rs-fMRI of depressive disorder patients with healthy participants, investigate whether pre-ECT dynamic functional network connectivity network estimated from patients rs-fMRI is associated with an eventual ECT outcome, and explore the effect of ECT on brain network states.Method: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were (...) collected from 119 patients with depression or depressive disorder, and 61 healthy participants, with an age mean of 52.25 years old. The pre-ECT and post-ECT Hamilton Depression Rating Scale were 25.59 ± 6.14 and 11.48 ± 9.07, respectively. Twenty-four independent components from default mode and cognitive control network were extracted, using group-independent component analysis from pre-ECT and post-ECT rs-fMRI. Then, the sliding window approach was used to estimate the pre-and post-ECT dFNC of each subject. Next, k-means clustering was separately applied to pre-ECT dFNC and post-ECT dFNC to assess three distinct states from each participant. We calculated the amount of time each subject spends in each state, which is called “occupancy rate” or OCR. Next, we compared OCR values between HC and DEP participants. We also calculated the partial correlation between pre-ECT OCRs and HDRS change while controlling for age, gender, and site. Finally, we evaluated the effectiveness of ECT by comparing pre- and post-ECT OCR of DEP and HC participants.Results: The main findings include depressive disorder patients had significantly lower OCR values than the HC group in state 2, where connectivity between cognitive control network and default mode network was relatively higher than other states, Pre-ECT OCR of state, with more negative connectivity between CCN and DMN components, is linked with the HDRS changes. This means that those DEP patients who spent less time in this state showed more HDRS change, and The post-ECT OCR analysis suggested that ECT increased the amount of time DEP patients spent in state 2.Conclusion: Our finding suggests that dynamic functional network connectivity features, estimated from CCN and DMN, show promise as a predictive biomarker of the ECT outcome of DEP patients. Also, this study identifies a possible underlying mechanism associated with the ECT effect on DEP patients. (shrink)

Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a ‘distant’ setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role of institutions (...) and ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey. (shrink)

Russia took the advantage of the contribution of the Armenian armed organizations in order to possess Istanbul, straits around it, Eastern Anatolia, to weaken Turkey, to be strengthen in the Southern Caucasus, organized the rebellion of the Armenians living in Turkey against the government. Russian ruling circles put forward the Armenian matter in order to take advantage of them. Armenians involved in the war to create their own government by obtaining the territory including Van, Bitlis, Tigranakert, Erzurum, Kharberd (...) and Sebastya, as well as Cilicia from Turkey, to solve their Armenian problem. But in fact, Russia, France and England tried to blow to Turkey pretending to try for building an independent Armenian government. The grade of contribution of Armenian military units in the First World War can be characterized as following: 1. Creating the Armenian volunteer units. 2. Establishing the regular battalions and infantry regiments and forming the national corpuses. The organizations of Hnchak and Dashnaksutyun actively participated in creating the Armenian volunteer units. Dashnaks mobilized 40 000 people to destroy the Turkish people. They established tens of khumbas. The Armenian volunteer units were commanded by Andranic Ozanyan, Dro, Amazasp, Keri, Checho, Vardan and others terrorists. Armenian volunteer units which were supposed to move in 4 directions, should act in the directions where the Armenian people were densely populated. These 4 Armenian volunteer units fight against Turks in all important combat operations from Sarigamish to Erzurum. The same time Russian army and Armenians triggered the rebellion of the local population against the Turkish government. 50000 of Armenians were fighting in French, England and USA armies. The Eastern legion of Armenians was established in French army on November 1916. On November 15, 1918, the Eastern Legion was named Armenian legion. The number of the Armenians in the legion riched to 4000. In the beginning of 1916, there was an announcement about subordination of the military detachments to army and establishment of infantry regiments based on that. Establishment of the separate Armenian corpus started at the end of December 1917. In 1917, 8 Armenian shooter regiments were established. From the mentioned 8 regiments two Armenian shooter divisions, the special Armenian division of Andranic, 3 infantry brigades of western Armenians in the Southern Caucasus region, some guerrilla troops in Erevan, Igdir guerrilla infantry and rider regiments, Zeytun regiment in Tbilisi were established. At present, Armenia often raises false claims such as the "Armenian genocide" in the parliaments of the world, trying to confirm this lie. This research proves that Armenians betrayed the Ottoman state during the First World War and also committed Turkish genocides. (shrink)

The emergence of features of Armenian Christianity, the transformation of the Armenian Church in Ukrainian lands is an interesting and unexplored topic in Ukraine that is closely related to the unresolved and nowadays problems of split Christianity and the emergence of different currents in it. Turning to the historiographical analysis of the sources devoted to this problem, the researcher of the Armenian Church is faced with the need to take a new approach to the study of this (...) phenomenon, to evaluate in a modern way the fact of the appearance of monophysitism. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of works on the Armenian Church are of a partial and, for the most part, historical nature, and also have a significant confessional color. First of all, we are talking about the criteria for analyzing and defining the research framework. A characteristic feature of the available sources is the avoidance of the Chalcedon problem and, accordingly, questions about the essence of monophysitism, which a priori recognize heresy. The conceptual basis of these works is certain postulates, on the basis of which the system of analysis is built, namely: to the V century. there was a single catholic Christian Church from which various schisms and heresies began to break away from various non-Orthodox, non-Catholic, erroneous movements and organizations; the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils are true in the last instance and the documents approved by them are not subject to discussion. (shrink)

Possessed of a long and honorable philosophical tradition of its own, Soviet Armenia provides an unequalled opportunity for examining the attempt to reconcile the new Soviet culture with long-standing cultural values. Unfortunately, a thorough examination of available sources provides no unambiguous conclusion. Some contemporary Armenian philosophers do manage to imbue their work with a definitely national stamp. On the other hand, Soviet Armenia — like other areas of the Soviet Union — has its share of centralists. However, what is (...) most interesting is that their existential situation has led them to fruitful pursuit of a philosophical elaboration of problems of culture. (shrink)

This book aims to introduce the Armenian version of Philo's writings also to those scholars not acquainted with Armenian Studies. The subject is approached from different perspectives - historical, hermeneutical, philological, linguistic - with special attention given to the reception of Philo in Armenian Christianity.