A large network of alchemical agents spread from the tiny, land-locked duchy of Saxe- Gotha-Altenburg outward across Europe. At its centre, Duke Friedrich I meticulously documented his interactions with many alchemical personalities during the 1670s and 1680s. The story of one such personality illustrates the changing meanings of distant alchemical knowledge both to the inner circle of courtly alchemists and to a larger alchemical republic. Born near Gotha, Johann Otto von Hellwig built his pan-European career on a youthful stay (...) on Java. To some, this indicated his access to exotic naturalia which might be imported to a centre of collection, such as Gotha. For others, Hellwig could access a wisdom hidden abroad since ancient Egypt, which should be disseminated among widely dispersed adepts. These viewpoints indicate different functions for distant knowledge, as well as differing desired trajectories for this knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus by Steven D. SmithFabio TutroneSteven D. Smith. Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 308pp. $99.When Otto Keller published his meticulous work Die Antike Tierwelt (1909–13), classical scholars still conceived of ancient zoological knowledge as an astonishingly labyrinthine (...) corpus of tales. One felt the need to separate objective truths and fabulous accounts on the basis of a modern-oriented comparatist approach which was especially suspicious of Aelian’s De Natura Animalium and the so-called paradoxographic tradition. At that time, classicists were also keen to [End Page 532] see Severan literature as a scarcely original (and relatively uninteresting) digest of earlier writings—a faithful mirror of the beginning of the end.Steven Smith’s book on Aelian’s “literary imagination” and its culturally embedded use of animal figures is paradigmatic of the notable progress of scholarship in both such fields of research—the role of animals as revealing symbolic constructs and the intellectual life of Severan Rome. Throughout his well-structured survey, Smith offers new insights into Aelian’s worldview as a profoundly Hellenized Roman writer creatively combining biological notions and literary mirabilia, socio-political patterns, and sophistic aesthetics. On the one hand, the book clearly situates itself in the flourishing area of cultural and animal studies, making the most of both well-known and newly emerging theoretical frameworks (from Michel Foucault to Donna Haraway, from Derrida and Deleuze to Giorgio Agamben). Of course, the purpose of Smith as well as of other contemporary scholars interested in the ancient representation of animals is no longer to identify reliable “scientific” data as distinct from ancient folklore. Rather, it is the intersection of rhetorical, historical, and anthropological factors which seems to characterize most properly the Graeco-Roman discourse on animal life. On the other hand, however, Smith engages in an ambitious reconfiguration of Aelian’s (admittedly enigmatic) profile as an exponent of the Second Sophistic, at the same time indebted and alien to the milieu of the third century c.e. The multifaceted textual construction of Aelian’s animal narratives is shown to entail a critical (and at times ambiguous) reflection on such different issues as gender, religion, ethnicity, natural philosophy, and kingship.The book is composed of ten chapters, each one investigating a specific aspect of Aelian’s Weltanschauung on the basis of thematically connected passages. While the main focus is on De Natura Animalium (and thus on animal-related topics), two chapters (2 and 10, respectively) extend the scope of the inquiry to Aelian’s Rustic Letters and Varia Historia (VH). The monograph as a whole is framed by an introductory overview (starting with a fictional first-person speech by Aelian) and a conclusive note which sums up Smith’s most relevant theses. In addition, a more “philological” appendix discusses seventeen short fragments possibly pertaining to Aelian’s lost Katēgoria tou gunnidos (“The Indictment of the Little Woman”), a bitter invective against Elagabalus prudently written after the emperor’s death (cf. Philostr. Vit. Soph. 625).The question of Aelian’s elusive literary persona figures prominently in the general introduction and is the core subject of chapter 1. By qualifying the author of the De Natura Animalium (NA) as “independent” and “countercultural,” Smith does not mean to remove him from his social and political context. On the contrary, the evidence drawn from the NA itself (especially from the impressionistic self-portrait of the preface and the epilogue), together with the biographical sketches in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists and in the Byzantine Souda lexicon, is used to demonstrate that, though “inextricably bound up with and perhaps even unwittingly celebratory of urban Roman culture of the early third century c.e., Aelian nevertheless also fashions a literary persona that is critical of that same [End Page 533] cultural milieu” (16). In Smith’s view, such a fascinatingly ambivalent effect is made possible by the overwhelming stylistic variety (poikilia) of the NA, which appears as an “open” work (in Umberto Eco’s terms) intentionally lacking any large-scale... (shrink)

Bezeichnet man im deutschsprachigen Raum eine kulturelle Veranstaltung als 'Spektakel', geht damit oft eine negative Wertung einher. Im Gegensatz dazu zeigt der Band die vielfältigen Begriffsdimensionen, medialen Charakteristika und Funktionen dieser zentralen ästhetischen Kategorie in künstlerischen, epistemischen und politischen Kontexten auf. Beiträge aus Kunstgeschichte, Philosophie, Film-, Literatur-, Medien-, Tanz- und Theaterwissenschaft setzen sich mit ästhetischen Theorien und Praktiken des Spektakels von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart auseinander. Die behandelten Beispiele reichen von der christlichen Liturgie bis zur Barockoper, von Paulinus von (...) Nola bis Christoph Schlingensief, vom populären Wissenschaftstheater des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zu politischen Funktionen des Spektakulären im südkoreanischen Kino oder dem italienischen Roman, in Alltag und Kunst des Sozialismus sowie der globalen Medienkultur. Mit Beiträgen von: Micha Braun, Simon Frisch, Elisabeth Fritz, Antje Géra, Nicola Gess, Martin Hähnel, Sarah Hegenbart, Teresa Hiergeist, Carsten Juwig, Katherina Keller-Grein, Kirsten Maar, Astrid Matron, Kassandra Nakas, Ulf Otto, Rita Rieger, Ivo Ritzer, Tanja Schwan und Christiane Voss"--Back cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Klaudios Ptolemaios: Handbuch der Geographie, Griechisch-DeutschAlexander JonesAlfred Stückelberger and Gerd Grasshoff, eds. Klaudios Ptolemaios: Handbuch der Geographie, Griechisch-Deutsch. Vol. 1: Einleitung und Buch 1-4. Vol. 2. Buch 5-8 und Indices. With contributions from Florian Mittenhuber, Renate Burri, Klaus Geus, Gerhard Winkler, Susanne Ziegler, Judith Hindermann, Lutz Koch, and Kurt Keller. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2006. 1018 pp. 24 color and black-and-white ills. 29 maps. 1 CD-RO M. Cloth, (...) €170.Ptolemy's Geography is at the same time the only survivor of the ancient Greek literature devoted to the topic of drawing maps of the world and is the most extensive ancient list that we possess of names and locations of communities and physical features in the known parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. It may seem astonishing that a document of exceptional importance for ancient history, geography, and the history of science should have had to wait until now for a complete critical edition. In fact the last complete edition, by C. F. A. Nobbe (1843–45), presents an indiscriminate text with no apparatus beyond a skimpy eighteen-page "Index Criticus" at the end. Two other editions, by F. W. Wilberg and C. H. F. Grashof (1838–45) and by C. Müller and C. T. Fischer (1883–1901), though furnished with apparatus, were vitiated by defective knowledge of the main lines of the textual tradition and besides were never completed. The twentieth century saw major progress in the sorting out of the Geography's manuscripts, with important contributions by (among others) Joseph Fischer, Otto Cuntz, Aubrey Diller, and above all by Paul Schnabel, whose monograph on the subject was meant as a mere harbinger of an edition that he did not live to produce. Meanwhile, scholars in need of a reliable text have had to make do with a patchwork of intentionally partial editions limited to sections of Ptolemy's geographical catalogue covering specific regions.The biggest obstacle in the way of restoring the Geography arises from one of Ptolemy's profoundest insights, that a graphical object such as a world map can be reproduced more accurately if its contents are translated into a collection of numerical coordinates representing each significant point of the drawing, in effect, a digitization. About two thirds of the Geography is thus dedicated to a list of some eight-thousand place names with the longitudes and latitudes of the corresponding localities expressed in degrees and fractions of a degree, ordered [End Page 128] so that one can reconstruct the map by plotting from point to point on a suitable grid of parallels and meridians. Ptolemy thus got rid of the analogue distortions inherent in the process of copying a picture, but he proposed no measures to protect the copying of the text and numerals of his list from errors giving rise to "noise" progressively obscuring the picture. Unfortunately, Greek alphabetic numerals, notations for common fractions, and exotic place names—many of them attested in no other document—were all liable to frequent misreading in ancient and medieval manuscripts. In such material, copying errors are difficult to detect and generally impossible to undo. The modern scholar, working with an abundance of manuscript copies (none older than the late thirteenth century), is incessantly confronted by variant readings of which at least one must be wrong but for which no rational basis for discriminating exists. To complicate matters further, many of the manuscripts contain maps, and the origin of these maps and their relation to the textual history are controversial questions for which the usual resources of textual criticism are inadequate. It is not surprising if editors' appetites have been sated with modest helpings of the Geography.Now at last we have a complete and reliable critical edition of Ptolemy's book, an accomplishment made possible in the first instance by a division of labor among a competent and well-organized team, and secondly by judicious choices about what the edition should and should not attempt to do. The team, the "Ptolemaios-Forschungsstelle," affiliated with the Institute for Classical Philology of the University of Berne, comprises more than a dozen scholars led by a philologist, Alfred... (shrink)

Much research has been done on the economic effects of self-employment, environmental conditions for entrepreneurial success, as well as attributes if the person him-/herself fits to this career path. To successfully run a business, however, is contingent on the health of the entrepreneur. In particular, small business owners (being solo self-employed without personnel) face financial uncertainties, a high workload, long working hours, and are often unable to call in sick. This study aimed at exploring the working situation considering resources (e.g., (...) autonomy), strain (e.g., dependency on contracts with clients) and health and career outcomes of small business owners. This study used a qualitative approach to comprehensively mirror the working situation. Participants who were 29 small business owners from Germany gave permission for recording expert interviews in which they reported, for example, on health complaints, recovery opportunities, obstacles and resources while running their businesses. The interviews emphasize the meaning of active actions and own responsibility for creating working conditions and enabling autonomy. Small business owners yet have to be able to use the autonomy. Besides personal preferences regarding the career path as being pulled into self-employment and not pushed by situational circumstances also marketability and flexibility played a role and explained health and career issues. Our findings underline that the social network is of utmost importance to small business owners and that social support – even or despite of being solo self-employed – is a key to sustaining health and satisfaction. As voluntariness played an essential role for selecting this specific career path those being pulled into self-employment as no other jobs are available should receive particular support through career counseling. One shortcoming of prior research is that the concrete working situation of small business owners and its impact on health and career has not adequately been taken into account. Based on work-related stress models we developed a frame model specific for the situation of small business owners which allows concrete hypotheses for further quantitative research. (shrink)

Hillel Steiner’s applied theory of territorial rights is part of his broader left-libertarian theory of rights. Steiner believes that all individuals have the libertarian right to self-ownership and to an equal share of the value of (global) natural resources. He thus views territorial rights as being ultimately reducible to the lower-level rights of free and equal individuals. This view challenges most accounts of nationalism (and territorial collectivism) as well as the normative theories of state sovereignty based on them. It thus (...) offers new perspectives on such issues as secession, immigration, and global justice. This article showcases how these ideas generate normative guidelines for solving territorial disputes. Among his concrete institutional proposals, relevant for the contemporary debate, is a globally distributed universal basic income (UBI) funded by the global taxation of natural resources. (shrink)

Different opinions about the simplicity of God may be connected with different understandings of how abstract terms are used to name the properties which are affirmed of a being. If these terms are taken to signify parts of that being, this being is not a simple one. Thomas Aquinas, who attributes essence, existence and perfections to God, nevertheless thinks that these are not different parts of God. When essence, existence and perfections are attributed to God, they all denominate the same, (...) the Being of the first cause. For Aquinas, this is a consequence of his way of introducing the language about God by basing it upon the philosophical ways leading to God as first cause. Awareness of this connection between Divine attributes and the arguments for God’s existence is crucial for an adequate understanding of Aquinas’ position. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article investigates social critique in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Two famous Thucydidean episodes are in focus: the Mytilenean Debate in Book III and the Melian Dialogue in Book V of the History. These episodes are interpreted here as inquiries assuming the shape of subversive and transformative social criticism: immanent critique. Immanent critique aims at shifting horizons of meaning in social contexts, and the philosophers practicing this kind of social criticism understand themselves as physicians of a failing (...) society. In Thucydides’ work, a particular object of criticism is formed by varying dominant social and moral ordering principles. In the Mytilenean Debate, it is the principle of expediency that rules, whereas in the Melian Dialogue the governing normative ordering principle is that of safety and survival. In each episode, a contending perspective is introduced for the purpose of undermining the dominating principle. (shrink)

Iacobvs Bernays uir sagacissimus, exposuit in Porphyrii de abstinentia libris exstare excerpta ex Theophrasti de pietate libro satis magna, quae antea partim inscientia, partim neglegentia uirorum doctorum erant neglecta. Ad haec fragmenta coniecturas quasdam profero, usus Nauckii editione altera.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Das Grenz- und Auslanddeutschtum" verfügbar.

1. DIE ELEMENTARE GLIEDERUNG DES RAUMS 1.1 Der Raumbegriff bei Aristoteles 1.2 Wortgebrauch und Sprachgeschichte 1.3 Das naturliche Achsensystem 1.4 Die Mitte des Raums 1.5 Die Himmelsrichtungen 1.6 Horizont und Perspektive 2. DIE WEITE WELT 2.1 Weite, Fremde und Ferne 2.2 Der Weg und die StraSSe 2.3 Der Wanderpfad 3. DIE GEBORGENHEIT DES HAUSES 3.1 Die Bedeutung des Hauses 3.2 Der sakrale Raum 3.3 Die Wohnlichkeit 3.4 Tur und Fenster 3.5 Das Bett 3.6 DAs Aufwachen und das Einschlafen 4. ASPEKTE (...) DES RAUMS 4.1 Der hodologische Raum 4.2 Der Handlungsraum 4.3 Der Tagraum und der Nachtraum 4.4 Der gestimmte Raum 4.5 Der prasente Raum 4.6 Der Raum des menschlichen Zusammenlebens 5. DIE RAUMLICHKEIT DES MENSCHLICHEN LEBENS 5.1 Im-Raum-sein und Raum-haben 5.2 Formen des Eigenraums 5.3 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick. (shrink)