In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Confessions of an American PsychoJames Hogg’s and Bret Easton Ellis’s Anti-Heroes’ Journey from Vulnerability to ViolenceDaniel Cojocaru (bio)My vitals have all been torn, and every faculty and feeling of my soul racked, and tormented into callous insensibility.... I could perceive no bottom, and then—not till then, did I repeat the tremendous prayer!—I was instantly at liberty; and what I now am, the Almighty knows! Amen.—James Hogg, The Private (...) Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner1My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist.... My pain is constant and sharp.... But even after admitting this... and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself.... This confession has meant nothing.—Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho2A hundred and sixty-seven years lie between the publication of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) (henceforth referred to as Confessions) and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991). Yet one cannot but be amazed at the striking similarities of the main [End Page 185] protagonists’s insights at the end of these two novels. Although connections between works of Gothic Romanticism and postmodern narratives have been duly noted, the possible reasons for the analogies remain largely unexplored.3It will be argued here that both novels are representations of worlds immersed in what René Girard, in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (henceforth referred to as Deceit), has termed “deviated transcendency,” resulting in similar stages of narrative progression, which in turn can be analyzed in terms of Girard’s mimetic cycle of violence.At a first glance, the two pieces seem to be concerned with themes that to a secularized age must appear most disparate. But as Girard has noted: “The very idea of mediation encourages literary comparisons at a level which is no longer that of genre criticism or thematic criticism.... It may illuminate the works through each other.”4 Hogg’s narrative deals with the problem of antinomianism and the resulting spiritual pride. The anti-hero of the narrative, Robert Wringhim, relies on his belief that he is one of the elect and cannot fall from grace and consequently is convinced by his elusive friend Gil-Martin to become a murderer without having to fear punishment. American Psycho on the other hand is concerned with the consequences of the crass materialism of the U.S. yuppie generation, culminating at the end of the 1980s, as experienced by the serial-killing first-person narrator Patrick Bateman. However, one could argue that in its very first pages, American Psycho presents the reader with a secularized version of antinomianism. Michael Steig has fleetingly noted that the egocentric doctrines of antinomianism psychologically resemble the “I’m alright tenets” of yuppie pseudo-psychology.5 Timothy Price, one of Bateman’s colleagues on Wall Street, expresses this in the following words: “In essence what I’m saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I’m an asset.”6 Translated into antinomian terms, one could say that he is one of the elect, one of the privileged enjoying a capitalist heaven on earth; and by saying that society cannot afford to lose him, he, like Robert Wringhim, is showing that he believes he cannot fall from grace—or at least he tries to believe it.“I was well aware that the devilish powers of his mother would finally prevail; and either the dread of this, or the inward consciousness of having wronged him, certainly unnerved my arm.”7 If, in this reference to a quarrel with a fellow pupil at school, Robert gives away the fact that he doubts his own words, through the rhetorical device of correctio, so does Timothy Price by his choice of words. In fact, it is exactly because he is an asset that society can afford to lose him. As he is literally transformed into a commodity, society can discard him and in the novel indeed does so. It is one of the many ironies of the narrative that Price disappears soon after the above... (shrink)

Augustin est bien connu comme défenseur d’une « théorie privative » du mal. On peut lire, par exemple, dans les Confessions que « le mal n’est que la privation du bien, à la limite du pur néant ». Le problème, cependant, avec les théories privatives du mal est qu’elles ne nous offrent pas, généralement, une explication robuste ni de l’activité du mal, ni de son pouvoir à causer des effets bien réels ; effets desquels l’expérience demande, malgré tout, une explication (...) rationnelle. Or, selon Augustin, la privation seule ne permet pas de rendre compte de toutes les manifestations du mal. L’explication privative du mal est, certes, la plus étudiée par la littérature ; mais elle ne constitue qu’une partie du tableau. Cet article veut souligner quatre moments de l’explication du mal qu’Augustin propose : le mal comme privation ; le mal comme parasite par rapport à l’être ; le mal comme perversion de la volonté ; et finalement, le mal comme conflit d’intérêts. Chacun de ces moments éclaire un type de mal, mais aucun ne permet à lui seul de rendre compte du problème. Pris ensemble, cependant, et gardant leurs différences respectives à l’esprit, la réponse d’Augustin à la question du mal se révèle beaucoup plus sophistiquée et exhaustive qu’on ne voudrait souvent l’admettre lorsqu’on se limite uniquement à la théorie de la privation. | : Augustine is well-known for advocating a ‘privation theory’ of evil. In Confessions, he writes that “evil has no existence except as a privation of good, down to that level which is altogether without being.” The problem with privation theories of evil generally is that they do not provide a robust enough account of the activity and power of evil to cause the very real effects for which experience demands a rational explanation. For Augustine, however, privation alone does not fully account for evil in all of its manifestations. The privation account of evil receives much scholarly treatment, but it is only part of the complete Augustinian picture. This paper outlines four accounts of evil in Augustine : evil as privation, as parasitic on being, as perversion of the will, and as conflict of interest. Each deals with a kind of evil, but none alone provides a complete account. Taken together, however, with their differences in mind, Augustine’s explanation of evil is shown to be much more sophisticated and comprehensive than is often recognised when one limits one’s understanding of Augustine’s conception of evil to the privation theory alone. (shrink)

The article looks into the private interpretations of the private revelations given by the Blessed Virgin Mary to the shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal during World War I at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It mentions that these interpretations have been subjected to the changes by Catholics who changed the Magisterium of the Church. It also notes the Russian country's consecration and conversion to the Catholic Church demonstrating obedience, confession, and Holy Communion.

Kierkegaard's theory of pre-ethical, aesthetic, ethical, and religious spheres of moral reasoning was applied to the case of an individual rejected for promotion to full professor. The evaluators seemed to represent the public morality of the profession, assumed that they represented the highest level of moral reasoning, and judged that the candidate represented a private morality based on a lower level of moral reasoning. The article questioned the view that moral reasoning could be discerned from one's actions. It was (...) paradoxical that different spheres seemed to produce similar kinds of actions, though for differing reasons, making identification difficult. It was easy for the evaluators to confuse spheres representing private moralities and to conclude, based on the candidate's research record, that she/he was unsuitable for promotion. It was equally difficult for the candidate to discern whether the evaluators' moral reasoning represented the public morality of the profession, or a pre-ethical need by the evaluators to appear in solidarity with the public morality. This made it difficult for the candidate to know whether the evaluators' recommendations represented absolute standards that would be applied to any future re-application, or not. The article's contribution was the identification of different spheres of moral reasoning, the interactions between spheres, and the paradoxical indeterminacy of gauging moral reasoning from moral action. It supported Kierkegaard's view that the highest truth attainable by an individual was "an objective uncertainty" and that this truth was lost in self-deception when one claimed to have been able to solve the paradox. (shrink)

One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the "permanent things" seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the theoretical. (...) For it is Elshtain the citizen - the creatively engaged and contributing citizen - whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings - civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war - are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic. (shrink)

The marginality of poetry in American culture has been taken for granted at least since the dawn of the modernist period, when Walt Whitman printed his first volume of poetry at his own expense. More recently, it has become an article of faith that there is a real popular audience for poetry, but somewhere else-in the East. Literary journals, the popular press, and publishers have made household names of a handful of Eastern European writers: Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, Zbigniew Herbert. (...) One is regaled with chestnuts about ordinary people in the Eastern bloc who care about "the Word," manuscripts passed from hand to hand, even poems preserved orally. Inevitably, the questions are revived: Where are the great American poets? Has American poetry been reduced to private confessions and personal trivia? Why is it that our poetry lacks that public, political relevance? The answer to such questions is often that we do not have the weight of History on our backs, the state oppression under which, as Milosz says, "poetry is no longer alienated," no longer "a foreigner in society," and can become more important than bread.1 But what has not surfaced in the vaunted "poetry and politics" debate is the extent to which our homage to victims of censorship everywhere has become a fetishization of totalitarianism, and a self-serving one at that. The mythology of our freedom, unbounded and unmediated, depends precisely on this other world, on what happens over there. 1. Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness of Poetry , p. 95; hereafter abbreviated WP. Bruce F. Murphy's work has appeared in the Paris Review, Pequod, and An Gael. He has completed a manuscript of poems and with Friedrich Ulfers is writing a study of Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

Buried within Fyodor Dostoevsky's works are glimpses of corrupt individuals who rise to the fore every now and then. Without these occasional revelations, not many would notice how diabolical an ordinary person really is. Although Dostoevsky does generalize that human nature can be quite vile, a character like the mysterious visitor from The Brothers Karamazov displays that nature without striving to be extraordinary as Dostoevsky's other prolific characters. Something troubling still lurks within this mundane type. Relying on moral dilemmas presented (...) by ancient thinkers will help this project expose and elaborate on the unsavouriness behind the activities and dispositions of Dostoevsky's minute character. With the mysterious visitor as the prime focus, we discover how an individual distorts one's personal development and decent relations with other humane beings. (shrink)

Rousseau’s life and his work are notoriously paradoxical. This certainly applies to his work on property which includes one of the most powerful of all denunciations of private property (the Second Discourse) and an affirmation of private property as ‘the most sacred of all citizens’ rights, and in some respects more important than freedom itself’ (in the essay on political economy in the Encyclopedie). In this paper, I explore the reasons for this seeming paradox, focusing upon Rousseau’s twin (...) concerns with inequality (rather than equality) and sincerity. In the end, Rousseau’s treatment is not entirely consistent, but it does make sense. (shrink)

Political liberals assume an accessibility requirement, which means that, for ensuring civic respect and non-manipulation, public officials should offer accessible reasons during political advocacy. Recently, critics have offered two arguments to show that the accessibility requirement is unnecessary. The first is the pluralism argument: Given the pluralism in evaluative standards, when officials offer non-accessible reasons, they are not disrespectful because they may merely try to reveal their strongest reason. The second is the honesty argument: As long as officials honestly confess (...) their beliefs after offering non-accessible reasons, disrespect and non-manipulation do not occur. This paper defends the accessibility requirement and asserts that these two arguments overlook a unique feature of the political domain. While all citizens collectively own political power as a corporate body, an official does not privately own her political power. Instead, she is a trustee who has a duty to act on behalf of the corporate body, that is, she has to make decisions on grounds that are accessible to others. This duty explains why, despite pluralism, the accessibility requirement is necessary. Moreover, given that political decisions are profoundly influential to each person, requiring people to be honest is ineffective in discouraging disrespectful and manipulative acts. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 70-75. cartography of ghosts . . . And as a way to talk . . . of temporality the topography of imagination, this body whose dirty entry into the articulation of history as rapturous becoming & unbecoming, greeted with violence, i take permission to extend this grace —Akilah Oliver from “An Arriving Guard of Angels Thusly Coming To Greet” Our disappearance is already here. —Jacques Derrida, 117 I wrestled with death as a threshold, an aporia, a bandit, (...) a part of life. —Akilah Oliver Moraine in geological lingo is that which is left behind. Moraine- a euphemism for the de-stabilizing referent of the writer-ly body as a “troubled and troubling landscape marked by cultural and historical signifiers, the body as flesh memory [...] the body as transitory” (Oliver, Author Statement). Moraine— a geological metaphor of the poet as a holder of memory, as an accumulation of rocks and debris carried along the edge, terminal, dropped at the foot of language (in language). “Flesh Memory” according to Akilah Oliver is "that which my body recalls [...] everything has to do with the task of remembrance and its narrative reinvention [...] I was always translating an idea of the world as it presented itself at any given time. To write was a choice about how to be seen, how to enter the world as translator, actor, participant, in the dialogues that apparently made the real 'real'" (Levitsky). Flesh. Memory. The stuff some poems are made from. The stuff that gets abandoned, gleaned, and picked up by more flesh and memory. "My body, my life has always felt like a kaleidoscopic rip in the dominant fabric [...] has always been a dialogue with the impossible and the apparent” (Levitsky). The impossible-body or poet's body anticipates and performs (through language) an irretrievable death. IN APORIA I realized everything I must have been doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day—a holiday—and every time you turned on the radio they said something like ‘four million’ or ‘going to die’.” — Andy Warhol I’m trying on egos, [a justification for the planet’s continuance]. Oh hello transgressor, you’ve come to collect utilitarian debts, humbling narrative space. Give me condition and wheatgrass, I his body disintegrating. I his body is ossification. Death my habit radius, yeah yeah. I his body can’t refuse this summons. I can’t get out this fucking room. Tell me something different about torture dear Trickster. Tell me about the lightness my mother told me to pick the one i love the best how it signals everything I ever wish to believe true just holy on my ship. I jump all over this house. this is it [what I thought is thought only, nothing more deceptive than]: I his body keeps thinking someone will come along, touch me. As like human or lima bean. I’m cradling you to my breast, you are looking out. A little wooden lion you & Peter carve on Bluff Street is quieting across your cheekbone. Not at all like the kind of terror found in sleep, on trembling grounds. It is yesterday now. I have not had a chance to dance in this century. Tonight I shall kill someone, a condition to remember Sunday morning. To think of lives as repetitions [rather than singular serial incarnations]. To understand your death is as exacerbating as trying to figure out why as schoolchildren in mid-nineteen-sixties Southern California we performed reflexive motions: cutting out lace snowflakes, reading Dick and Jane search for their missing mittens, imagining snow. Disintegrat ing . The -ing gerund catapults from the non-finite verb into past, present, future. The -ing as a tail pinned to death, a dog spinning to bite and never fully reaching itself, always shy of the end, circumreferential; a double copulative: deathing. Possessively AO calls it “habit radius” (a virtual fetish attribute) or an inescapable death presence that “confronts us with the paradox of an unattainable object [...] through it’s being unattainable” (Agamben, 27). A flirtation or dialogue with an unknowable thing and aporia utilized as investigative instrument to engage (death) while (in Southern California) we “perform reflexive motions,” cut lace snowflakes, imagine snow, and pay rent like “yeah, yeah” what else is new. And this too, fiction. The book I wish to right. The restored fallen, heroic. Did you expect a different grace from the world? Or upon exit? I’m working on “tough.” They think I am already. All ready. Who is the dead person? Is "I'm sorry" real to a dead person? Browning grass. My hands on this table. A contentious century. A place to pay rent. Redemptive moments. Am I now the dead person? Dead person, dead person, will you partake in my persimmon feast? The body inside the body astounds, confesses sins of the funhouse. I too have admired the people of this planet. Their frilly, orderly intellects. The use they’ve made of cardamom, radiation as well. How they’ve pasteurized milk, loaned surnames to stars, captured tribes, diseases, streets, and ideas too. The living-body as archive: is it possible to experience the living-body as archive without a (kind of) death? Sifting the rubble, rummaging through hoarded debris, skin sheds, memory-napping, and re-awoken (in flesh and) on terrain. “An investigative poetics seeks to unravel staid communities of thought and grasp at what might always be just beyond reach; a poetics of inquiry that lies between language as meaning, and language as rapturous entry into the world of posited ideas and idealism”( Levitsky). Something snaps. Lights blow out prior to embarking upon an investigative poetics. It begins with a question (often a sexy aporia) that leads to openings. "Every politics of memory [...] implies an intervention of the state. It's a state that legislates and acts with regard to the nonfinite mass of materials to be stored, materials which must be collected, preserved” (Derrida & Stiegler, 62). It seems poetic investigation already contains the potentiality of an (invisible) archive if the writer is “always writing” especially when not. Here’s my stupid digital romantic inclination: the living-body (of a poet) is a self-sustaining archive of non-finite memories. But not even I really believe that. AO innovated and sculpted an investigative poetic praxis. In a conversation with poet Rachel Levitsky, poetic-voice is viewed not as a precious identifier, but as a means to think through/about form, concluding that form is linked to framing. While poetic-voice may have tendency to precede form, it also erupts as a result of framing techniques. “They are frames that hold the shape of thinking (which is also to say of imagining) [...].”7 This reminds me of my rabbit who symmetrically chewed the corners of his hutch, which makes me wonder if it’s an expression of the shape of some animal anxiety tick I won’t ever have access to. Beyond the form/frame, death is an unoriginal yet unique limit; death is a damn deathless thing. It functions as a source of poetic investigation; that thing always “just beyond reach.” And how is death not a fetish (in this case an obsessive reverence for something non-material)? “Insofar as it [death] is a presence, a fetish [...] it is in fact something concrete and tangible; but insofar as it is the presence of an absence, it is, at the same time, immaterial and intangible, because it alludes continuously beyond itself to something that can never really be possessed [...] The fetish is [...] a sign of an absence, it is not an unrepeatable unique object; on the contrary, it is something infinitely capable of substitution, without any successive incarnations ever succeeding in exhausting the nullity of which it is the symbol” (Agamben, 33). AO utilized absence (the absent body [catapulted by the death of a beloved]) as an apparatus to investigate. In the process of conversing with absence or that which is absent, the absent body is affectionately objectified, incessantly summonsed back to a place of recognition, of objects, a desire for the absent body to remain intact while exiting the structural limits of grammar and syntax by moving into chant forms “to say what cannot be said” (Levitsky). from AN ARRIVING GUARD OF ANGELS THUSLY COMING TO GREET dear oluchi- the light is blinking rapidly on the black boxy machine. your room seems bigger than before and i am still planning to read some of those robert jordan books of yours. yesterday at the used bookstore where i was browsing the mysteries to “stall reality” (they are really not mysteries at all, they just employ death as the plot mistress but are unable to grasp its mystery at all)—well the point is, things were calm down here for a while and the world was little. i want to be big like you. or i want you not vast, not dead, not gone, but human small and here. i am so selfish. that is what i really want. to see you again. to oil your scalp. to hear you walk in the door, say ma i’m home . give me a chance to say welcome home son. or when leaving, don’t forget your hat . what do you wear out there? i wish you could have taken your new shoes with you. i’m so proud of you. i’m sorry for the way you died. i miss you all the time. even before, i missed you. out there, one time, some different men said: “shake for me girl, i wanna be your backdoor man.” who dat you love. 5/18/03 A letter-poem in sixteen lines “dear oluchi-” is safe-housed in epistolary form. Poetic voice is rendered as internal thought meanderings, a not-so-much confession, private/(pillow?) talk in the desire to be heard/witnessed by the referent and reader with an intent to absolve. The diminutive “i” bears a relation to poet Fanny Howe’s “little g God” in that “One of the (many) things I like about little g God is that you can have a vodka tonic while you talk to little g God, sing along to Bowie’s “I’m Afraid Of Americans,” and hum Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” though maybe not all at the same time” (Oliver, 2009). Towards the middle of the poem AO is at a used bookstore and remarks on the funny employment of death as a ‘plot mistress’ that ‘they’ (the dubious employed mystery authors) are ‘unable to grasp’, thereby giving death a mouthpiece, a modeling job, something to do to pass the time. from THE VISIBLE UNSEEN When I first saw graffiti, I recognized in it an ugly aesthetic, a dialectics of violence, a distortion of limbs, a hieroglyph. It was only later when I read the names of the dead that I then saw the path of ghosts charted there; its narrative of loss for the visible unseen whose place in history has been fictionalized and rendered unseen under the totalizing glare of history. Inscriptions, traces, specters. Graffiti begs a public face just as ghosts require non-ghosts (humans) to sense them. The “visible unseen” is a game of hide-and-seek between public viewer and graffiti-inscriber, an ephemeral-violent aesthetic on an ephemeral-policed canvas. Graffiti-inscribers already submit to being forgotten, expect to be washed away; perhaps it’s a holy urban mandala created by gangster-type monks without Buddhism. [...] in its refusal to disappear it forces a discourse in the public imagination we are forced to see what we would rather not, to make sense of an encoded language that we cannot read on the level of meaning. it irritates, forces its agency on us, speaks outside and beyond semiotic reach. An epic font-size pervading the public’s imagination, illegible, I could just close my eyes, remain passive, drive past, abandon it beyond reach, push it further away beyond death walls. In Barcelona I watched a clean up crew wash walls with an awesome water hose but I was more intrigued by their bodies; not a distortion of limbs, not hieroglyph but also not entirely legible; the laboring body permanently erasing specters of the city, and of course they knew it was also an invitation for the ghosts to return. Graffiti is death’s little sister, is also an aporia. [...] Graffiti (fr GK -graph(os), something drawn or written, to diagram or chart) attempts to stage the impossible: to erase the essence of its own subjectivity. Graffiti is a cartography of ghosts, a mapping of elegiac rapture (the transporting of a person from one place to another, as in heaven) and rupture (the state of being broken open.) Dwelling is a fiction stasis. [...] The notion of the past as being something done with, a look-back event, inhibits the possibility of reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture. If graffiti posits history as always in the process of becoming undone. [...] Because what is the body, if not also a complex temple, an unstable site through which to negotiate subjects, materiality, economies, gods, and modes of representations? The site where we are all already belated. Graphein meaning “to write.” “Derrida says every archive makes a law, and the law of genre is its own rupture” (Bloch, 39). However, graffiti is an (non/anti)-archive of erasure due to (the politics of) washing out its subjectivity, which only adds onto (or is symptomatic of) its character. The inhibition of “reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture” is partly due to it being a “look-back” event in that it’s process involves scratching through layers to reveal previous specters underneath. Graffiti (as an ancient genre) has always been a thing of ‘becoming undone’, and therefore ‘belated and always in arrival’ (Levitsky). It’s a Dionysian activity done at night with it’s back turned toward us. "The specter [...] is of the visible, but of the invisible visible, it is the visibility of a body which is not present in flesh and blood [...] appearing for vision, to the brightness of day [...] something becomes almost visible which is visible only insofar as it is not visible in flesh and blood. It is a night visibility. As soon as there is a technology of the image, visibility brings night. It incarnates in a night body, it radiates in a night light" (Derrida & Stiegler, 115). (shrink)

U tekstu se traga za vezom između Descartesovih životnih obrata i razloga zbog kojih filozof u Raspravi o metodi i Meditacijama o prvoj filozofiji primjenjuje ispovjednički način pisanja. Takvo nastojanje otkriva posebnu ulogu maske pod kojom se Descartes namjerava prvi put pojaviti pred javnošću. Iako masku spominje još u dnevničkim bilješkama, on je konačno oblikuje, i to kao ‘osobu’, tek s otkrićem cogito, dakle, u vrijeme dok piše Raspravu o metodi. U tom mu djelu ‘osoba’, shvaćena kao čist razum, daje (...) mogućnost svoje filozofsko preobraćanje ispovijediti kao obrazac intelektualnog preobražaja čovječanstva, čime se njegova ispovijest pretvara u propovijed. U Meditacijama, međutim, Descartes ide korak dalje. Njegova vještina služenja maskom, te njegovo iskustvo koje je u snovima imao sa zloduhom i Bogom, dovode ga do toga da se u ovom spisu pojavljuje kao glumac sa tri lika: kao »ja«, kao zli genije i kao istinoljubivi Bog. Iza sva tri lika, naravno, stoji Descartesov ratio; ali bitno je primijetiti da zloduh nije samo maska kojom filozof prikriva grijeh skeptičke aktivnosti u koju uvlači čitaoca. Na osnovu Descartesovih snova može se tvrditi da postoji još jedan zloduh u Meditacijama, ovoga puta stvarni, koji stoji nasuprot meditirajućem subjektu. Taj je oličenje općeprihvaćenih stavova, predrasudnog mišljenja i lijenosti ljudskog uma.The text explores the connection between Descartes’ life conversions and the reason why in the Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy he utilizes a confessional tone to his writing. Such an endeavour exposes a specific role of the mask under which the philosopher intends to present himself to the public for the first time. Although the mask is already mentioned in his Private thoughts, Descartes gives it a form of persona only after the discovery of cogito, as he is writing the Discourse. The mask of persona, conceived as a pure reason, allows him to confess his philosophical conversions as a paradigm of intellectual conversion of humanity, transforming his confession into a sermon. However, in the Meditations, Descartes takes a step further. His ability to utilize the mask, combined with his experience in dreams with a malicious demon and God, enable him to appear in this work as a multi-faced actor: as »I«, as a malicious genius and as a truthful God. Behind all three masks is evidently Descartes’ ratio, however it is important to recognize that the malicious genius is not only the mask the philosopher uses to hide the sins of the sceptical activity in which he involves the reader. On the basis of Descartes’ dreams, we can argue that there is one more malicious genius in the Meditations, this time a real one, standing opposite the meditating subject. This one is the embodiment of widely accepted opinions, prejudices and laziness of human intellect. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.2 (2001) 223-253 [Access article in PDF] The Economics Of Roman Elegy: Voluntary Poverty, The Recusatio, And The Greedy Girl Sharon L. James Roman love elegy presents sexual relationships between elite men and women of lower status in apparently reversed gender and power positions, so that the male is enslaved to his beloved domina. This metaphorical reversal, however, actually retains standard Roman social structures, suggesting (...) an inequity even within a private love affair: rather than sharing goals and desires, lover and beloved stand in a gendered opposition. Historically, elegy has been interpreted from the perspective of its male speakers, and much scholarship has focused on the characterizations of those speakers. But as it is legitimate to study the male elegiac speakers' viewpoint, it is likewise appropriate to consider that of his preferred love object and frequent addressee, the elegiac doctapuella. Since much of elegy is directed at a fictive, if named, woman, 1 such an approach may illuminate some of its rhetorical strategies and gender values, particularly as they derive from and relate to Roman gendered power constructs. Since elegy in particular generically anticipates the perspective of the docta puella, 2 and makes it a structural element of the [End Page 223] genre, to read elegy from that perspective provides both a necessary corrective or balance to the dominant male voice of the genre and a revelation of its inherent disingenuity. I will examine two related topoi of elegy--the recusatio and the problem of the "greedy girl"--from the position of the puella, a viewpoint that demonstrates the relationship between these two topoi and reveals the engine of Roman love elegy to be self-interested sexual persuasion rather than sincere confession of passion. 3This approach requires identifying the elegiac puella, the counterpart to the recognizable elite male speaker of Roman love elegy, the lover-poet. In my view, she is a fictional construct based upon the courtesan of New Comedy--that is, she is an elegant, educated woman who has no financial security and thus must earn her own living while she can. 4 [End Page 224] Identifying her in this way has several consequences, but only two concern us here.The first consequence is that many apparently individual character traits in an elegiac puella turn out to be professionally motivated behavior, as dictated by both Dipsas and Acanthis in Amores 1.8 and Propertius 4.5. A primary example is greed, for which the elegiac speakers never tire of criticizing their puellae, as though avaritia were a character flaw of a specific woman rather than a professional obligation. 5 Thus, when the lover-poet in Propertius 2.16 complains that Cynthia always weighs the purses of her lovers ("semper amatorum ponderat una sinus," 2.16.12), he is actually describing the behavior prescribed for her not only by the lena Acanthis, in poem 4.5 but in the pages of Roman comedy as well. 6 Comedy routinely presents the courtesan's needs and the young lover's desires as being at odds. The same structure of economic opposition governs the elegiac love affair: the puella plays a generic, professional part that may conflict with her personal inclinations or character (cf. Thais and Bacchis in Ter. Eun. and Hecyra). She is also presented as retaining her self-control while her impassioned lover loses his. 7 Like other courtesans of Roman comedy, Phronesium (Plaut. Truc.) is fully aware of both her present material and social circumstances and the [End Page 225] expiration date of her professional viability. Thus she necessarily seeks money and gifts from her lovers, both to maintain her attractions as an elegant woman 8 and to prepare for the future when she will no longer be able to practice her profession. Her literary granddaughter, the elegiac puella, does likewise (see, as noted above, the instruction of Acanthis and Dipsas, particularly lines 59-62 of Prop. 4.5 and 49-56 of Am. 1.8), and here it is worth recalling that even the male speakers of elegy allude... (shrink)

Since Dilthey’s template study of 1890, the Prussian state’s attempt to censor Kant’s religious writings has typically been seen as the work of a reactionary politics bent on imposing religious orthodoxy as a bulwark against the spread of Aufklärung. This paper offers a revisionist interpretation, arguing that the attempted censoring was a by-product of a set of a longstanding Religionspolitik designed to achieve religious toleration through a system of regulated public confessions. Reaffirmed in the Religious Edict (1788) and the Censorship (...) Edict (1788), Prussian policy required acceptance of a plurality of public confessions whose stability was preserved through the restriction of public proselytising and the acceptance of private religious freedom. In breaking with this religious settlement, through their public advocacy of a true ‘religion of reason’, the religious rationalists of the theological Aufklärung breached the embargo on public proselytising, leading eventually to government’s attempt to censor Kant’s own ‘pure religion of reason’. (shrink)

The policy changes governing the relations between the pharmaceutical, medical device and service industries and academic clinical research physicians, recommended by the Institute of Medicine,1 the American Academy of Medical Colleges,2 and much discussed in the media and on our campuses, aim to create some protective ethical firewalls. However, some potentially critical consequences of these steps are missed if we do not acknowledge what else is on the table, and who is sitting at it. By only reacting defensively to the (...) juggernaut of righteous indignation over the loss of purity in a faculty physician's approach to medical problem solving, we are allowing the process to blind us to the difficulties in establishing fair and equitable management of all of the potential conflicts of commitment and conflicts of interest we incur, not only as faculty members, but also as departments and academic medical centres . Critically, this involves all sources of revenue—private, commercial and public—that support our professional and institutional commitments as well as our personal finances.i To counter the present crackdown on inappropriate financial relationships effectively, we will need to reframe the questions, and convince all stakeholders to the process that there is more to this crisis than can be resolved through our public confessions of commercial largesse obliged. The Phrma Code guidelines3 have resulted in what is believed to be a defensible, if as yet legally untested, compartmentalisation of the commercial sector's marketing, medical education and research sponsorship activities. We at the AMC are a long way from understanding how those same missions, as they emanate from our multifarious commitments, can be isolated and individually managed. Defining the parameters for establishing institutional conflicts of interest and commitment are beyond our essay's scope, but with the very public emphasis on capitalist subversion of …. (shrink)

This essay challenges the portrayal of philosophical idealism as sinful ‘confinement in the self’, arguing that this obscures a relationship between Hegel and Bonhoeffer characterised by variation rather than contradiction. I first trace a limited congeniality between their respective critiques of the ‘beautiful soul’ and the ‘privately virtuous’, showing how both thinkers resist moral isolation through the call to confession. Second, I follow their attempts to overcome an oppositional logic between such social exchange and divine agency, rooted in the (...) syntax of Hegel’s phrase ‘God existing as community’. This provides sharper focus to Bonhoeffer’s variations, changing the subject from God to Christ and the attendant act from reciprocal confession to intercessory prayer. Rather than merely defensive revision, I argue that this reveals an agile Christology which can sustain an ethical posture of ‘being for others’ through the withheld confession and broken trust typical of a communion of sinners. (shrink)

For most interpreters of the philosopher from Rotterdam, his doctrine of tolerance is solely a consequence of his religious and moral doctrines. In this article, I intend to show that his doctrine rest on the political doctrine of indivisible sovereignty and on the strictest separation between political obedience and religious membership. Baylean tolerance is a political doctrine that allows the articulation between freedom of conscience (individual), minority confessions (private associations), and public religion (acknowledged as official).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Interstate Arbitration in the Greek World, 337–90 B.C.Everett L. WheelerSheila L. Ager. Interstate Arbitration in the Greek World, 337–90 B.C.Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. xvii + 579 pp. Cloth, $70, £55 (foreign). (Hellenistic Culture and Society, 18)Sheila L. Ager's massive—and impressive—volume on Hellenistic interstate arbitration rides the new wave of scholarly interest in the politically fragmented but cosmopolitan Hellenistic period. Cosmopolitanism in many (...) periods (including the present post–Cold War era) has fostered political internationalism—schemes of world government, federal unions, and mechanisms for peaceful resolution of interstate conflicts. Although the Hellenistic age enjoyed little respite from war, some scholars have hailed Greek arbitration as a model for modern imitation.A brief survey of previous scholarship on arbitration will place Ager's work in perspective. Concepts of law and internationalism dominated earlier work. Some believed that arbitration as judicial practice could be studied without distinguishing public from private or internal from interstate cases: e.g., E. Sonne, De arbitris externis, quos Graeci adhibuerunt ad lites et intestinas et [End Page 642] peregrinas componendas, quaestiones epigraphicae (1888); E. de Ruggiero, L'arbitrato pubblico in relazione col privato presso i Romani (1893); A. Steinwenter, Die Streitbeendigung durch Urteil, Schiedsspruch und Vergleich nach griechischem Recht (1925). For internationalists establishment of a permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899 elicited a flood of scholarly interest: Greek arbitration now had contemporary relevance: e.g., W.Westermann, CJ 2 (1906–7) 197–211; L. Matthaei, CQ 2 (1908) 241–64; A. Raeder, L'arbitraire internationale chez les Hellenes (1912), published by the Nobel Institute; M. Tod, International Arbitration amongst the Greeks (1913); cf. his Sidelights on Greek History (1932) 39–68. Victor Bérard (always "Berard" in Ager) remained a voice of cynicism crying in the wilderness (De Arbitro inter Liberas Graecorum Civitates, 1894): Greeks resorted to arbitration after exhaustion in war or accepted a settlement only until a later opportunity for reopening the case arose. Study of interstate arbitration, dormant after Tod, revived with Luigi Piccirilli's corpus of Greek cases ca. 740–338 B.C.: Gli arbitrati interstatali greci (Pisa [not Florence, as Ager 578], 1973). Seven years later, A. J. Marshall reassessed Roman arbitrations in the East and accommodation of Greek practice (ANRW II.13 [1980] 626–61), on which E. S. Gruen expanded: The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (1984) 96–131.Certainly more cases of arbitration/mediation are now known. Ager's study includes 171 instances for 337–90 B.C., with an appendix of 40 cases from texts too fragmentary to judge their contents accurately or instances failing to meet her criteria for inclusion as arbitration/mediation. In comparison, Ruggiero assembled a Roman corpus of 65 cases (both public and private, 191 B.C.– A.D. 282/4); Raeder, 81 Greek cases (ca. 740–ca. 100 B.C.; Tod, 82 Greek cases (ca. 740–early first cent. B.C.); and Piccirilli, 61 Greek cases (ca. 740–338 B.C.), besides 19 cases from mythological sources. But numbers easily deceive (cf. Ager 19–20): new epigraphical discoveries alone would assure greater numbers. Moreover, whereas Ruggiero, Raeder, and Tod confined their catalogues to epigraphical texts, Piccirilli and Ager include literary testimonia and a broader definition of "arbitration":, a formal judicial procedure involving selection of third–party judges to evaluate publicly presented oral and written testimony; mediation (σύλλυσις), a third party's reconciliation of disputants; and, for Ager (xiv), even "voluntary compromise."Ager's volume, a revised dissertation (University of British Columbia), continues Piccirilli's corpus: thus its initial terminus is 337 B.C.; the concluding terminus, 90 B.C., is conceded to be arbitrary. The texts follow chronological order (as opposed to Tod's regional arrangement). Only interstate cases involving Greeks as either disputant or arbiter are included, and inconsistency for inclusion is confessed: not all cases are in her view historical (i.e., no. 93, Heraclea's attempted mediation between Rome and Antiochus III), and her generous definition of "arbitration" can involve subjectivity (e.g., no. 23 [Delphi]: dikastai in a very fragmentary text qualifies it as an arbitration document; cf... (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to analyze the phenomenon of Christian prayer by way of combining two different analytical frameworks. We start by applying Schutz’s theories of “intersubjectivity,” “inner time,” “politheticality,” and “multiple realities,” and then proceed by drawing on the ideas and insights of linguistic philosophers, notably, Wittgenstein’s “language-game,” Austin’s “speech act,” and Evans’s “logic of self-involvement”. In conjoining these accounts, we wish to demonstrate how their combination sheds new light on understanding the phenomenon of prayer. Prayer is a (...) complex phenomenon that involves two major dimensions: the private and the social, as Matthew and Acts, respectively, demonstrate. Schutz’s study of the phenomenon of “inner time” and the “polithetical” structure of consciousness, at both the subjective and intersubjective level, provides a useful lens to analyze these two dimensions. In addition, prayer, in following a specific set of rules, can also be considered as a specific, i.e., religious “language-game”. In the last analysis, however, we propose to analyze prayer within the Schutzian framework of “multiple realities,” “enclaves,” and “symbolic appresentation,” which permits accessing the “religious finite province of meaning” in the very midst of the paramount reality of everyday life. In a nutshell, we claim that Christian prayer is a practice of constructing and living within a “religious province of meaning” in the everyday world; it is a practice that revolves around self-involving language-activities such as praising, confessing, thanksgiving, or requesting to God, which enable the praying subject to transfigure the language of everydayness and “see through” the world of everyday life in order to let it appear in a different light, e.g., the light of grace, gift, and salvation. (shrink)

Thanks largely to Daniel Dennett, I am a recent convert to what many will regard as the shocking hypothesis that qualia do not exist. This admission is not quite a confident sighting of that rarest of philosophical birds, an unequivocally sound and valid argument. For one thing, I have, like many, been frustrated by and suspicious of philosophers' use of qualia for some time, and have often wished them dead ; so I was an easy mark. More to the point, (...) I was persuaded by Dennett without being persuaded by his arguments. This is not intended as a confession of a Kirkegaardian penchant for preferring to believe the conclusions of bad arguments. Dennett enabled me finally to kick qualia out of my private ontology by providing, in the later sections of his “Quining Qualia”, an alternative conceptual vocabulary for talking about the contents of perceptual and reflective experience that genuinely makes no appeal, surreptitious or otherwise, to qualia. Furthermore, Dennett's most general motivations for banishing qualia—the convictions that there is no compelling evidence for them, that they serve no reliable explanatory purpose and that the hypothesis of their non-existence dissolves some otherwise wrenching philosophical dilemmas—are the right ones, and his paper made this clear to me. However, I feel the need to quine qualia again for myself, because I want them to stay dead, and am afraid that, due to some infelicities in his argument, Dennett has only wounded them. (shrink)

The early writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau were dismissed by his contemporaries as the paradoxes of a madman. Later critics, weighing the early works against such classics as the Confessions and Emile, were convinced that the views of the young Rousseau could not be reconciled with those of his more famous period. In this stimulating book Professor Einaudi argues that the denigrators of Rousseau's early work were wrong: the early and later views can be reconciled. Indeed, full understanding of the mature (...) Rousseau can be gained only through appreciation of the writings completed between 1737 and 1756. In developing his argument, the author refers not only to such well-known early works as the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences and the Discourse on Inequality, but also to the less familiar writings of the same period—the essays on political economy and the state of war, the letter to Voltaire on the Lisbon earthquake, the fragments on history and education, the Discourse on Wealth, and Rousseau's replies to his critics. Rousseau's reputation has steadily grown until he is today regarded by many as the most important thinker of the eighteenth century. His views on a variety of topics—man and society, private and public life, economics and government, war and peace—seem astonishingly relevant to the problems of the twentieth century, and for this reason he is now read with a thoroughness and sympathy that were seldom accorded him in his lifetime. This major contribution to the current Rousseau revival is the first full-length study in English to take into account the insights of recent European scholars, such as Starobinski, Derathé, and Vossler. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 201-207. “Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life.” —Maurice Blanchot (1982, 89) Nikos Karouzos had a communist teacher for a father and an orthodox priest for a grandfather. From his four years up to his high school graduation he was incessantly educated, reading the entire private library of his granddad, comprising (...) mainly the Orthodox Church Fathers and the ancient classics. Later on in his life he sold the library for money, only to buy a little more time before he went broke again: “I carry sorrow like a cage/ I got no birds/ as I come back from her hair/ I see the profit emptied/ cool from terror.” (1993, Ι, 101) Nowadays—and ridiculously recently—we are more than apt to speak of a certain insouciance pertaining to the Greek form of expenditure: expenditure without any type of investment, sometimes not (even) symbolic. In the vaults of the European unconscious, this imprudent stance still conjures a “capital punishment” in the form of de-capitation, reflecting back the fear of excess and the terror of its consequences.1 Thus the Greek way of living is very close to what a stranger could have termed as “the Greek way of dying.” Yet, what is not often understood is that the Greek esprit , the same one that invented the maxim μηδ?ν ?γαν (“nothing in excess”), does not experience death solely as an imminent fear of bankruptcy. For it miraculously combines its unconditional acceptance with the promise of a resurrection that is always there in the scents of Spring, from Dionysus to the orthodox Christ: “Everyone resurrects himself through dying [….] Resurrection is the switching of mortalities.” (2002, 94) Hence, if an entire library was imprudently traded for a plate with seven olives, a sliced tomato and some fresh goat cheese, let us not be fooled: this is not the meal of the pauper, but that of “an aristocrat from God” (1993, II, 491) feeding his eloquent loudmouth, ridiculously cut open in an otherwise rock-solid caput . *** To speak of the Greek experience is to speak about a half-dead language that still utters in life what is seemingly excluded from it and thus forbidden to be talked about: death. Death as anything that is out of this world, as something that will never return . Still, along with an experience of death that recently waned as a worn-out academic fashion, the Greek experience is dead too. Nearly 2300 years of written words separating Homer from the fall of Byzantium equal 500 books on a library traded for money: “I am with the killed. Hence my deepest solitude. I do not feel this tremendous macho society, beyond from the fact that it is a ruthlessly consuming one. It is me who pays all the time .” (2002, 57) Let us do the math and see how much this dealing with the Greek experience is costing the poet and how much dealing with the Greek experience might cost us today. *** “I do not guarantee a single word.” (Karouzos, 1993, II, 454) Through its various dialects and forms, the Greek language speaks through an incessant historical dissemination. Anyone who is aware of this terrifying polymorphy and still calls himself a poet, must stand against a white sheet of paper, pen-in-hand, with a very particular duty: to be as fully inconsistent as possible. In the formally ironic uniqueness of the poem, the poet functions as “a band-aid for lesser and greater antinomies.” (1993, I, 251) Of course these antinomies are not exhausted in language—they are historical, political and, alas, existential. Yet, beyond appearances , it is language that ruthlessly encodes them through history, submitting the poet to the temptation of placing them one next to the other on a single white sheet. The closer their neighboring, the greater the scattering of the writer in the ironic uniqueness of the paper. In a work where poetic license is described as a “freedom-impasse” (2002, 51), this task is undertaken in full conscience of its personal consequences: “what I am interested in is to escape my individuality (envisioning the non-ego) […] Nevertheless, my dissociations never achieve duration.” (2002, 74-75) Hence, though poetry is the “deserted direction of will,” (1998, 62) the stance of the poet is not that of a Nietzschean “great man.”2 Whereas drunkenness provides a thread between the poem and the excess it both presupposes and infuses (“Poetry always enlarges. ‘Drunkenness’ is nothing more than that,” (2002, 85)), whereas language flashes in loudmouth spurts of déraison (“When I am alone I do something else. I utter words. For example, while having my ouzo and listening to music I am most likely capable of randomly shouting ‘Electricity!’” (2002, 138)), the poet never gives in to the double affirmation that would eventually risk the “element of pleasure in discourse.” (2002, 80)” It is exactly because the gap of the antinomies is so vast that poetry is not meant to be written with a hammer. Neither does writing consist in a reevaluation of those elements. In short, poetry is not an affirmation of difference, but the surprising beauty of chiming antinomies. We might never transcend them, but it is up to us to put them together. Yet again, this voisinage is not to be identified with the necessity of chance as an eternal return.4 On the contrary it is a return from that very return : Let us treat Yes as a No to No and No as a Yes […] And let us not forget that this pissed affirmation crumbled down Nietzsche’s intellect in the dark paths of this world. (2002, 88) This return from the “vicious circle” should in no way be taken as a form of artistic prudence. Rather it can be seen as a dribble of demonic inconsistency as Dionysus transforms himself into a Christ that is in turn de-theologized: “Who can forbid that? Every man is capable of his own theology, nothing can stop him.” (2002, 73-74) This is a turn towards an existential vision of the world, historically coinciding with a particular political defeat of the Left, to which the poet devoted all his life: after the defeat of the popular front I raised the question “why do we exist?” while others were asking “why we failed.” (2002, 57)5 But most of all it is a return to poetry that exceeds the existential question itself, going beyond the issue of faith. Poetry comes in as a question of return after a defeat that is confessed in full profanity. Though it accepts the necessity of the defeat, it does not affirm it. Though it negates it, the negation is not in the name of a promise to be delivered in the kingdom of heavens. Following a historical and existential defeat, poetry is born post mortem . It signals a return to Christ as “groundless religiousness in the surprise of the real as such” (2002, 72) which is at once a return to the refuge of childhood. It is not a question of endurance towards an eternal return. Rather it is a question on the possibility of an existential return. Returning in a world as someone who cannot enjoy any returns exactly because he is averse to guarantees. A return without returns. *** PHOTOCOPY OF HAPPINESS When I was young I used to pin down cicadas and step on ant nests. I used to stand there silent for hours. With threads I decapitated bees. Now I am a dead man breathing. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 336.) The return to the “paradise of childhood” (2002, 68) constitutes the devouring refuge of its own memory when defeat becomes the synonym of adulthood. The political struggles of a young communist in a country torn up by a civil war right after World War II fraught with incarcerations and exiles. Historically they resulted in the defeat of the communist movement in Greece and opened up a long turbulent road that would peak in the dictatorship of 1967. Existentially they led to a series of disillusionments: mental breakdown, divorce, abandonment of studies in law school. To the question “why do we exist” the answer was poetry. Still this exposé should not be read as a sweeping chronography of a man. For it actually happens to coincide with the historical fate of a nation that after its modern constitution never stopped dreaming of the glories of its past youth, in a present that was (and is) sweepingly disappointing. But isn’t this return to youth finally a way of compensating for a loss of youth that necessarily results in a losing adulthood? Will Greeks, the eternal children of Plato and Nietzsche, ever learn? How to return without dying, how to remember without wasting time? WE ARE IN THE OPEN MEANING Living the coldest mauve night right across Parthenon I went to take a piss on some foliage and I was enjoying the foliage as it was steaming. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 340) Beyond the historical tragedies of modern Greece and away from any personal disappointments, the relation that this land holds with language and history is mediated through the Greek light—whose omnipresence is the very condition of its transcendence. All historical contradictions from Dionysus to Christ took place under this light; all those disseminated dialects were spoken beneath its warmth. To paraphrase Lévinas,6 light is both the condition of the world and of our withdrawal from it—a withdrawal towards the invisibility of God, of the dead, of meta-physics, resulting from the temptation that all is still here, behind this light the visibility of which they once evaded: “birds, the allurement of God.” (1993, I, 17) Under that luminous sky, if Greeks can do anything at all, it is to envision a return that will never come. All they can do is write poetry—which is doing nothing; other than lending an ear to a disseminated language whispering a unity that cannot be promised, as an adulthood in defeat is ready to recognize. Trying “to trap the invisible in visibility” (1993, II, 483) they forget that they have grown up and one day they die—with the promise of return. Hence an additional meaning must be given to this return to childhood. It does not signal salvation but rather its promise. To the ears of an aged continent it means that the return to/of poetry is a losing game, a return without returns. “Europe, Europe… you are nothing more than the continuation of Barabbas.” (1993, I, 295) *** “Life is not there to verify theories.”7 The records show that Karouzos was finally given a second-class pension from the Greek government, at the time when he was being recognized by the literary press as one of Greece’s major contemporary poets. Being neither a bourgeois nor a nobelist, he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-communist, unconditionally faithful to the utopia of a classless society. He also drank, heavily. “Capitalism made an animal out of man/ Marxism made an animal out of truth/ Shut up.” (1993, II, 369) Perhaps one of the most scandalous divides of our times has been the one between the living and the dead, the latent prohibition that the living should not be concerned with the dead based on the mere impossibility of the dead to be concerned with the living in the first place. What adds to this scandal is that this divide abuses anything that cannot return to us by subsuming it under the same futility. Hence death is no longer “loss” in the usual sense. It no more refers to the things we lost but to our “loss” (of time, money and well-being) as we insist to dwell on them. Death is a waste —of time. It is this waste that we find in the insouciance of Greek expenditure; the waste in dealing with a language that most of its historical part is no longer spoken (a dead language); the waste in translating a poet who is ex definitio untranslatable; the waste of his vision, his money, his life. The waste of dealing with anything that cannot return and that cannot bring in any returns . But it is also the waste of life that poetry itself presupposes, the waste of dealing with invisibility, with anything that is out of this world and thus invokes the fear of death that is in turn—and surprisingly— nowhere to be found. Instead of death, what is there, beyond the light, is the being without us (to recall the Lévinasian il y a ), the mumble of our own nothingness which constitutes the price to be paid for writing poetry under an evergreek light. To understand this to-and-fro, is to realize that poetry is something out of this world that nevertheless takes place in this world, by virtue of this world. But to ridiculously equate this to-and-fro with death as non-existence, is to exile poetry along with its own possibility from this same old world: I do not believe that poetry will ever disappear from this world. […] But I am also sure that it does not have many chances of playing, as you say, a redemptive role in our vertiginous technological future. Without being endangered as a creative need, it will be placed on the side of history. (2002, 32) It is mainly there that we would like to locate the meaning of Nikos Karouzos’s poetry today. If we are willing to include the Greek original it is because we consider that it will be both a waste of time for us to do so (since most of you cannot read Greek) and because it might induce you to the even larger waste of learning it. We would additionally be glad if this small introduction served as an equally wasteful, academically useless piece of reading, gesturing towards a taboo of investing in anything Greek—that is in anything dead among the living, in anything that will never come back and maybe was never here in the first place. This is the only way to reserve for ourselves the possibility of poetry and preserve the light of its promise. “To return: that is the miracle.” (1993, I, 17) Athens, Greece July 10, 2011 NOTES 1 “ Capitale (a Late Latin word based on caput “head”) emerged in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[…] The word and the reality it stood for appear in the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) ‘… quamdam seminalem rationem lucrosi quam communiter capitale vocamus ’, ‘that prolific cause of wealth that we commonly call capital’” (Braudel, 1992, 232-233). 2 “A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? First : there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to despise and reject everything petty about him, including even the fairest, ‘divinest’ things in the world.” (Nietzsche, 1968, 505, §962) 3 Cf. Deleuze, 1986, 186-9. 4 “Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return.” (Deleuze, 189)5 In this 1982 interview Karouzos refers to the defeat of the communist movement in Greece after the civil war of 1946-1949 between the Governmental Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military division of the Greek communist party. Karouzos’s father was a member of the communist National Liberation front (EAM) members of which formed the mainl resistance movement (ELAS) in Greece during WWII. The poet was a member of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), which was a youth division of EAM. After the end of the war, ELAS was called to disarmament in view of the formation of a National Army. The members of EAM resigned from the government of national unity and a series of protests led to a 3 year civil war between ELAS and the Government Army. After the defeat of ELAS the Communist party was outlawed and many communists were exiled in deserted Greek islands. Karouzos, who took action in the Greek resistance and was active during the Greek civil war, was exiled in Icaria on 1947 and in Makronisos on 1953 where he was called two years earlier to do his military service. 6 “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being. To enter into being is to link up with objects; it is in effect a bond that is already tainted with nullity. It is already to escape anonymity. In this world where everything seems to affirm our solidarity with the totality of existence, where we are caught up in the gears of a universal mechanism, our first feeling, our ineradicable illusion, is a feeling or illusion of freedom. To be in the world is this hesitation, this interval in existing, which we have seen in the analyses of fatigue and the present.” (Lévinas, 1988,43-4) 7from a TV interview. THE POETRY OF NIKOS KAROUZOS From Redwriter [ Ερυθρογρ?φος ], in Collected Works, Vol . II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 463-4. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 9-10.] JESUS ANTI-OEDIPUS* Why were we once saving till the fifth day the Paschal lamb? The scriptures say: with this victim’s meat we ought to cleanse all of our senses. To give life to the whitest wave miraculous odors in the extension of the chest. Ideals to death. For us to witness the illustrious dawns of Absinthe and for the soul to be a deeply carved ornament on the fore we named will. Then many deer running amidst the evergreen growth with watery hymns, then, the unintended angels descending with heights spiraling in their momentum offer themselves to the luminous Adventure. Whence the need for speech and our sufferings covered with flags like the glorified dead. An incorporeal finger pointing at the flamboyant and fragrant holocausts within the tired horizons and the exhausted breadths with joys of the mistletoe on fire and shivering all of the green-leaved love. Something would have chirped again had we not driven it away— maybe the ewe’s grass. Something would have called us to the eternal resurrection— maybe the grace of spring. But now our heart is fiercely blinded, withdrawn to the appearances of Hades. Silence and ice incessantly cover the Infant Spirit in thatched times. While the cherry trees are dreaming faintly glowing in absolute darkness there’s nothing the Babylonians can contemplate in labs with automatic colored lights. How to rejoice now in the fifth day of the lamb? We have forked the stars. We’ve gradually become supposedly sublime with plucked chimeras in our hands. Avenged relentlessly by science. *Though the poem appears in a 1990 collection, it was actually written in 1968. Hence the reader must be aware in not associating Karouzos’ Anti-Oedipus with the famous 1972 work of Deleuze and Guattari, given that the former precedes the latter. ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙ-ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ Γιατ? κρατο?σαμε κ?ποτε ?ς την π?μπτη μ?ρα το πασχαλιν? πρ?βατο; Τα κε?μενα λ?νε: μ’ αυτο? του θ?ματος το κρ?ας ?πρεπε να καθαρ?σουμε ?λες τις αισθ?σεις. Για να δ?σουμε κ?μα στη ζω? λευκ?τατο θαυμ?σιες ευωδι?ς στην ?κταση του στ?θους. Ιδανικ? στο χ?ρο. Για να βλ?πουμε τα λαμπρ? χαρ?ματα του ?ψινθου και να ’ναι η ψυχ? στ?λισμα βαθυχ?ρακτο της πλ?ρης που την ε?παμε θ?ληση. Τ?τε πολλ?ς δορκ?δες τρ?χοντας αν?μεσα στην καταπρ?σινη φ?ση με τους υδ?τινους ?μνους, τ?τε, κατεβα?νοντας οι αθ?λητοι ?γγελοι με κυλινδο?μενο το ?ψος στην ορμ? τους χαρ?ζονται της αστραφτερ?ς Περιπ?τειας. ?θεν η μιλι? γι’ αυτ? χρει?ζεται και τα δειν? σκεπ?ζονται ωσ?ν τους τιμημ?νους νεκρο?ς με σημα?ες. Ασ?ματο δ?χτυλο δε?χνει τα φλογ?δη και μοσχοβ?λα ολοκαυτ?ματα στους κουρασμ?νους ορ?ζοντες στα εξουθενωμ?να πλ?τη καθ?ς αν?βουν οι χαρ?ς του νερα?δ?ξυλου και τρ?μει ολ?κληρη η πρασιν?φυλλη αγ?πη. Κ?τι θα κελαηδο?σε π?λι αν δεν το δι?χναμε— μπορε? της προβατ?νας το χορτ?ρι. Κ?τι θα μας καλο?σε στην απ?ραντη αν?σταση— μπορε? του ?αρος η χ?ρη. Μα η καρδι? μας ?γρια τυφλ?θηκε π?ρασε στα φαιν?μενα του ?δη. Σιγ? και π?γος αδι?κοπα σκεπ?ζει στους αχυρ?νιους καιρο?ς το Ν?πιο Πνε?μα. Την ?ρα που ονειρε?ονται οι βυσσινι?ς και λ?μπουν αμυδρ? μεσ’ στο απλ?τατο σκοτ?δι τ?ποτα δε στοχ?ζονται οι βαβυλ?νιοι στα εργαστ?ρια με τ’ αυτ?ματα χρωματιστ? φ?τα. Π?ς να χαρο?με πια την π?μπτη μ?ρα του προβ?του; Φουρκ?σαμε τ’ αστ?ρια. Γ?ναμε σιγ?-σιγ? δ?θεν υπ?ροχοι με μαδημ?νες χ?μαιρες στα χ?ρια. Μας ν?μεται σκληρ? η επιστ?μη. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 472. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18.] DIALECTΙCS OF SPRING Christ the straight angle; Christ the Pythagorean theorem. Christ the infinitesimal calculus from above the blessed Sets Christ. Christ the tessellation of massive particles Christ the zero mass. Hence we spray numbers and fields of lust. We are carabineers of diseased logic plus something— Observed means observer and Hekate The darkness luminous and light in the dark Astarte banqueters demons from today. ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΡΟΣ Χριστ?ς η ορθ? γων?α· Χριστ?ς το πυθαγ?ριο θε?ρημα. Χριστ?ς ο απειροστικ?ς λογισμ?ς ?νωθεν ?λβια Χριστ?ς τα Σ?νολα. Χριστ?ς η ψηφιδογραφ?α στα μαζικ? σωμ?τια Χριστ?ς η μ?ζα μηδ?ν. ?ρα ψεκ?ζουμε αριθμο?ς και πεδ?α λαγνε?ας. Ε?μαστε τυφεκιοφ?ροι νοσο?σης λογικ?ς και κ?τι-- παρατηρο?μενο σημα?νει παρατηρητ?ς και Εκ?τη σκ?τος το π?μφωτο και φως εν τ? σκοτ?? η Αστ?ρτη συνδαιτημ?νες δα?μονες απ’ ?ρτι. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18. [1993, II, 472]. CREDO (as we are used to say in Latin) Α I believe in one Poet expelled from heavens / fugitive from the god and vagabond, Empedocles / and here on earth / exile on the earth etc. of Baudelaire /. Β I believe in one Computer inside thunder and through matter. Γ Suffering undefiled / substantive / the Poet uplifts himself slow-burning suicidal implying lengthy sleeps. Δ Cutting down on prospective mistakes. Ε Of all things visible and invisible officiating the onion-peelings. Ζ The Poet has nothing / see the departed /. Η I believe in one Poet that says: madness I enjoy; he ridicules existence; let me light up from my mana. Θ Syntax he doesn’t care about when musicality commands him. Along with still more licenses, and Ts are played according to the concept sound anywhere. E.g. the winters here, he winters there; it will not come—I will not rest, etc. etc. Ι The Poet exercises thought until it’s stripped down. Κ And if he’s Greek he must always study the fineness of Attica, in light, mountains, fields and sea. For this fineness teaches language. Λ And if he’s deeply destined the Poet expresses the unexplainable of the explained; he happens to be a rightful heir to the scientist and his predecessor. Μ On the froth he does not last; the Poet blusters at the bottom of the pot. Ν Flamebred and never redeemed. Ξ The Poet must sometimes say: what a consumption of presence — be a bit lonely for a change! Ο The Poet is twilit. Π He is susceptible of deaths and resurrections. Ρ He looks from the corner of his eye and exists in a glance. Σ He follows behind the mother. Τ Eveningless when it comes to age. Υ I believe in one Poet who says: let the purities coincide. Until the Corinth of the Universe or even further. Φ In a higher despair. Χ In a brighter quintessence. Ψ In one sensation that lifts off. Ω Forgiving everyone. CREDO (ως ε?θισται να λ?με λατινιστ?) Α Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν εκτ?ς ουρανο? / φυγ?ς θε?θεν και αλ?της, Εμπεδοκλ?ς / και επ? της γης / εξ?ριστος π?νω στη γη κ.λπ. του Βωδελα?ρου /. Β Πιστε?ω εις ?να Υπολογιστ?ν εντ?ς κεραυνο? και δια της ?λης. Γ Υποφ?ροντας ?χραντα / ουσιαστικ?ν / ο Ποιητ?ς ανατε?νεται βραδυφλεγ?ς αυτ?χειρας εξυπακο?οντας πολ?ωρους ?πνους. Δ Τα υποψ?φια λ?θη λιγοστε?οντας. Ε Ορατ?ν τε π?ντων και αορ?των ιερουργ?ντας την αποκρομμ?ωση. Ζ Ο Ποιτ?ς ?χει τ?ποτα / βλ?πε τους αναχωρ?σαντες /. Η Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: η τρ?λα μ’ αρ?σει· γελοιοποιε? την ?παρξη· ας αν?ψω απ’ τη μ?να μου. Θ Συνταχτικ? δεν το γνοι?ζεται στην προσταγ? της μουσικ?τητας. Μαζ? και μ’ ?λλες ακ?μη λευτερι?ς, και τα νυ πα?ζονται κατ? την ?ννοια ?χος οπουδ?ποτε. Π.χ. τον χειμ?να εδ?, το χειμ?να εκε?· δε θ? ’ρθει – δεν θα καταλαγι?σουμε, κ. λπ. κ.λπ. Ι Ο Ποιητ?ς γυμν?ζει τη σκ?ψη σε απογ?μνωση. Κ Κι αν ε?ναι ?λληνας οφε?λει να σπουδ?ζει π?ντοτε της Αττικ?ς τη λεπτ?τητα, σε φως, βουν?, χωρ?φια και θ?λασσα. Διδ?σκει γλ?σσα η λεπτ?τητα το?τη. Λ Κι αν ε?ναι βαθι? πεπρωμ?νος ο Ποιητ?ς εκφρ?ζει το ανεξ?γητο του εξηγητο?· τυγχ?νει ν?μιμος δι?δοχος του επιστ?μονα και προκ?τοχ?ς του. Μ Στον αφρ? δεν ?χει δι?ρκεια· στο πατοκ?ζανο μα?νεται ο Ποιητ?ς. Ν Φλογοδ?αιτος και ποτ? ξελυτρωμ?νος. Ξ Ο Ποιητ?ς κ?ποτε πρ?πει να λ?ει: μεγ?λη καταν?λωση παρουσ?ας – γενε?τε και λ?γο μοναξι?ρηδες! Ο Ο Ποιητ?ς ε?ναι αμφ?φλοξ. Π Επιδ?χεται θαν?τους και αναστ?σεις. Ρ Ακροθωρ?ζει και υπ?ρχει σε ξαφνοκο?ταγμα. Σ Ε?ναι ουραγ?ς της μητ?ρας. Τ Αν?σπερος απ? ηλικ?α. Υ Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: να συμπ?σουν οι αγν?τητες. Μ?χρι την Κ?ρινθο του Σ?μπαντος ? μακρ?τερα. Φ Σε αν?τερη απελπισ?α. Χ Σε φαειν?τερη πεμπτουσ?α. Ψ Σε μια α?σθηση που πτηνο?ται. Ω Συγχωρ?ντας τους π?ντες. From Large Sized Logic [ Λογικ? μεγ?λου σχ?ματος ], Athens: Erato, 1989, n.p. [1993, II, 521-3]. (shrink)

The proliferation of unconventional death practices in North America, however innovative, is in part an expression of societal confusion about the nature of death and grief. If the church can recover the theological and liturgical fabric of funerals, reclaiming their main purpose as public confession rather than private pastoral care, Christian funerals can serve as a hopeful counter-witness to an uncertain culture.

Wittgenstein’s attitude toward Christian believing is more complicated that many philosophers have been led to believe. The hiccup in the received account began as a neglect of Wittgenstein’s subject-involving method in philosophy of religion. Wittgenstein’s method cannot be subsumed under the rubric of philosophy-as-[quasi-scientific]-explanation. Rather, Wittgenstein’s method was subject-involving in the sense that by his own methodology he put himself at existential risk. In 1931 he wrote that “[t]he movement of thought in my philosophizing should be discernible also in the (...) history of my spirit, of its moral concepts & in the understanding of my situation”. Apparently, to understand Wittgenstein’s method we are right to look closely at his biography. In the following essay I show that during his Norwegian sabbaticals, especially that of 1936–1937, Wittgenstein embodied the very method he advocated in his exploration of Christian believing. This method involved him in an enduring practice of actually praying, in close study of passionate Christian thinkers, and in public confession of his private sins. Although his journey ends shy of Christian believing, the form of his spiritual quest exemplifies the manner in which philosophers of religion ought to consider as internal to the investigation of religious concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Misnomer of Freud's "Seduction Theory"Hall TriplettSigmund Freud's theory of 1896 was buried without a name in 1897, less than two years after it appeared. The process by which it acquired a name, "seduction theory," and the role this name played in the history of psychoanalysis are essential parts of the legend-making in Freud's biography. The label, bestowed half a century after publication, reflected two major rhetorical transformations. First, (...) from a theory presented with highly general claims of infant sex abuse, assault, and trauma, the theory was repackaged as a theory of seduction. Second, from a theory reportedly based in actual, traumatic experience, followed by repressed memory, it was transformed into one of fantasy. The name "seduction theory" has therefore operated as a misleading, strategic misnomer for the theory that Freud published in 1896.Freud announced his theory in three publications, referred to here in order of publication as the Paris paper,1 the Berlin paper,2 and "The Aetiology of Hysteria," published in Vienna.3 In his final publication the emphasis on trauma was greatest. In the space of five pages in the Standard Edition of Freud's works he used the word "traumatic" or "traumatically" fifteen times.4 Although he was extending the traumatic memory theory that he had shared with Josef Breuer in 1895,5 he touted his new modification as "the discovery of a caput [End Page 647] Nili [source of the Nile] in neuropathology."6 Sixteen months later he would privately renounce it. The theory was resurrected in the 1980s as support for the recovered memory movement.7It is essential to recall that the issuance of scientific claims is quite different from scientific validation. Getting the name of a theory right more than a century after publication is one matter only; assessing the basis of its underlying claims raises yet another challenge, particularly when the theory has been transformed with such extensive variation as Freud's theory of 1896.Therefore, the early death of the theory, described only in private letters to Wilhelm Fliess, is critical to an understanding of the entire historical episode. It is essential also to note that when Freud published his retrospective revisions of the theory, he did not know that his contemporary letters to his intimate friend would become competing evidence of the actual events of the mid-1890s.8When Freud secretly abandoned his theory on 21 September 1897 he wrote to Fliess, "I no longer believe in my neurotica."9 Implied already is the fact that Freud's belief in his theory was all that had supported it. One of his retrospective comments unwittingly substantiates this fact. In 1914, in his "History of the Psycho-analytic Movement," he conceded that his theory "broke down under the weight of its own improbability."10Furthermore, abandoning a theory in secrecy with no public defense is itself tantamount to a confession that supporting evidence is missing. Freud had acknowledged the absence of supporting data in his Berlin paper when he stated, "In this kind of communication it is not possible to bring forward the evidence needful to support my assertions, but I hope to fulfill this obligation later in a detailed presentation."11 His claim that it was "not possible to bring forward the evidence" must be challenged. Presenting scientific evidence is always possible when one has it. Moreover, in his "later" paper, by far the longest of 1896, he evaded the presentation of "actual material," opting instead to discuss potential objections.12 He did not present a single case history of hysteria, arguing that this would have taken too much time; yet he had closed his Berlin paper with a case history of paranoia that was purportedly based in the female patient's "sexual relationship" with her brother during childhood.13 [End Page 648] This case is not persuasive, but it demonstrates Freud's eagerness in 1896 to share a case when he believed that he had one to share.The style of a live lecture in "The Aetiology of Hysteria," as though Freud were speaking to an audience of potential objectors, is highly misleading, even fictional. As he explained in his letters... (shrink)

This paper delineates the thrust of Augustine's theodicy against the broader background of his Christian Neoplatonic outlook. We examine Augustine's initial Manichean influences and see how these beliefs carry over to his mature thought, which is evident in the seventh book of the Confessions. After Augustine's time with the Manicheans, we look at how he was so influenced by the books of the Platonists (libri platonicorum). Although Augustine's position regarding the problem of evil shifts, his idea of the primacy of (...) the soul is still evident in his thought process. To wit, Augustine posits that evil must be considered a privation of the Good, so much so as to reach the point of complete nonentity. Human beings' ability to be corrupted by evils rests in their position as being created ex-nihilo by God. With this creation also comes an inherent mutability. Due to human mutability, Augustine believes that God is not responsible for such evil actions. This paper also contrasts this belief with modern empiricist David Hume's idea regarding God's responsibility for human actions. Hume argues that the volition of all human actions rests in God as Creator of the world. As creator, Hume claims that God places human beings in a position to act. If humans are predisposed to perform evil actions, they cannot be faulted. Augustine would counter that argument by claiming that evil is not a substance. Not being a substance, evil is there not ascribable to God. Ultimately, Augustine's theodicy is based upon the goodness of God. (shrink)

“Noverim me, noverim te.” – Saint Augustine, Confessions, 10.1.1. (397-400 AD). -/- What would and will an urban commons look like that is slowly and incrementally being re-socialized? How would that affect urban planning “now” and in times of crisis? How do we prepare for the likelihood of rolling similar crises with an eye on returning the urban commons to citizens? -/- There is the old adage that under capitalism, risk is always socialized and profit is always privatized. We are (...) seeing it now, under the COVID-19 crisis. The huge bailouts launched by governments are symptomatic of the crisis in political economy, just as they were post-2008. “Too big to fail” has sponsored monsters that refuse to back off without threatening the collapse of the entire system. Francisco Goya’s “The sleep of Reason produces monsters …” comes to mind. -/- Physical and immaterial culture, in our current Western civilisation, are intimately linked. Yet the focus for urban design is generally on the material or physical side, with the immaterial left to its own devices. Increasingly, urban design measures are merely ameliorative and aesthetic, with the larger share shaped by a political economy dictated by market ideology or “politicalology.” What transpires, nonetheless, is an immaterial commons that constitutes a public or private intellectual commons – often a mix of the two; but, in the case of domination by market ideology, the privatization of “general intellect” proceeds by abject appropriation. In such a technocratically driven model, subjective states become increasingly important. As Indian architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi once said, “Smart cities are smart people.” -/- How might these two otherwise contiguous and synchronous systems be brought back into a properly civic-minded rapport with or without crisis-driven change? Are there alternate models for the urban commons? What measures might be put in place in advance, or as provisional intercessions? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the WorldAndrew KeittIn 1688 Anglican divine William Wharton published a short tract entitled The Enthusiasm of the Church of Rome demonstrated in some observations upon the life of Ignatius Loyola. Typical of the confessional propaganda of the day, Wharton's work contrasted the "rationality" of Protestantism with what he considered to be the superstition and obscurantism of the Catholic faith:It has (...) been the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to create a right sense of Religion and Piety in all her Communicants, and secure to them the practice of a rational Devotion. She makes no pretensions to private Inspirations, and extraordinary Illuminations of the Holy Ghost; and all her Children are more apt to deride, than admire the follies of the Enthusiasts.... Not so the Church of Rome, which in all her Offices and publick Ceremonies promotes and foments it, hath on many occasions given publick applause and approbation to it, and oweth the greatest part of her peculiar Doctrines, and present prosperity to the Enthusiasm of her Followers.1The "enthusiasm" to which Wharton refers had become the object of intense controversy in late seventeenth-century England. The term enthusiasm in this context meant highly emotional, deeply embodied religious experience in [End Page 231] the form of inspired raptures, miraculous revelations, and prophetic power. It was an epithet used with increasing frequency during this period to condemn not only Catholics but also members of radical Protestant sects such as the Diggers, Levellers, and Fifth Monarchy Men.The efforts of mainstream Protestant denominations to distance themselves from the "ultrasupernaturalism" of religious enthusiasts would seem to fit within a Weberian paradigm in which the Protestant Reformation functions as a catalyst for the "disenchantment of the world," the process by which the boundaries of the supernatural were supposedly rolled back in the modern West.2 Indeed, many historians of early modern Europe have adopted, either implicitly or explicitly, such a model. Lawrence Stone, for example, reflects this school of thought with his assertion that by the end of the seventeenth century, Protestantism's "more rational and coherent view of nature and its relationship to God's providence" created a worldview in which magical or miraculous explanations of events became increasingly untenable.3Catholicism, on the other hand, has often been portrayed as maintaining a more porous boundary between nature and supernature. Summarizing what he calls the "Weberian consensus," sociologist Peter Berger offers the following analysis, which reads remarkably like a translation of Wharton's characterization of Catholicism into the language of the social sciences:The Catholic lives in a world in which the sacred is mediated to him through a variety of channels—the sacraments of the church, the intercession of the saints, the recurring eruption of the "supernatural" in miracles—a vast continuity of being between the seen and the unseen.4In recent years, however, as historians have emphasized the structural parallels between the various confessions in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such stark contrasts have become increasingly suspect.5 Consequently, scholars have underscored the need for comparative work on the topic. Michael Heyd, for example, has suggested such a strategy in his work on the reaction to religious enthusiasm in seventeenth-century Europe.6 [End Page 232] Although Heyd focuses primarily on the English case, he recommends an integrative, comparative approach. He describes how religious enthusiasm became "the subject of detailed analysis—theological, social, psychological and even medical" in the closing decades of the seventeenth century in England, and he details the efforts of both religious and secular authorities "to distinguish carefully between true inspiration and a false one, between the natural realm and the truly supernatural."7 Heyd links this reaction against religious enthusiasm to the disenchantment of the world and asks to what extent these trends were unique to the Anglican tradition in England.8Lorraine Daston has emphasized the need for comparative study as well. Religious enthusiasm plays an important role in Daston's "historical epistemology," which traces the development of modern notions of "fact" and "evidence," and their relationship to changing attitudes toward the miraculous in early modern Europe. The... (shrink)

The volume offers the first large-scale study of the teaching of Descartes' philosophy in the early modern age. Its twenty chapters explore the clash between Descartes' "new" philosophy and the established pedagogical practices and institutional concerns, as well as the various strategies employed by Descartes' supporters in order to communicate his ideas to their students. The volume considers a vast array of topics, sources, and institutions, across the borders of countries and confessions, both within and without the university setting (public (...) conferences, private tutorials, distance learning by letter) and enables us thereby to reconsider from a fresh perspective the history of early modern philosophy and education. (shrink)

The volume offers the first large-scale study of the teaching of Descartes' philosophy in the early modern age. Its twenty chapters explore the clash between Descartes' "new" philosophy and the established pedagogical practices and institutional concerns, as well as the various strategies employed by Descartes' supporters in order to communicate his ideas to their students. The volume considers a vast array of topics, sources, and institutions, across the borders of countries and confessions, both within and without the university setting (public (...) conferences, private tutorials, distance learning by letter) and enables us thereby to reconsider from a fresh perspective the history of early modern philosophy and education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 181-186 [Access article in PDF] Response to June Boyce-Tillman, "Towards an Ecology of Music Education" Claudia Gluschankof Levinsky College of Education, Israel I begin with two confessions. First, music was not my favorite class at school. I cannot even recall what we did there. It did not at all connect with the powerful, meaningful place that music had in my private (...) life, where I loved to sing with my family, and play and sing in ensembles in classes at a private music school. The private piano lessons were fine, but I found no joy in practicing on my own. Music was for me-and still is-a communal experience, associated with personal choice. School did not, and probably could not, provide that.Second, during a recent marketing meeting at the college where I teach and work, I finally said aloud, "I am not sure that I can market a product in which I don't believe." Being a teacher in overcrowded, resource-poor schools where parents are less involved yet more interfering and being expected to conform to standards and to act more as a producer of school ceremonies and festivals and less as a music educator is not a profession I would recommend entering. Boyce-Tillman's paper offers a model for music education in which the corrective emotional experience, in my own case, becomes a remedial object lesson in the setting of the music classroom and a reason to recommend music school teaching as a rewarding profession.Boyce-Tillman calls us to conceive of music "as intimately related to human society and the environment rather than as a discrete and separated category of knowing." Her position is in tune with Christopher Small's coined term "musicking": The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are [End Page 181] conventionally thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand as metaphor for, ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine them to be: relationships between person and person, between individual and society, between humanity and the natural world and perhaps the supernatural world.1The five interlocking areas proposed in Boyce-Tillman's model are present in Small's musicking: the relationships among the sounds parallel the area called Materials; the relationships between people and sounds may parallel the area called Expression, which refers to the personal meaning given to the organized sounds. "In the area of Construction, effectiveness often depends on the right management of repetition and contrast within a particular idiom." Such a particular idiom is part of the style ideal of a particular culture. It is defined in terms of form and content, and expresses some inner quality of the society that produced it. The style ideal can be characterized by different factors (for example, historical period, geographic location, school, manner of performance, individual composer, and so on) and can be examined in terms of musical components (form, texture, harmony, melody).2According to Boyce-Tillman, the area of Values "is related to the context of the music-making experience. All musical experiences are culturally related." Because values are shared by groups, I found this present in the relationships be-tween a subculture and the larger society, in its broader meaning. The fifth area is Spirituality, defined by Boyce-Tillman as "the ability to transport the audience to a different time/space dimension." That different time/space dimension may be understood as the supernatural world, referred to by Small.Small sees the greatest challenge to music educators today to be that of providing "that kind of social context for informal as well as formal musical interaction that leads to real development and to the musicalizing of the society as a whole,"3... (shrink)

Tolerance has its arguments, both in morality and in law. It also has its sources, not only in the sense of the origins from which it springs, but also in the sense of that which actuates it and gives it life, that which encourages it and sanctions it - profoundly. Religions take part of these sources, but also take part of this reflexive aspect of ethics that puts into play the final legitimation, the ultimate justification of the norms of our (...) public and private actions. It is with respect to this recourse to the ultimate that religion and ethics intersect without becoming one. Yet it is also in this recourse to the ultimate that one and the other greatly face the danger of temptation. This is particularly the case with religion. It is indeed not enough to simply say that it is the political use of religion that is to blame, and not religion as such, in the long and unfinished history of religious intolerance. We must trace the source of the temptation of intolerance to the very heart of the certainty of religious faith. Any belief, as soon as it defines itself in relation - a relation of any kind, whether of distance or proximity, of alterity or fusion - to an absolute, must be on guard against its own penchant for intolerance. It is not enough, in an opposite sense of the preceding warning, to rely on the critical resources borrowed from sources outside of religion: it is at that same heart of certainty of all religious faith that we must seek the reason for the conviction that it is unjust to look to impose on adherents of other religions, on agnostics and atheists, the truth as it is admitted in good faith by the community of believers of one or another religious confession. (shrink)

Tolerance has its arguments, both in morality and in law. It also has its sources, not only in the sense of the origins from which it springs, but also in the sense of that which actuates it and gives it life, that which encourages it and sanctions it - profoundly. Religions take part of these sources, but also take part of this reflexive aspect of ethics that puts into play the final legitimation, the ultimate justification of the norms of our (...) public and private actions. It is with respect to this recourse to the ultimate that religion and ethics intersect without becoming one. Yet it is also in this recourse to the ultimate that one and the other greatly face the danger of temptation. This is particularly the case with religion. It is indeed not enough to simply say that it is the political use of religion that is to blame, and not religion as such, in the long and unfinished history of religious intolerance. We must trace the source of the temptation of intolerance to the very heart of the certainty of religious faith. Any belief, as soon as it defines itself in relation - a relation of any kind, whether of distance or proximity, of alterity or fusion - to an absolute, must be on guard against its own penchant for intolerance. It is not enough, in an opposite sense of the preceding warning, to rely on the critical resources borrowed from sources outside of religion: it is at that same heart of certainty of all religious faith that we must seek the reason for the conviction that it is unjust to look to impose on adherents of other religions, on agnostics and atheists, the truth as it is admitted in good faith by the community of believers of one or another religious confession. (shrink)

In today's world, with extraordinary force, such religious functions as axiological, moral-regulative, ideological and compensatory are actualized. In the process of successive secularization, the influence of religion on human communities and their way of world perception, world outlook and life significantly decreased. The gradual differentiation of the forms of social consciousness has led to the fact that religions in its variations of different confessions and traditions of expression, the segment of moral and spiritual influence on humanity was left to guard. (...) And such a situation was considered justified and expedient, especially given the harm that human communities have been making attempts to religiously legitimize a purely political decision of specific individual policy makers. Abuse of religion to cover private economic or political interests has led to negative consequences in public life, and sometimes in wars and extremism. However, with the beginning of the 21st century and the event of discrediting contemporary secular values-not-motivated regulatory forms of organization of social reality, it becomes apparent that religions have not exhausted their socio-regulatory potential. (shrink)

Tolerance has its arguments, both in morality and in law. It also has its sources, not only in the sense of the origins from which it springs, but also in the sense of that which actuates it and gives it life, that which encourages it and sanctions it - profoundly. Religions take part of these sources, but also take part of this reflexive aspect of ethics that puts into play the final legitimation, the ultimate justification of the norms of our (...) public and private actions. It is with respect to this recourse to the ultimate that religion and ethics intersect without becoming one. Yet it is also in this recourse to the ultimate that one and the other greatly face the danger of temptation. This is particularly the case with religion. It is indeed not enough to simply say that it is the political use of religion that is to blame, and not religion as such, in the long and unfinished history of religious intolerance. We must trace the source of the temptation of intolerance to the very heart of the certainty of religious faith. Any belief, as soon as it defines itself in relation - a relation of any kind, whether of distance or proximity, of alterity or fusion - to an absolute, must be on guard against its own penchant for intolerance. It is not enough, in an opposite sense of the preceding warning, to rely on the critical resources borrowed from sources outside of religion: it is at that same heart of certainty of all religious faith that we must seek the reason for the conviction that it is unjust to look to impose on adherents of other religions, on agnostics and atheists, the truth as it is admitted in good faith by the community of believers of one or another religious confession. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RUSSEL:rS ANTI-COMMUNIST RHETORIC BEFORE AND AFTER STALIN'S DEATH STEPHEN HAYHURST History / Copenhagen International School Copenhagen, Denmark 1100 A communist regimes collapse in Eastern Europe, and the rhetoric of the Cold War is at last abandoned, it seems an appropriate time to examine an aspect of Bertrand Russell's political life and thought which has not been as well documented as, for example, his activities in the First World War (...) or the 1960s. In the decade following the end of the Second World War Russell could, with some justification, be accused of contributing to Cold War mistrust, and even of playing the role of a "Cold War Warrior". Between 1945 and 1953 not only was Russell, as he himself later admitted, well entrenched as part of the "Establishment", but he was also actively involved in denouncing Communism, Stalin, the Soviet Union, and at times even the Russian people. Russell's Cold War invective intruded into his private letters, newspaper and magazine articles, public lectures and some of his books during this period. For example, What is Freedom? and What is Democracy?, whilst not the best remembered of Russell's books, are illustrative of his vehement hatred of Stalin's regime, and are of especial interest because they underwent small but significant revisions after Stalin's death. This brief survey of Russell's anti-Stalinism is, by necessity, highly selective, and has intentionally focussed on some of Russell's more extreme statements. A much more comprehensive study would be necessary to analyze the overall significance of Russell's anti-Stalinism. Russell's political thought in the years immediately after the end of the Second World War is dominated by what has been called his "preventative war phase". His proposal that the Soviet Union should be ru II: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives McM rer University Libraty Press n.s. II (summer 1991): 67-81 ISSN 0031>-01631 68 STEPHEN HAYHURST pressured into signing the Baruch Plan for the international control of nuclear weapons, was made on at least twelve separate occasions between 1945 and 1949 and was, he later confessed, "the worst thing" he ever said.I This episode, characterized by controversy, proposals, denials and counter-denials, and reasonably well discussed by both critics and commentators, has direct relevance to Russell's anti-communist rhetoric.2 His prescient awareness of the staggering implications of nuclear weapons led him to demand, within two weeks of the destruction of Hiroshima, the urgent implementation of some procedure of international control.3 Since the First World War Russell had always maintained a vigorous belief in the long-term necessity of world government. Although this internationalism had been a central component of Russell's political thought, it had remained at least until 1945, at the level of a political ideal rather than a concrete proposal. In his more pessimistic moods, Russell had maintained that it would only arise through American hegemony, and at all times he had argued that a world government would only be effective if it possessed a monopoly ofweapons.4 Suddenly with the development of the atomic bomb, conditions had changed. Until 1949 the United States had a monopoly of this new monstrous weapon. Despite his very mixed views about both American political ideology and practice, Russell now clearly looked to the United States for international leadership. From the outset he accepted that international control of the bomb may not arise voluntarily. In October 1945 he wrote, "I think a world government supremely important, and I do not expect to see it established without I The twelve occasions are set out in I. F. Stone, "Bertrand Russell as a Moral Force in World Politics", Russell, n.s. I (1981): 7-25. Interview by Cedric Belfrage in the National Guardian, New York, 8, no. 35 (18 June 1956): 6. 2 Clark: D. P. Lackey, "Russell's Contribution to the Study of Nuclear Weapons Policy", Russell, n.s. 4 (1984): 243-52; Alan Ryan, Bertrand Russell, a Political Lift (London: Allen Lane the Penguin P., 1988): Stone, "Bertrand Russell as a Moral Force in World Politics~'. l "The Bomb and Civilization", Forward. Glasgow, 39, no. 33 (18 Aug. 1945): I, 3... (shrink)

Several years ago, in a brilliant contribution to the Collection Archives Series, Michel de Certeau wove together a large number of seventeenth-century documents pertaining to the famous episode of demonic possession among the Ursuline nuns of Loudun.1 One of the principal ways in which de Certeau organized his disparate complex materials into a compelling narrative was by viewing the extraordinary events as a kind of theater. There are good grounds for doing so. After all, as clerical authorities came to acknowledge (...) the incidents of possession and treat them accordingly, they ceased to be isolated, private events occurring inside the convent walls and were transformed instead into public spectacles performed for a populace deeply divided between Catholics and Huguenots. Once or twice a day the nuns were taken from their needlework or tranquil meditations and led in small groups through the streets of the town to a church or chapel, where spectators had already gathered. At first these spectators were local townspeople, many of whom must have been acquainted with or even related to the nuns, but, as word of the possession spread, crowds of the curious arrived not only from the region but from all over France and from as far away as England and Scotland. The inns of the town were filled with these visitors who traveled to Loudun expecting to witness events there that were at once beyond nature and yet performed on schedule: repeatable, predictable, and—in their bizarre way—decorous.At the appointed times, beneath the expectant gaze of the crowd, the possessed women would ascend a scaffold, be loosely tied to low chairs, and begin to manifest their symptoms. From within each of the tormented bodies, a particular devil would arise and be constrained by the exorcist to identify himself. If a nun were possessed by more than one demon, the exorcist could dismiss one supernatural voice and demand that another come forth and occupy the tongue of the writhing woman. If the demon refused to cooperate in the interrogation, the presiding priest would solemnly remove the Holy Sacrament from the pyx and hold it up to the mouth of the possessed while the priests and spectators would assist by chanting the Salve Regina. This would provoke screams and violent contortions. Submitting to irresistible spiritual pressure, the devil would then be compelled to speak, confirming the Christian mysteries and the power of the Catholic church. “On stage,” writes de Certeau, “there are no longer human beings; in this sense, there is no longer anyone—only roles” . And these “roles” in turn are revealed to be the hidden truths that underlie the masks of ordinary life; more accurately, the ceremony has the power to convert ordinary life into mere masks, precisely so that these masks may be stripped away to reveal the inward drama of spiritual warfare. The demons appear at first to dominate that drama, forcing their wretched and unwilling hosts to manifest the power of darkness, but a spectacular ecclesiastical counterforce transforms the tragedy into a comedy in which the devil confesses that he has been vanquished by Jesus Christ. 1. See Michel de Certeau, La Possession de Loudun, Collection Archives Series, no. 37 ; all further references to this work, abbreviated PL, will be included in the text . On the relationship between exorcism and theater in this period, see also Henri Weber, “L’Exorcisme à la fin du seizième siècle, instrument de la Contre Réforme et spectacle baroque, » Nouvelle revue du seizième siècle 1 : 79-101. Stephen Greenblatt, the Class of 1932 Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is a founder and editor of Representations. His most recent book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, received the British Council Prize in the Humanities. He is presently completing a study of Shakespeare and the poetics of culture. “Marlow, Marx, and Anti-Semitism,” his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Winter 1978 issue. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his early work, both appropriated and transformed Friedrich Schiller’s idea of aesthetic education. Art must cease to be a mere object of private pleasure and turn into a medium of public communication – this is the vision both philosophers share. As Nietzsche assigns the rôle held by language in Schiller to music, he shifts the project’s meaning. Yet both authors have to address the paradox that art, cut off from political and economic structures they disapprove of, (...) is meant to change these very structures. While Schiller’s response to the paradox terminates in nearly confessed resignation, Nietzsche’s solution is threatened by simplistic euphoria. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s work Purity of Heart is To Will One Thing, signed in his own name, was meant as a private preparation for public confession. To be pure of heart meant to have a single-minded dedication to the will of God, a dedication from which all other foreign motives had been filtered out. A pure heart does good not out of fear of punishment or the hope of a reward but solely because it is God’s will. There is thus (...) a Kantian rigorism in this work: every overt or concealed form of self-love must be purged in order that an act be truly moral. Jeremy Walker, who has also written a book on Frege, and whose book reads faintly like a work in analytic ethics, has written not an exhaustive commentary on Purity of Heart but a set of "reflections" on some philosophical themes that run through the work. He takes up the question of Kierkegaard’s Kantian conception of morality and argues that the dynamic of Kierkegaard’s notion of ethical choice leads straight to an absolute commitment to the absolute good, God. Thus purity of heart is only possible if the will is directed towards an absolute good. Kierkegaard’s true view is a Christian synthesis of Kant and Plato. It also follows that the opposition of the ethical and the religious is false. Such a view, which belongs to the doctrine of the three stages, is not Kierkegaard’s but that of the pseudonymous authors. It is actually opposed to the view that Kierkegaard signs in his own name. Walker’s book is brief, clear and addressed to an important point, not only for Kierkegaardian scholarship, but also for ethics.—J.D.C. (shrink)

‘Prayer’ can be defined as ‘the offering, in public worship or private devotion, of petition, confession, adoration, or thanksgiving to God; also the form of words in which such an offering is made’ (cf. Cohn-Sherbok 2010). In addition to this simple definition it could be said that there are different forms of prayer: some are vocal and articulate and others are only mental in nature; some prayers are communal and liturgical and other prayers are spontaneous or at least (...) composed by the one saying the prayer (cf. Stump 1999). Accordingly, it is evident that there are manifold intricacies involved in any characterisation of ‘prayer’. In this article my aims are twofold. First, I explore the implications of Martin Buber’s philosophy, particularly of his conception of God as Thou for our understanding of ‘prayer’; second, I will argue that Buber’s understanding of ‘prayer’ as dialogue serves as a way for the individual to seek reconciliation with itself, with others, and with God. (shrink)

The spinal cord provides an alternative model for nerve tissue grafting experiments. Anatomo-functional correlations are easier to make here than in any other region of the CNS because of a direct implication of spinal cord neurons in sensorimotor activities. Lesions can be easily performed to isolate spinal cord neurons from descending inputs. The anatomy of descending monoaminergic systems is well defined and these systems offer a favourable paradigm for lesion-graft experiments.

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

Dostoevskij’s underground parody of confession paradoxically recovers an Orthodox morality by constructing an unorthodox model of authority and authorship. The authenticity and authority of underground discourse are both contingent on self-conscious parody, which also mediates Orthodox community or sobornost’. This essay critically reconsiders ethical, aesthetic and cultural dimensions of the self-conscious interpolation of literary and religious discourses in Dostoevskij’s Notes from Underground. Arguing with and against Bakhtinian readings, it re-examines the underground narrator’s secularized, Romanticized sensibilities, cynical critique of humanism, (...) sacrilegious modes of laughter, usurpation of authority, internalization of dialogue, literary stylization and parody, aesthetic and moral self-critique, and, finally, insistence on “a new word.”. (shrink)

"I confess — I took virtually every picture in this book with my compact camera!" Pros like Rick Sammon make their living with top-of-the-line dSLR cameras.

An introduction to Rousseau's Confessions.