In this text I would like to argue that individualistic culture of today is imbued with a specific notion of the self. Phenomena like life-style blogs, „cult” of celebrities and especially self-realization gurus and literature co-create a discourse on man where self is no longer regarded as an inner essence, substance or existential potency of a man but rather as a tengible and to some extent concrete object. Thus „being oneself” ceases to function as a verb and starts to be (...) a noun – name of a form of psycho-somatic wholeness that we can and should incorporate. As a consequence the self is ultimately brought to a number of styles of living with its rules, worldviews and modes of behavior and ultimately is reified. Becomes a magico-religious object which in anthropological terms can be described as a fetish. (shrink)

The devil, witchcraft and magic - the reverse side of Christianity.

A questão da magia sempre despertou a atenção das pessoas pela suposta possibilidade que teria de interferir no seu “destino”. Na literatura, muitos autores já trouxeram para o debate reflexões acerca da possibilidade do acesso dos seres humanos às chamadas “forças ocultas”. Horácio e Machado de Assis são dois desses importantes autores. Alguns de seus textos, principalmente aqueles de conteúdo satírico, suscitam interpretações críticas sobre a forma como se tem tentado manipular, de diversas maneiras, para proveito pessoal, o campo (...) metafísico. Busca-se, nesse artigo, pôr em diálogo o Epodo V, de Horácio, e o conto A cartomante, de Machado de Assis, para refletir acerca da problemática da magia, com seus mistérios e/ou engodos e as diferenças inerentes ao tratamento literário dado à sátira por parte de Horácio e Machado de Assis. (shrink)

As reflexões deste artigo têm como objetivo principal mostrar que, à diferença do que se pensa habitualmente, o período do Renascimento foi marcado por uma atmosfera de magia, de superstição, de medo e angústia em face do destino e da morte. Trata-se, pois, de um período em que floresceram, ou refloresceram, as letras e as artes, mas não propriamente a ciência e a filosofia. Na verdade, a própria ciência e o que se poderia denominar filosofia — representada principalmente por (...) duas correntes: a platônica, da Escola de Florença, e a aristotélica, da Universidade de Pádua — eram envolvidas por uma atmosfera de saber hermético e, consequentemente, eram lidas e estudadas a partir dessa perspectiva. Note-se ademais que, já na primeira metade do século XX, começaram a desenvolver-se novos estudos que vieram fazer ressaltar essa faceta pouco conhecida, ou negligenciada, do período renascentista. (shrink)

A partir da leitura dos escritos de Ficino dedicados à melancolia, a presente investigação considera o modo como, combinando elementos de diversas fontes, o filósofo florentino contribuiu decisivamente para compreensão dessa condição e para a constituição de um medium terapêutico diferenciado. O enquadramento do De Vita Libri Tres na longa sucessão de teorias médico-‑filosóficas relativas à constituição melancólica revela a sua participação na dimensão incremental de uma densa semântica, mas também, de modo decisivo, a ausência de uma evolução unívoca das (...) ideias de melancolia. Assim o demonstra a recuperação de uma vertente favorável do temperamento melancólico, combinando Ficino a ortodoxia médica relativa ao equilíbrio humoral com a possibilidade, enunciada no Problema XXX, de uma forma superior de equilíbrio. O eclodir da genialidade contemplativa, tida como característica central dos maiores feitos humanos, em particular no domínio dos estudos académicos, tem lugar na forma de êxtase, adaptando Ficino traços da mania [furor] platónica. O papel de Ficino na evolução das conceções de melancolia é também evidenciado na sua exploração das suas formas amorosa e religiosa, indicando uma sensibilidade às condições sociais da individuação, mas também a tentativa de compreender e mitigar as tribulações existenciais associadas ao seu próprio temperamento. Já no que se refere ao manancial terapêutico proposto pelo filósofo florentino, o aspeto mais inovador reside na sua mobilização da astrologia e da magia, pro- curando demonstrar que as mesmas são um recurso natural baseado num conceito de simpatia entre os elementos da hierarquia cósmica e, como tal, distintas da necromancia e da demonologia. (shrink)

Tekst stanowi próbę rozwiązania dwóch problemów. Po pierwsze, jak istota przejawia się w indywiduum, w rzeczy konkretnej, nie dającej się zdefiniować? I po drugie, jak zweryfikować definicję? Jest to problem prawdy, wobec którego można zastosować metodę przyswajania abstrakcji - wznoszenia się od abstrakcji do konkretu. Metodę tę wykorzystywał K. Marks. W artykule dowodzi się, że metoda ta nie traci na swojej heurystycznej sile nawet wówczas, gdy zastosuje się ją do analizy współczesnego kapitalizmu symbolicznego. Nie stosując tej wyjaśniającej mocy abstrakcji, intelektualiści (...) stają się ideologami rozrywającymi jedność tego, co realne i tego, co idealne, waloryzującymi drugi element wspomnianej jedności. Swiat ich idei nijak się ma do aktualnej praktyki społecznej, dlatego dominuje w niej niezrozumiany symbol - fetysz. W społeczeństwie jest on tajemniczą podstawą problemów człowieka z samym sobą. Stąd jego zrozumienie i realne przywrócenie należnego mu w społeczeństwie miejsca umożliwi człowiekowi drogę powrotną do samego siebie. (shrink)

Sabendo que Cármides sofria com dores na cabeça pela manhã, Sócrates se oferece para curar a enfermidade do jovem e, em busca do fármaco para o tratamento, conta que, enquanto esteve em Potideia, recebera o ensinamento de certas práticas mágicas de um discípulo de Zalmoxis. Possíveis causas para as opressões na cabeça de Cármides já foram aventadas, como, por exemplo, a ressaca da embriaguez e a própria intemperança, objeto de análise do diálogo. O nosso propósito neste artigo é, além de (...) sugerir a hipótese de que a moléstia se deve à qualidade de seus sonhos, destacar, dentre algumas práticas caracterizadas como mágicas, aquela que visa a cura por intermédio da liberação da alma do corpo, o que é assinalado pela excursão alçada pelo sono. Para corroborar a nossa hipótese, abordaremos passagens da República em que Platão, ao tratar da transformação do homem democrático em tirânico, menciona a psicologia dos sonhos. (shrink)

Konstanty Michalski w wykładzie wygłoszonym na uroczystym posiedzeniu Krakowskiego Towarzystwa Filozoficznego w dniu 14 stycznia 1914 roku w auli Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, poświęconym zmarłemu Franciszkowi Gabrylowi, wykazał, że filozofia neoscholastyczna nie jest już nauką, uprawianą i „zamykaną" w zaciszach klasztornych cel i salach wykładowych seminariów duchownych. Przeciwnie, neoscholastyka wychodzi naprzeciw współczesnej sobie filozofii nowożytnej i podejmuje dyskurs ze spychającymi ją na margines kultury umysłowej nurtami takimi jak: ontologizm, fideizm i kartezjanizm. Przez filozofią neoscholastyczną należy rozumieć szeroko pojęty tomizm, zarówno w ujęciu (...) tradycyjnym, jak i lowańskim, naukę Arystotelesa, Ojców i Doktorów Kościoła, oraz autorów scholastycznych. (shrink)

Już sam tytuł recenzowanego tomu ewokuje przemyślenia dotyczące wielkich sporów moralnych z przeszłości i skłania do postawienia pytania o ich aktualność. W konsekwencji tego pojawia się kolejne pytanie: czy prowadzony przez autorów i redaktorów tomu dyskurs zamyka się w obszarze historii (w szczególności historii filozofii), ewentualnie teoretycznych dywagacji intelektualnych, czy też posiada wymiar praktyczny? W mojej ocenie praca posiada walory teoretyczny i praktyczny. Przygotował ją interdyscyplinarny zespół dwudziestu autorek i autorów (z uzasadnioną dominacją liczebną filozofek i filozofów), którzy przygotowali dwadzieścia (...) esejów, mierząc się z szerokim spektrum tematów. W założeniu mamy więc do czynienia z niezwykle ambitnym projektem. Wnikliwa lektura tomu potwierdza, że cele, które postawili przed sobą jego redaktorzy i autorzy, zostały z powodzeniem zrealizowane. Oddany właśnie do rąk czytelników tom pt. _Spory moralne_ powinien znaleźć się w bibliotekach szkolnych (mam na myśli szkoły średnie) i akademickich. Może również stanowić źródło wiedzy i inspiracji dla ludzi pióra, dla duchowieństwa, dziennikarzy, prawników i polityków. (shrink)

Już sam tytuł recenzowanego tomu ewokuje przemyślenia dotyczące wielkich sporów moralnych z przeszłości i skłania do postawienia pytania o ich aktualność. W konsekwencji tego pojawia się kolejne pytanie: czy prowadzony przez autorów i redaktorów tomu dyskurs zamyka się w obszarze historii (w szczególności historii filozofii), ewentualnie teoretycznych dywagacji intelektualnych, czy też posiada wymiar praktyczny? W mojej ocenie praca posiada walory teoretyczny i praktyczny. Przygotował ją interdyscyplinarny zespół dwudziestu autorek i autorów (z uzasadnioną dominacją liczebną filozofek i filozofów), którzy przygotowali dwadzieścia (...) esejów, mierząc się z szerokim spektrum tematów. W założeniu mamy więc do czynienia z niezwykle ambitnym projektem. Wnikliwa lektura tomu potwierdza, że cele, które postawili przed sobą jego redaktorzy i autorzy, zostały z powodzeniem zrealizowane. Oddany właśnie do rąk czytelników tom pt. _Spory moralne_ powinien znaleźć się w bibliotekach szkolnych (mam na myśli szkoły średnie) i akademickich. Może również stanowić źródło wiedzy i inspiracji dla ludzi pióra, dla duchowieństwa, dziennikarzy, prawników i polityków. (shrink)

Summary Between the 1860s and the 1910s, British acoustics was transformed from an area of empirical research into a mathematically organized field. Musical motives—improving musical scales and temperaments, making better musical instruments, and understanding the nature of musical tones—were among the major driving forces of acoustical researchers in nineteenth-century Britain. The German acoustician, Helmholtz, had a major impact on British acousticians who also had extensive interactions with American and French acousticians. Rayleigh's acoustics, reflecting all these features, bore remarkable fruit in (...) his treatise The Theory of Sound, which successfully subjected empirical acoustics to analytical mathematics. His accomplishments made British acoustics a subfield of physics, thus distinguishing it from the ‘new acoustics’ in early twentieth-century America. (shrink)

Research on the influence of industry on chemical regulation has mostly been conducted within the framework of the production of ignorance. This special issue extends this research by looking at how industry asserts its interests––not just in the scientific sphere but also at other stages of policy-making and regulatory process––with a specific focus on the types of tools or instruments industry has used. Bringing together sociologists and historians specialized in Science and Technology Studies, the articles of the special issue study (...) the arenas in which instruments and practical guidelines for public policy are negotiated or used. The aim is to observe the devices in the making or in action, from the selection of actors to the production of thresholds, criteria, and other technical regulations. The introduction highlights how industry influence on expertise and regulation is undoubtedly far more pervasive and multifarious than has been conceptualized to date by social scientists. Putting this issue back at the heart of both the STS and social sciences research agendas is increasingly urgent and could lead to new inquiries able to highlight these logics even more widely, using fresh empirical examples. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno—philosopher, cultural critic, sociologist, and music theorist—was one of the most important German intellectuals of the twentieth century. This concise, readable life is the first attempt to look at his philosophical and literary work in its essential political context. Central to Adorno’s intellectual development were his musical training, his father’s Jewish roots, and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, which forced him to emigrate to the United States. While in exile, he and Max Horkheimer wrote Dialectic of (...) Enlightenment, a bold attempt to illuminate the dark side of modernity, and on his own Adorno wrote a series of connected essays on the “culture industry”—his indictment of mass culture. A co-founder of the famous Frankfurt School, Adorno returned to head it after the war, assuming a key role in the intellectual life of postwar West Germany until his untimely death in 1969. Ja;ger’s biography sheds new light on many aspects of Adorno’s life and writings and on his relationships with such figures as Paul Celan, Bertolt Brecht, and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

Erwin Panofsky explicitly states that the first half of the opening chapter of Studies in Iconology—his landmark American publication of 1939—contains ‘the revised content of a methodological article published by the writer in 1932’, which is now translated for the first time in this issue of Critical Inquiry.1 That article, published in the philosophical journal Logos, is among his most important works. First, it marks the apogee of his series of philosophically reflective essays on how to do art history,2 that (...) reach back, via a couple of major pieces on Alois Riegl, to the 1915 essay on Heinrich Wölfflin.3 Under the influence of his colleague at Hamburg Ernst Cassirer, the principal interpreter of Kant in the 1920s, Panofsky from 1915 on exhibits in his work ever more Kantian thinking and language.4 But Logos was not an art-historical review or one dedicated to aesthetics but a principal mainstream journal of the philosophy of culture. So ‘On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts’ has a good claim to be the culmination of Panofsky's philosophical thinking in his German period under the Weimar Republic. · 1. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance , p. xv; hereafter abbreviated SI. See Panofsky, ‘Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst’, Logos 21 : 103–19; trans. Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz under the title ‘On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts’, Critical Inquiry 38 : 467–82; hereafter abbreviated ‘P’.· 2. See the discussion in Carlo Ginzburg, ‘From Aby Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method’, Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi , pp. 17–59, esp. pp. 36–41.· 3. See Panofsky, ‘Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst’, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, ed. Karen Michels and Martin Warnke, 2 vols. , 2:1009–18; ‘Der Begriff des Kunstwollens’,Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, 2:1019–34, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott and Joel Snyder under the title ‘The Concept of Artistic Volition’, Critical Inquiry 8 : 17–33; and ‘Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie: Ein Beitrag zu der Erörterung über die Möglichkeit kunstwissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe’, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, 2: 1035–63, trans. Lorenz and Elsner under the title ‘On the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory: Towards the Possibility of a Fundamental System of Concepts for a Science of Art’, Critical Inquiry 35 : 43–71.· 4. On neo-Kantianism in pre-Nazi Germany, see Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger , pp. 25–37; Éric Dufour and T. Z. R. Créteil, ‘Le Statue du singulier: Kant et le néokantisme de l’École de Marbourg', Kantstudien 93 : 324–50; Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture , pp. 22–51; and Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos , pp. 52–86. Specifically on the Cassirerian Kantianism of Panofsky, see Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art , pp. 181–82; Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History , pp. 91–92, 147–52; Silvia Ferretti, Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg: Symbol, Art, and History, trans. Richard Pierce , pp. 174–77, 182–84; David Summers, ‘Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanistic Discipline’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside, ed. Irving Lavin , pp. 9–24; Mark A. Cheetham, Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline , pp. 68–77; Paul Crowther, The Transhistorical Image: Philosophizing Art and Its History , pp. 70–73; Allister Neher, ‘“The Concept of Kunstwollen”, Neo-Kantianism, and Erwin Panofsky's Early Art Theoretical Essays', Word and Image 20 : 41–51; Georges Didi-Huberman,Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, trans. John Goodman , pp. 4–6, 90–138; and Lorenz and Elsner, ‘Translators’ Introduction', Critical Inquiry35 : 33–42, esp. pp. 38, 40–42. (shrink)

In 427 B.c. the Athenian assembly passed a decree bearing on the recently suppressed revolt on the island of Lesbos. All citizens in Mytilene, the city which had led the revolt, were to be executed and their women and children sold into slavery. A trireme was swiftly dispatched to Paches with instructions to execute the decree. But the Athenians had arrived at their decision in a fit of anger; and when presently their ργ subsided, they experienced grave misgivings over an (...) action which now seemed in their own estimation cruel and excessive. They earnestly sought to reconsider the matter, and so within the space of a day they convened once more to debate Mytilene. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Molding the institutions of governance: theories of state formation and the contingency of sovereignty in fragile polities; 2. Imposing states: foreign rivalries, local collaboration, and state form in peripheral polities; 3. Feudalizing the Chinese polity, 1893-1922: assessing the adequacy of alternative takes on state-reorganization; 4. External influence and China's feudalization, 1893-1922: opportunity costs and patterns of foreign intervention; 5. The evolution of foreign involvement in China, 1923-52: rising opportunity costs and convergent approaches to intervention; 6. (...) How intervention remade the Chinese state, 1923-52: foreign sponsorship and the building of sovereign China; 7. Creating Indonesia, 1893-1952: major power rivalry and the making of sovereign statehood; 8. Siam stands apart, 1893-1952: external intervention and rise of a sovereign Thai state; 9. Domesticating international relations, externalizing comparative politics: foreign intervention and the state in world politics. (shrink)

In the course of the development of physics until the beginning of the twentieth century there was an evolutionary progress within its ontological frameworks. Its continuity was violated by A. Einstein’s works of 1905 and his so-called „quantum and relativistic revolution.” In its course people gave up a series of results they had achieved, and replaced them by some radical solutions that differed from common sense intuitions. In particular, in the context of the theory of relativity the concept of electromagnetic (...) ether was rejected. Then the concept of absolute time and absolute geometry of space were removed, facts that eliminated the „flow” of time and change of the ontology of physics from the substantialist one into the eventist one. The changes turned out unnecessary, they resulted not from the very theory of relativity, but from some arbitrary solutions within the frameworks of its philosophical interpretation. On the other hand, they clash with clear ontological intuitions and make an explanation of the „flow” of time impossible. What is more, they are also not beneficial for a further progress in the development of physics, especially in the context of seeking a quantum theory of gravitation. It seems right to return to pre-relativistic concepts, starting from ether. For it is the elimination of the latter that had started the „revolution.”. (shrink)

Study of Aparokṣānubhūti of Śaṅkarācārya, work on Advaita philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 126.3 (2005) 461-463 [Access article in PDF] Graham Zanker. Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art. Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. xiv + 223 pp. 34 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $39.95. The underlying contention here is that if a Hellenistic poetic description of a person, an animal, the weather, a scene, or an objet d'art adopts a particular way (...) of viewing, we have independent evidence for the habits of viewing that Hellenistic people would have brought to their contemplation of representational art. (4) So Graham Zanker summarizes the thesis of his new book, the most extensive and detailed account of Hellenistic visuality yet published. This is a carefully worded sentence. Zanker's enumeration of poetic descriptions of "a person, an animal, the weather, a scene or an objet d'art" deliberately exemplifies what he takes to be the scope of ekphrasis and hence reproves those who have taken ekphrasis more narrowly as the description of works of art (cf. 6–10). The target of this disapproval turns out to be especially Simon Goldhill, whom he attacks at 82–83 and in a long endnote (184–85, n. 26). Yet the care to be precise in matters of literary definition goes with such large, even lax, social and cultural generalizations as "Hellenistic people" and "representational art." What Zanker must mean by those whose contemplation of art can be evoked through poetic descriptions is a highly literate and educated social elite—perhaps the court itself—that may have played (Marie-Antoinette-like) at shepherds and fishermen (as in the cup of Theocritus' first Idyll) but surely did so from a much narrower social perspective than the totalizing generalism of "Hellenistic people." The weapon of precision is a dangerous one to use, when it may be turned back on the user.There are, moreover, numerous problems with both the notion of "independent evidence" and that of "habits of viewing." While the literary evidence of ekphrasis (not only in poetry) certainly encompasses viewing, its specially wrought and often spectacular cleverness may signal the exceptional, even the perverse, as much as (or more than) the habitual. Does a revolutionary statue like the Aphrodite of Cnidos (not actually Hellenistic, but nonetheless rightly incorporated at some length in Zanker's book) reflect or elicit the habitual gaze? In what sense? And, if so, when? Was the gaze it enticed at its moment of creation "habitual," or did that gaze only become "habitual" in its numerous—within our surviving material archive of examples, mainly Roman-period—versions and replications? More difficult still is "independent evidence." I am not really sure what that could be in a topic created from critical and interpretative explications of complex images and texts that do not themselves draw explicit or simple conclusions about viewing (or anything) beyond what readers may impute to them. How they may collectively constitute evidence about viewing can only come about as the result of argument. I think a compelling argument based on the critical interpretation of images and texts may be taken as evidence, but is that "independent evidence?" What does this mean? And such a complex argument is a very different kind of evidence from what Zanker seems to mean by any particular viewpoint we may find expressed in an ekphrasis. [End Page 461]Again, I do not think it follows that the evidence for viewing we may entice from a poetic description of a person, an animal, or the weather need necessarily be related to the contemplation of a work of art. Indeed, Zanker's use of the term contemplation (with its Kantian overtones) appears to indicate a specifically aesthetic zone of response. Certainly the Hellenistic period explicitly elevated creativity in the visual arts to a new canonical status with its creation of art-historical narratives and histories devolving on the rise of naturalism and on the genius of particular hallowed artists who are preserved for us by the likes of Quintilian and Pliny. That special aestheticism, marked in the choice of works of... (shrink)

Through a specific example, this paper explores the problems of empiricism and ideology in the uses of material-cultural and visual evidence for the writing of ancient history. The focus is on an Athenian documentary stele with a fine relief from the late fifth century bc, the history of its publications, and their failure to account for the totality of the object's information—sculptural and epigraphic—let alone the range of rhetorical ambiguities that its texts and images implied in their fifth-century context. While (...) the paper reflects on the Samos Stele, it also considers the broader hermeneutic problems of approaching the different discourses ofword and imagewithin antiquity andworries about the distortions introduced into ancient history by modern formulations, descriptions, and translations of the past. (shrink)

Two important texts in the Sufi tradition made available together in English for the first time.