Pionnier de ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui, parfois trop vite, la « recherche-création », défenseur d’une approche scénique et unitaire de l’esthétique théâtrale, André Veinstein a œuvré à la définition de ce qu’il appelait une « conception esthétique de la mise en scène ». Il entendait par là souligner l’importance de la liberté interprétative propre au théâtre, tout en mettant en garde contre les tentatives de déformation et de dissociation, selon ses mots, de l’œuvre dramatique.

Cette contribution explore la production dramatique de Louis-Ferdinand Céline, constituée de deux pièces écrites en 1927 (L’Église et Progrès). En particulier, l’étude enquête la fonction du théâtre pour l’écrivain, à travers une analyse littéraire des deux pièces. Cette production est une première tentative de dénonciation sociale, une critique que les lecteurs connaissent depuis la parution de Voyage. Dans la première pièce l’auteur condamne les actions de l’administration coloniale dans les territoires africains et il introduit son idéologie antisémite en décrivant (...) les représentants de la Société des Nations. Avec Progrès, Céline déploie une satire de la société bourgeoise qui lui est contemporaine, caractérisée par une morale déchue. L’article explore ensuite les possibles influences qui ont mené Céline à écrire pour le théâtre; la lecture de sa correspondance nous permet de découvrir que Céline était un véritable amateur du théâtre français et notamment celui de Molière. Il en découle une réflexion qui nous permet d’associer sa production à celle du Théâtre classique du XVIIe siècle. Céline aurait sans doute été inspiré par les comédies-ballets du célèbre dramaturge, en rendant jeunesse aux classiques nationaux français sur la scène contemporaine. (shrink)

Etudes sur la philosophie, la théorie politique et la littérature des Lumières en Europe, sur le thème de la reconnaissance dans le roman et le théâtre français du XVIIIe siècle, etc.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 14-30 [Access article in PDF] Mallarmé Contra Wagner Eric Gans I In early 1885, Edouard Dujardin wrote to Stéphane Mallarmé for a contribution to his newly founded Revue wagnérienne. Mallarmé, admitting that he had never seen--and perhaps never heard--anything of Wagner, replied to Dujardin in July that he was working on a "half article, half prose poem," and that "never has anything seemed to (...) me more difficult." 1 A month later, the Revue published a text, more prose poem than article, entitled "Richard Wagner, rêverie d'un poète français." 2Wagner was an increasingly obligatory reference for the French avant-garde after his death in 1883. But as far back as 1862, the 20-year-old Mallarmé, no doubt influenced by Baudelaire's enthusiastic groundbreaking article "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris" of the year before, had included Wagner along with Mozart and Beethoven in a group of three creators of the "mystery" of music, in a brief article entitled "Artistic Heresies: Art for Everyone." Characteristically enough, what fascinated the young Mallarmé was not music itself so much as the "signes sévères, chastes, inconnus" ("severe, chaste, unknown signs") (OC, p. 257) with which it was written, which give music the advantage over poetry--written in the universally understood alphabet--of being inaccessible to the uninitiated. This characteristic emphasis on writing over sound reappears in the "Hommage" sonnet for Wagner published in Dujardin's journal in January 1886, where Wagner's music is described as "mal tu par l'encre même en sanglots sibyllins" ("badly silenced by the ink itself in Sibylline sobs") (OC, p. 71). As we shall see, however, the relation between music and poetry suggested in "Art for Everyone" had by then been reversed. [End Page 14]Unlike most of his circle, Mallarmé was no Wagnerite; his "Rêverie," like his sonnet, expresses reluctant praise and reflects a certain professional jealousy. The theater had long been Mallarmé's chief preoccupation, as it had been for so many nineteenth-century writers who would be forced to make their reputation in other genres. The unfinished poem "Hérodiade," which occupied him throughout his life, took the form of a drama, and an early version of the "Après-midi d'un faune" had actually been presented to a theater director. References to music in Mallarmé's writings increase in number and specificity after 1885, and it is not unreasonable to assume that for him the prime representative of "music" in this period was Wagner. However much Mallarmé's own theater had become internalized and idealized, Wagner's theatrical success, as well as his near-deification by friends and disciples like Dujardin or Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, could not leave the poet indifferent. II What I would like to explore, however, is something more fundamental than the personal equation. Mallarmé's rivalry with Wagner over the theatrical center of culture is the rivalry of two arts and their respective means. What makes Mallarmé's critique of Wagner of particular interest is the exemplary rigor of the former's artistic intentions. Mallarmé's poems are a series of attempts to produce literary form with a minimum of figural content. Each poem has been submitted, so to speak, to Ockham's razor. The ultimate aim of this labor may be described as the discovery of the originary scene of poetry itself, the minimal sine qua non of representation, and therefore of humanity. 3 On the contrary, Wagner did not shrink from saturating the figural imagination in the pursuit of his totalizing aims. The confrontation reveals that musical maximalism in the service of national myth becomes a threat to what we may call, from Mallarmé's minimalist perspective, the anthropological mission of true art.Mallarmé held no particular brief for the theater of words; his tastes in performance went rather to the ballet, or to the mime-show, the subject of one of his most aesthetically interesting reflections. 4 Mallarmé anticipated 20th-century dramaturgy in seeing the theater not as a place for ratiocination and... (shrink)

Ancien fleuron de l’industrie horlogère, Lip est une manufacture bisontine connue pour les conflits sociaux retentissants dont elle fut le théâtre en 1973-1974 puis en 1976-1977, et se dota très vite d’une aura légendaire à laquelle participèrent de nombreuses productions culturelles et artistiques contemporaines des événements. Le temps passant, l’intervention fit place à la rétrospection : de nouvelles œuvres s’employèrent à revisiter cette histoire, tendues entre le mythe et ses angles morts, la commémoration et le souvenir. Publiée en 1998, (...) Les Yeux rouges de Dominique Féret est l’une des premières à s’inscrire dans cet après-coup. Composée de quatre entretiens avec d’anciens protagonistes des luttes de Lip, cette pièce en dit au moins tout autant sur le passé que sur le présent qui se tourne vers lui et traduit l’inflexion que connaît tout un pan du théâtre européen des années 2000, marqué par la résurgence de la question sociale mais aussi par des modulations pathétiques qui tendent à sa dépolitisation. (shrink)

English summary: Theater allows people to examine important problems with sufficient distance in order to judge fairly without feeling directly implicated. Michel Meyer offers a much needed history of theater, from its earliest Greek beginnings, through the Middle Ages, Enlightenment, to the absurd works of Beckett or Sartre, while remembering the context of other supporting arts. French description: Le theatre est, avec l'epopee, la plus ancienne forme de litterature en Occident. Son but est de creer de la distance avec des (...) situations problematiques, liees au pouvoir, au divin, aux dilemmes moraux, afin de permettre au spectateur de faire le bon jugement sans se sentir directement implique. Michel Meyer envisage toutes les theories du theatre, a commencer par celle d'Aristote, qui se sont succede jusqu'a aujourd'hui et les confronte a l'histoire meme du theatre. Eschyle, Sophocle, Euripide, Aristophane, Marlowe, Machiavel, Shakespeare, Racine et le theatre classique francais, le theatre baroque espagnol, le romantisme, le realisme, d'Ibsen a Tchekhov et a Pirandello, comme le theatre de l'absurde, avec Ionesco, Beckett ou Sartre, tout est etudie, articule, et remis en perspective. La rationalite dans l'histoire du theatre est clairement mise en evidence, sans jamais negliger ce que le theatre doit ou apporte aux autres arts les plus proches, comme l'opera. Michel Meyer offre ici une synthese spectaculaire et une erudition sans precedent sur le phenomene theatre en un ouvrage court et percutant, plein d'idees nouvelles. (shrink)

On tachera d’exposer, dans ce bref texte, tout d’abord, les motivations qu’on a pouraffirmer que la subjectivité demande un effort pour satisfaire l’exigence ontologique quiest constitutive de son être. Ceci demandera, d’abord, l’explication de certains motscomme exigence ontologique, recueillement et humilité. Ensuite, on verra si, et comment,une telle exigence peut être satisfaite. On s’appuiera, pour faire ceci, sur les réflexions duphilosophe français Gabriel Marcel, qui a avancé, notamment dans Le mystère de l’être etHomo Viator, des importantes contributions à ce (...) sujet. La philosophie de Gabriel Marcelsera analysée, non seulement dans sa production « systématique », mais aussi dans cellethéâtrale, car c’est dans le caractère dramatique de la pièce théâtrale qu’une expérience del’absolu peut d’abord se produire et ensuite s’alimenter. En effet, dans la conviction quecette expérience a besoin de la communication indirecte du théâtre et de la poésie, on seraautorisé à en faire recours. On montrera, alors, en suivant une analyse gnoséologique,d’abord (I) comment la définition de la subjectivité comme effort est nécessaire et exacteet puis (II) comment cette exigence ontologique peut être satisfaite. (shrink)

Dès le début du xixe siècle, Jeanne d’Arc connaît la célébrité dans toute l’Europe. Élevée au pinacle, installée au panthéon des Français, elle devient un sujet en or pour les compositeurs et leurs librettistes, parce qu’elle permet d’aborder les thèmes les plus divers, de l’héroïque au religieux en passant par le pastoral et le tragique. Elle fait l’objet de nombreuses mises en scène dans des genres musicaux aussi variés que l’opéra, l’opéra-comique, le ballet, la mélodie, la pantomime ou le (...) théâtre en musique. La question centrale qui se pose pour chaque compositeur est la suivante : comment représenter Jeanne d’Arc, cette « figure sublime »? Comment donner voix à une héroïne que l’on a vue sous tous les jours, tour à tour grandiloquente, simple et pieuse, puis égérie nationale avant de devenir sainte en 1920? Au travers d’une étude sur la voix donnée à Jeanne, dans deux œuvres majeures du répertoire qui lui a été consacré, Giovanna d’Arco de Verdi, créée à la Scala de Milan en 1845, et Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher de Paul Claudel et Arthur Honegger, créée à Bâle en 1938, nous essaierons de déceler l’esprit d’une époque, et par là de mieux distinguer quelques-unes des facettes données à la Pucelle d’Orléans. (shrink)

Du moment des années 1880, qui marque le début d’un véritable engouement pour Pascal, jusqu’à 1896, lorsque la publication de la célèbre Lettre sur les exigences de la pensée contemporaine en matière d’apologétique de Maurice Blondel lance un nouveau défi aux apologistes, les auteurs français qui ont incarné l’apologétique chrétienne fin-de-siècle, les protestants comme les catholiques, ont été confrontés à la nécessité de revenir encore une fois sur le sort qu’il convenait de réserver aux Pensées. Alors que le legs (...) du Suisse Alexandre Vinet est en cours de difficile inventaire, les protestants finissent par conclure que l’apologie pascalienne a perdu nombre de ses vertus et qu’elle est inefficace sur les incrédules de la fin du xix e siècle. Les catholiques, au contraire, paraissent redécouvrir les mérites et les avantages d’une démarche apologétique qui permet de répondre aux principales inquiétudes d’un siècle finissant, alors même que la France est le théâtre d’une véritable « crise de la conscience catholique ». (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Vladimir Jankélévitch mêle intimement philosophie et musique, régime de correspondance auquel le philosophe-musicien a toujours aimé se tenir. " La musique, rappelle-t-il, est un art temporel non point secondairement, comme la poésie, le roman ou le théâtre, mais essentiellement. " Son domaine est la " temporalité enchantée ", le mystère de l'instant, le charme de la nostalgie, du nocturne et des parfums de la nuit, du lointain, du silence surtout, puisque la musique, née du silence, y retourne. (...) Ce livre réunit des textes peu connus, inédits ou depuis longtemps inaccessibles. Comptes rendus de concerts et de festivals, évocations poétiques des musiciens chers à son coeur : les musiciens français, particulièrement Debussy, Ravel, Fauré ; les musiciens de l'Europe centrale, Chopin et Liszt, le rhapsode et baladin du monde européen, image même de notre modernité ; les génies de la musique russe, notamment Moussorgski et Rimski-Korsakov. Pour Vladimir Jankélévitch " on ne pense pas la musique ", mais on peut penser en musique, ou musicalement. Le lecteur retrouvera dans ces textes le bonheur de la mystérieuse connivence d'une pensée sur la musique qui donne à entendre musicalement. (shrink)

Grand philosophe, grand mathématicien, Descartes a-t-il été aussi un grand écrivain? La question est classique. A l'évidence, il existe un style cartésien, dont le Discours de la Méthode offre une sorte de bouquet, avec ses longues phrases à la construction puissante et aux savantes modulations. Ce style résulte d'une éducation littéraire que Descartes n'a en vérité jamais répudiée. De quoi cette éducation a-t-elle été faite? Quelle relation le philosophe entretient-il avec le langage? Comment passe-t-il du latin, " langue de ses (...) précepteurs ", au français, " langue de son pays "? De quel travail de la pensée la phrase cartésienne est-elle le théâtre? Ces questions n'ont rien de subsidiaire. Se pencher sur le style de Descartes, c'est s'engager dans un voyage à travers ses textes. Des notes de jeunesse jusqu'aux dernières lettres, on y rencontrera des paysages presque ignorés, où s'incarne, au plus loin des simplifications scolaires, une pensée d'une audace restée inouïe. (shrink)

"L'histoire des idées ne saurait se réduire à l'exégèse de quelques systèmes canoniques. On s'est proposé ici l'étude d'un fait culturel global qui mène le lecteur de la musique à la métaphysique, de la mystique à la médecine, de la théologie au théâtre et au roman, en passant par la poétique, l'art des jardins et l'architecture. Les auteurs mineurs, éternels "humiliés et offensés" de l'histoire, y ont place aux côtés de Rousseau, Diderot, Helvétius, Voltaire ou Sade. L'âge des Lumières (...) n'a pas ignoré l'inquiétude. Un vaste dialogue s'y fait entendre entre les malebranchistes, qui prolongent et modernisent les analyses augustiniennes, et les lockistes, qui réintègrent l'inquiétude dans la nature. C'est en marge de cette lutte conceptuelle que les mystiques cherchent l'inquiétude - comme les communistes utopiques - dans l'esprit "propriétaire", les théoriciens de la musique dans la modulation en mineur et les médecins de l'école montpelliéraine dans les crispations du diaphragme. Centrée principalement sur l'espace intellectuel français, cette enquête nous conduit de la "crise de la conscience européenne" à la naissance du romantisme. Le renouveau spiritualiste, qui ouvre avec Maine de Biran le XIXe siècle, ne cherche pas à réhabiliter une inquiétude réduite par les médecins idéologues à un simple frémissement organique. On assiste, semble-t-il, à une "perte de l'inquiétude" : perte définitive ou simple accident de parcours? Notre époque, à qui la dépression et l'angoisse sont familières, gagnerait-elle à redécouvrir le concept d'inquiétude, tel qu'il fut affiné à l'âge des Lumières? Le lecteur en jugera.". (shrink)

De l’arrivée de Torelli à la cour de France en 1645 à la publication des quarante-neuf planches de l’ Encyclopédie (« THÉÂTRES » et « MACHINES DE THÉÂTRE ») en 1772, les machines de théâtre ont connu en France un processus de considération critique pour un art jusqu’alors minoré – au seul rang de « mécanique » – depuis les grandes figures de la philosophie grecque. L’intérêt suscité par la machinerie théâtrale chez les savants français fait écho, (...) sur le plan philosophique, au triomphe du mécanisme cartésien dont le déclin, prononcé définitivement dans le troisième quart du xviii e siècle par Rousseau et Diderot, annonce la mort d’une scénographie classique portée sur les plaisirs de l’illusion et le merveilleux mythologique. (shrink)

Une application d’attribution d’auteur au moyen de la distance intertextuelle en anglais Le calcul de distance intertextuelle que C. et D. Labbé appliquent aux textes français peut être utilisé pour différencier les œuvres d’au moins deux auteurs dramatiques contemporains de l’époque élisabéthaine, William Shakespeare et Thomas Middleton. Bien que les 46 textes sous étude, transcrits avec une orthographe moderne, ne soient pas lemmatisés et que seuls des échantillons de textes de même longueur aient été utilisés, les indices de distance (...) intertextuelle qu’on a pu ainsi établir empiriquement sont du même ordre de grandeur que ceux qu’ont établis C. et D. Labbé pour le français. Timon of Athens considéré comme étant pour deux-tiers de Shakespeare et pour un tiers de Middleton se place entre le groupe des œuvres de Shakespeare et celui des œuvres de Middleton dans une analyse multidimensionnelle de 1035 distances intertextuelles. (shrink)

Le sport, fait social et culturel. Origine, évolution et message de l'olympisme contemporain. Sport et olympisme: des sources antiques aux formes d'aujourd'hui. Sport, olympisme et société. Sport et olympisme: approches philosophiques.

In this essay, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard’s oeuvre can be seen as a theater of ideas. This argument is developed in three steps. First, I will briefly introduce a theoretical framework for addressing the theatrical dimension of Kierkegaard’s works. This framework is based on a distinction between“performative writing strategies” and “categories of performativity.” As a second step, I will focus on Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, one of the best examples of Kierkegaard’s innovative way of (...) doing philosophy. This strange and elusive book introduces the difficult and counter-intuitive notion of repetition. Repetition is a category of performativity that aims to activate the subjectivity of the reader. This performative effect is achieved by confronting the reader with an “unresolved”existential problem that is not yet drawn into clarity but is staged in all its confusions and contradictions. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Constantius relies here on a performative writing strategy that is animated by a dialectic of advance and withdrawal. In the last and third step, I will analyze Constantius’s own reflection on the performative dimension of his text. Constantius has left several clues behind, each of which suggests that he deliberately developed a performative writing strategy. (shrink)

Children love theater without knowing that they “do theater”, without someone teaching them to “play a part”: representing roles and situations is a spontaneous and natural playful dimension. We can call this “animation”, a characteristic feature of childhood: in the proper sense it means “giving life” by impersonating roles or creating scenarios with toys. Theater becomes a pedagogical device when it recognizes and enhances these assumptions by acting on two levels: on the one hand, making theater with children and young (...) people, soliciting their communication and interpretative skills, as a laboratory that, starting from the body, involves all languages. On the other hand, making theater for children, producing shows able to enter a relationship with the imagination of children, as an aesthetic experience; at its best it is experimental theater. (shrink)

From the Federal Theater Projects of the Great Depression to the disruptive performances of the 1960s and 1970s, theater has played an important role in American radicalism. This special issue of_ _Theater_ reports on socially conscious, politically active theaters in the United States. Despite the evaporation of Cold War passions and the rise of conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, such theater work remains a persistent and evolving presence on the political landscape. Since the first inauguration of George W. Bush, (...) new opportunities have arisen for political performance and for significant new challenges to these artists. T_heater and Social Change_ not only tracks the historical evolution of political theater but also explores the current state and future prospects of different modes, including agit-prop, demonstrations, solo performance, Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, and community-based production. With such notable contributors as Anna Deavere Smith, Jonathan Kalb, Holly Hughes, and Tony Kushner, the issue offers a diverse assemblage of personal statements, conversations, photographs, interviews, and performance text. _Contributors include:_ Reverend Billy, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Arlene Goldbard, Sharon Green, Lani Guinier, Holly Hughes, Jonathan Kalb, Tony Kushner, Judith Malina, Robbie McCauley, John O'Neal, Claudia Orenstein, Bill Rauch, Julie Salverson, Anna Deavere Smith, Alisa Solomon, Roberta Uno. (shrink)

Theater production is a collaborative creative activity. Social creativity recognizes the relationships between creative groups and the contexts in which creativity emerges. It also suggests that the interactive processes between the collaborators and their work form a center, which in turn becomes a kind of creative entity itself. An evolving systems case study of production practices at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival illuminates this process and illustrates the differences between seeing an aggregate creative activity and the more holistic view, in which (...) the artwork functions like another person, a creature in dialogue with the personality of the creative system. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses an innovative pedagogical device designed for training pre-service teachers on the nature of science. We endorse an approach according to which aspects of the nature of science should be explicitly discussed in order to be understood by learners. We identified quantum physics, and more precisely the principles of uncertainty and complementarity, as a rich topic suitable for such a discussion. Our training device consists in preparing and staging a new type of theater, the “scientific experimental (...) theater,” based both on the characteristics of Brecht’s theater and Kelly’ cyclic theory of learning. This device was implemented with a group of eight pre-service teachers. According to our observations, the approach favors their involvement and provides them with a frame for expressing their doubts and confronting their points of view. By analyzing their discussion, we identified several aspects of the nature of science that the pre-service teachers raised spontaneously: subjectivity, the social and cultural embeddedness of science, the construction and status of models, and the role of questioning in the development of science. The implemented device therefore appears as an interesting means for stimulating a rich discussion on the nature of science. This study opens new avenues for teachers’ and students’ training devices aimed at developing a critical and reflective stance on science. (shrink)

Dieses Buch bietet eine grundlegende Einführung in den Einsatz der Methode des Decision Theater zur Vermittlung von mathematischer Modellierungskompetenz im Schulkontext. In den letzten Jahren hat sich unter anderem anhand der Covid-19 Pandemie mehr denn je gezeigt, wie Mathematik im Allgemeinen und das mathematische Modellieren im Speziellen zum Verständnis globaler Herausforderungen und Möglichkeiten zu ihrer Bewältigung beiträgt. Deshalb sollte die mathematische Modellierungskompetenz eine zentrale Rolle im Schulunterricht spielen. Doch der Prozess von Vermittlung und Erwerb einer solchen Kompetenz ist komplex und (...) mit vielfältigen Schwierigkeiten verbunden. Angesichts dieser Ausgangslage stellt das Buch die Methode des Decision Theater als innovative Lernumgebung neuer Art vor, die die Vermittlung von mathematischer Modellierungskompetenz unterstützen kann. Dabei trägt die Methode des Decision Theatre auf drei Ebenen dazu beiträgt, Modellierungskompetenz und ein damit verbundenes ganzheitliches Bild der Mathematik zu fördern: Das Decision Theatre dient als IT-Dienstleister, als Wissenschaftskommunikator und als interaktiv-diskursive Lernumgebung. Neben Geschichte und Definition des Decision Theater, stellt das Buch dessen Einsatz konkret am Beispiel des Projekts „Schule @ Decision Theatre Lab“ des Berliner Exzellenzclusters MATH+ Berlin Mathematics Research Center vor. Als Zusammenfassung der wichtigsten Aspekte des Einsatzes der Methode des Decision Theater im Schulkontext richtet sich das Buch an Didaktiker*innen und Lehrkräfte aller Schulformen. (shrink)

Table of Contents: Illustrations Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction 3 Ch. 1 Kinds of Natural Philosophy 14 Ch. 2 Methods of Bookishness 49 Ch. 3 Modes of Argument 82 Ch. 4 Bodin’s Philosophy of Nature 116 Ch. 5 Theatrical Metaphors 153 Ch. 6 The Reception of the Theatrum 180 Epilogue: The Legacies of the Theatrum 225 Notes 233 Bibliography 331 Index 369.

In this short essay the A. intends to analyze the scientific coordinates of social theater as a pedagogical-didactic device in an inclusive perspective for the development of the intellectual welfare of communities in the 21st century. The reference model is that of Inclusive Education, which represents, as Unesco has specified several times, a true guideline in the field of education, education and training; it develops through the guiding principles of equality, social justice, freedom, the right to citizenship, the right to (...) education and social equity, without any discrimination based on race, gender, language, or different cultures. This is possible through inclusive theater workshops at school. (shrink)

_The Art of Theater_ argues for the recognition of theatrical performance as an art form independent of dramatic writing. Identifies the elements that make a performance a work of art Looks at the competing views of the text-performance relationships An important and original contribution to the aesthetics and philosophy of theater.

We have become estranged from the cosmic movements, according to Bataille. We are confined by the error linked to the representation of ‘the stationary earth’. We have negated the immersive immanence of the whole and made nature into a fixed world of tools and things. How then do we recognise ourselves as part of the ‘rapture of the heavens’? Bataille urges us to consider life as a solar phenomenon, the free play of solar energy on the earth. This paper argues (...) how Bataille’s cosmic vision anticipates both planetary and ecological thinking. This entails a base materialism of difference based on a radical Nietzschean and Heraclitean theory of becoming and flux. This thought is developed along Bataillean concepts such as the movement of the whole, the labyrinthine, and compound beings, ipseity, as well as the concept of a communifying movement. This materialism paired with Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere lays the foundation for the laws of the general economy, which also constitutes an economy inclusive of a general ecology: a tragic vision of Gaia and Dionysos. Finally, poetry is considered, as a way we might reconnect with the universe and stimulate ecological imagination. (shrink)

This collection explores the link between theater and human flourishing. It interrogates both the social good of theater and the personally restorative work of a range of live embodied performances. It brings together the disciplines of theater (and performance studies) and psychology, especially positive psychology, to explore the social benefits of theater. These benefits include the formation and participation in community, opportunities to engage in political speech and thought, and the experience of being entertained (or offended) by both the creative (...) work of artists and the individual responses of fellow audience members. (shrink)

In the performing arts, including music, theater, dance and so on, theoretical issues both about artworks and about performances of them must be dealt with, so that their theoretical analysis is inherently more complex and troublesome than that of nonperforming arts such as painting or film, in which primarily only artworks need to be discussed. Thus it is especially desirable in the case of the performing arts to look for defensible broad theoretical simplifications or generalizations that could serve to unify (...) and potentially comprehensively explain these difficult cases. (shrink)

Though Rousseau is recognized to have treated the problem of self-knowledge with great sensitivity, very little is known about a centrally important aspect of that treatment—his understanding of self-deception. I reconstruct this conception, emphasizing the importance of purposive but sub-intentional processes that work to enhance agents' self-esteem. I go on to argue that Rousseau's fundamental concern about the theater is its capacity to manipulate these processes in ways that make spectators both complicit in their own falsification and vulnerable to elite (...) domination. This argument, with its focus on the pervasive and often subconscious character of self-deception, not only problematizes an influential reading of Rousseau which emphasizes the epistemic availability of the “true” or “sincere” self, but also highlights the ongoing civic and moral threat posed by self-deceptive mental states. (shrink)

What is unique and essential about theatre? What separates it from other arts? Do we need 'theatre' in some fundamental way? The art of theatre, as Paul Woodruff says in this elegant and unique book, is as necessary-and as powerful-as language itself. Defining theatre broadly, including sporting events and social rituals, he treats traditional theatre as only one possibility in an art that-at its most powerful-can change lives and bring a divine presence to earth. The Necessity of Theater analyzes the (...) unique power of theatre by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched, practiced together in harmony by watchers and the watched. Whereas performers practice the art of being watched-making their actions worth watching, and paying attention to action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space-audiences practice the art of watching: paying close attention. A good audience is emotionally engaged as spectators; their engagement takes a form of empathy that can lead to a special kind of human wisdom. As Plato implied, theatre cannot teach us transcendent truths, but it can teach us about ourselves. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes the case for theatre as a unique form of expression connected to our most human insticts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theatre or performance more broadly. (shrink)

Theater is an art or theater is not an independent art. Each of these antithetical propositions has its supporters. It is usually the supporters of the second who come up with anything resembling intelligible argumentation. The first is usually accepted as fact, sanctified by universal acknowledgement, without criticism, without much reflection—it is just accepted: theater unquestionably gives satisfaction. What kind? Aesthetic! And so, theater is an art!

Held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science by Ann BlairPeter DearAnn Blair. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp. xiv + 382. Cloth, $45.00.Jean Bodin’s Universae naturae theatrum (1596) is the least celebrated of all the major publications by this outstanding figure of the French renaissance. It lacks the apparent political, historiographical, and philosophical relevance of Bodin’s well-known (...) earlier works (the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem of 1566, Les six livres de la République of 1576, and De la démonomanie des sorciers of 1580, all receiving much more attention then as now). Ann Blair focuses our attention on the Theatrum, as a text whose significance for her book exists on at least three interrelated levels: there is its relation to Bodin’s views in the more famous texts; its advantage as a treatise on natural philosophy about whose author we know much more (intellectually) than those of most such works; and in connection with the last, there is above all its value as a distinguished representative of a genre of natural philosophical writings that was prominent in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.It is the third consideration that motivates Blair’s book most centrally. She declares her wish to enrich our view of the history of science with works, like the Theatrum, that were not made by subsequently regarded stars such as Galileo or Descartes; the very typicality of its genre makes the Theatrum, she argues, a valuable window on contemporary understandings of what natural knowledge was and should be about. Bodin’s enterprise possessed a religious core: natural philosophy was for him a tool to be used in shoring up broadly irenical positions (of the kind associated with the Colloquium heptaplomeres, usually attributed, as here, to Bodin). This kind of “natural theology” avant la lettre characterized a good number of different thinkers and writers on natural philosophy in this period, many of them German (besides their discussion here, Blair is considering such people, and their project of pia philosophia, more fully in her current work). It is a subject that, more than anything, stands at the heart of her study.Bodin, rather conventionally, tried to establish a close liaison between natural philosophy and religious knowledge—that is, between those things to be inferred from experience of the natural world and the central dogmas of faith. Less conventionally, he attempted to demonstrate on occasion truths that were far from orthodox. Regardless of whether Bodin was “really” a Catholic or a Protestant (and Blair observes the great interest in the Theatrum shown by German Calvinists in the first few decades after its original publication), his general religious stance was one of accommodation. Thus good philosophizing could demonstrate (in the weak, rhetorical sense of that term) such doctrines as the existence and providence of God; contentious issues, such as the correct interpretation of the Eucharist, were left aside. Nonetheless, Bodin also argued, at such length and with such vigor as to have the propositions condemned by the Catholic church, that human souls and angels (as well as, more usually, demons) were corporeal beings. The importance to Bodin of this position stemmed from its sociopolitical implications: in particular, if human souls were incorporeal, it became unclear how rewards and punishments—necessary sanctions for restoring the social order threatened by the Wars of Religion—could be meted out after death. Curiously, such a view seems to imply that pleasure and pain are inextricably connected to bodies alone. [End Page 363]Among the historiographical strands informing Blair’s approach is recent literature on the “history of the book,” best known through the work of Roger Chartier. Accordingly, Blair discusses the vicissitudes of production of Bodin’s book in its various editions and emissions, and carefully considers, along with the likely reading practices by the aid of which Bodin came to compose it, the various uses to which its first readers put it. Her major interpretive trope is that of the commonplace book. While acknowledging the lack of direct material evidence for Bodin’s use of such a technique as his chief means of... (shrink)

tad aikṣata, bahu syām prajāyeyetiIt thought, May I be many, may I grow forth.rūpaṁrūpaṁ pratirūpo babhūva tadasya rūpam praticakṣanāyaThe prototype has assumed various forms, and such is its form as that which it adopts for its manifestation.prathamaṁ śūnyatābodhiṁ dvitīyaṁ bījasaṁgrahṁ tṛtīyaṁ bimba niṣpattiṁ caturthannyāsamakṣaraṁFirst is the void; second the seed; third the emanation of the image; fourth the articulation of the syllable.… rest and play alternate in the divine perfection as they must. … Ātman-Brahman must also be conceived not as (...) resting but playing in and as the thought.The aim of this article is to meditate philosophically on the very nature and significance of the trinitarian conceptions of.. (shrink)