This chapter contains sections titled: Serial Killers, Real and Imagined Dexter Gacy Are Serial Killers Morally Responsible? Moral Responsibility: Emotions and Cognitive Frames.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle On MetaphorJohn T. KirbyMuch Madness is divinest Sense—To a discerning Eye——Emily DickinsonOurs is an age of metaphor. Wayne Booth, in his inimitable fashion, remarks,There were no conferences on metaphor, ever, in any culture, until our own century was already middle–aged. As late as 1927, John Middleton Murry, complaining about the superficiality of most discussions of metaphor, could say, "There are not many of them."... Explicit discussions (...) of something called metaphor have multiplied astronomically in the past fifty years.... students of metaphor have positively pullulated.1In the postmodern era philosophers of language, particularly those outside the analytic tradition, tend to think more and more in terms of all language as being metaphorical. This trend, however, is not a new one; it seems to have its roots back as far as Heraclitus, and, in the modern world, was certainly espoused by Giambattista Vico in his Nuova Scienza (1725). What we may call the Viconian tradition was embraced on the continent by Nietzsche, and, in the Anglo–American world, by Ivor Richards.2 Nietzsche's thought had far–reaching consequences in terms of its influence on the work of Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, who in the late 1960s and the 1970s found themselves in the center of a vortex of controversy over the notion of "deconstruction," and its interrogation not only of Western metaphysics but also of human language and thought generally. Now, it seemed, such simple formulae as "This X is Y" called into question the whole process of naming and predication. But even among those for whom this is an unconvincing position, the problem of metaphor continues to be a fascinating one. How to define [End Page 517] it? What are its uses? What is its relation to literal, or nonfigured, language? And what its relation to human cognition?3Booth goes on to say, "there have been many more discussions of what people from the Greek philosophers on called metaphor than any bibliography could show."4 That being so, a sustained study of Aristotle's concept of metaphor needs no further justification, since it is to him that we owe the terms in which the debate was framed for many hundreds of years. Indeed, here as often, even those who wish to propose new or different parameters for the analysis of metaphor must do so against the grain of the Aristotelian tradition.5 This, if nothing else, is a measure of the tremendous influence Aristotle has had on the history of Western rhetoric and poetics.As on many other topics, it is now fashionable to condescend to Aristotle for the limitations of his study of metaphor, or—more aggressively still—to find fault with its parameters. Certainly he did not preempt any further discussion on the issue; nor, I imagine, would he have wanted to. But I surmise that there is more to be learned from an appreciative study of his methods here than one might initially suppose. In this study, then, after a few remarks on recent studies of metaphor, I propose to examine the state of the question before Aristotle, and then [End Page 518] to look at what he has to say about metaphor in the Poetics and Rhetoric.In their attempts to cope with the notion of language generally, and specifically with the questions of literal versus figurative language, scholars over the last hundred years or so have themselves appropriated a number of metaphors purporting to describe the phenomenon. These include (above all) models based on comparison and interaction. The comparison model, it is typically said, conforms more to the classical approach to metaphor, whereas those based on interaction stem primarily from the work of Richards and Black.6 Indeed it is from this notion of interaction that the terms "tenor" and "vehicle" were born, the former referring to the underlying idea that is illustrated or illuminated by the latter, which is "applied" to it; and Richards is right both to point out [1] that the word "metaphor" is sometimes used to signify what he means by "vehicle," and sometimes to mean the symbiosis resulting from the conjunction of tenor and vehicle, and [2] that... (shrink)

From the celebrated author of American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, a compelling introduction to the life-affirming philosophy of William James In 1895, William James, the father of American philosophy, delivered a lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide during an existential crisis as a young man a quarter century earlier. Indeed, as John Kaag writes, "James's entire philosophy, from beginning to end, was geared to (...) save a life, his life"—and that's why it just might be able to save yours, too. Sick Souls, Healthy Minds is a compelling introduction to James's life and thought that shows why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology—and an inspiration for Alcoholics Anonymous—can still speak so directly and profoundly to anyone struggling to make a life worth living. Kaag tells how James's experiences as one of what he called the "sick-souled," those who think that life might be meaningless, drove him to articulate an ideal of "healthy-mindedness"—an attitude toward life that is open, active, and hopeful, but also realistic about its risks. In fact, all of James's pragmatism, resting on the idea that truth should be judged by its practical consequences for our lives, is a response to, and possible antidote for, crises of meaning that threaten to undo many of us at one time or another. Along the way, Kaag also movingly describes how his own life has been endlessly enriched by James. Eloquent, inspiring, and filled with insight, Sick Souls, Healthy Minds may be the smartest and most important self-help book you'll ever read. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Volitional Necessity and Volitional Shift:A Key to Sobriety?John Talmadge (bio)As a long-time amateur student of philosophy, I think my most effective contribution to this discussion of Dr. Rego's paper will be to discuss Harry Frankfurt's ideas from precisely the point of view of the beginner and the novice. After all, I had never experienced the pleasure of reading Frankfurt until reading Rego, so I can hardly be considered (...) proficient and conversant in analytical philosophy. To pretend to be so would be, in Frankfurt's way of thinking, to construe what I really am (a novice) as what I would ideally like to be (an expert). He calls this "the equation of the real with the ideal," and he certainly gets us thinking. He also says that our failure to mark the distinctions among our many passions (and our attitudes toward our passions) gets us into considerable confusion and trouble.Because I am most familiar with the diagnosis and treatment of addictions, I confine my comments to that domain. I have enjoyed over the years over the puzzling question of whether addiction should actually be called a "disease." This puzzle confounds us for one reason apparent to any armchair philosopher: how can we name something a disease when the removal of the offending agent banishes the problem? I have come to believe that Locke had it right when he said, "We would have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves." (1994, 122) Addiction is not so much a disease as it is an idea. And this is where I think that Dr. Rego's insights have their most value.In his essay "The Importance of What We Care About," Frankfurt offers a particularly helpful example for those of us interested in the addictions. He observes that there are occasions when we care about something powerfully, and we care about it in such a fashion that we cannot avoid the consequences of the caring. His example from history is Martin Luther, who nailed his declaration to the door of the church with the statement, "Here I stand; I can do no other."It is clear, of course, that the impossibility to which Luther referred was a matter neither of logical nor of causal necessity. After all, he knew well enough that he was in one sense quite able to do the very thing he said he could not do; that is, he had the capacity to do it. What he was unable to muster was not the power to forbear, but the will.(Frankfurt 1988, 86)When an alcoholic finds success through Alcoholics Anonymous, he experiences what I would term a "volitional shift." No longer in the grip of alcohol itself, the alcoholic is constrained by what Frankfurt terms "volitional necessity." The alcoholic has a new constraint to which he declares he is subject, that is, "Today I will remain sober." [End Page 327]Frankfurt says that this capacity—the ability to reflect on ourselves—is precisely what separates us as uniquely human. As Frankfurt sees the world, the will of an agent is identical with the desire that motivates him (or would motivate him if he should act).1A first-order desire, such as the alcoholic's craving for a drink, may be contradicted by a second-order desire, specifically a desire not to crave a drink. The second-order desire is born of the individual's knowledge that the use of alcohol, in his case, will lead to dire consequences in terms of health, happiness, and stability. Frankfurt believes that an addict, for example, typically experiences a desire for the destructive chemical but also a desire not to use the chemical. This second-order desire is the one with which the addict identifies, and this reflects the addict's true self (Frankfurt 1988, 14).If we take Dr. Rego's point and notice how a therapist might approach a patient and define a problem, we see obvious distinctions between different schools of thought. To take three simple examples, consider the following: (a) a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whisper Before You GoJohn K PettyDavid came with a bang.1A momentary prelude from a dysphonic chorus of pagers announce “Level 1 Pediatric Trauma—MVC ejected” before the abrupt crescendo of the trauma bay doors opening. He is maybe two. Maybe three–years–old. It is hard to tell when a child is strapped in, strapped down, nonverbal, intubated, and alone.The flight team speaks for him, “Four–year–old boy improperly restrained in a single–vehicle (...) crash into a ditch. He was partially ejected. He was unresponsive and pulseless at the scene. He got CPR and code drugs, and they got a pulse back. Emergency medical service (EMS) took him to the nearest hospital where they needled his chest, called for air transport, and scanned him up. He has been shocky for us since we picked him up. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) has been three the whole time. They said his head scan showed subarachnoid hemorrhage.”With the words of the flight team as background narrative, we get about doing our thing—hopefully more method and less madness. Bang, bang, bang! Check the tube. Vital signs. IV fluids. Place a chest tube. Hang the blood. Quick X–ray. Neuro exam—nothing. Get him off the board. Warm him up. Place the orogastric (OG) tube. Bang, bang, bang!The neurosurgery resident opens the CT scans from the other hospital. The brain and cervical spine scans show a disaster: some swelling and bleeding in the higher brain, but the worst damage is in the lower brain, brainstem, and top of the spinal cord. I have heard a neurosurgeon describe this pattern before as “internal decapitation.” Such language never makes it into the patient’s chart. For David the last two words of the neurosurgery consult note will eventually read, “Prognosis grim.”He remains unstable in the trauma bay. Inaction is death. We ultrasound his heart, abdomen, and pelvis. He has fluid that shouldn’t be around his heart. He is dying of the neuro injury we cannot control, but the pericardial fluid might be giving him shock, and we can control that. We can’t ignore the fluid. Shouldn’t ignore it. At least, wouldn’t ignore it. So, we bang up to the operating room. Squeezing blood. Spiking fluid. Oxygen tank and crash cart. Up we go.In the operating room, we do much and we do well. We release the fluid around the heart and find it was CPR, not heart injury that put it there. In the pericardial flash we get a view of the cardiac athlete, pounding like the 26th mile of the marathon. We explore the abdomen and find it swollen but innocent of an injury that would take his life. We place our lines and tubes as the neurosurgeons place theirs. If nothing else, we will be able to measure what lies ahead.“Good work, team,” and we bump the door on the way to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).The care in the PICU is more Apache brave than Gaelic knight—more bottles, fewer scissors. The curtains and carpets mute the tones. Our efforts continue, but I get a word that David’s father has arrived. He is sitting in a small, private waiting room off of the main PICU waiting room. The PICU staff colloquially refer to this as “the bad news room.” I take a seat next to a solitary man who is having the worst day of his life. His worst day so far.“I am Dr. Petty, and I am one of the doctors who is taking care of your son. I am very sorry about what has happened. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about what you understand is going on, and I’ll tell you what I know.” [End Page 17]He tells me that his wife was driving David back from her sister’s house, just the two of them. He doesn’t know what happened, but he got a call from the other hospital about the crash. His wife was badly hurt. He heard that David had died, but they got him back. Both were transferred up to the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"He Who Eats Me Will Live Because of Me":Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas's Johannine Theology of the Missions of the Divine PersonsDaniel M. Garland Jr.IntroductionIn the Bread of Life Discourse of John 6, Jesus begins his teaching by stating that he is the true bread from heaven sent from God to give life to the world. After "the Jews" (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι)1 boast that Moses gave their fathers manna to (...) eat in the wilderness, Jesus makes a contrast between the manna in the wilderness and himself as the "bread of life" (6:35). While the title "Bread of Life" carries a metaphorical sense, Jesus climaxes his discourse by [End Page 1171] insisting that believers eat of (ἐσθίω) or gnaw on (τρώγω) his flesh and drink his blood. Then, in John 6:57, Jesus makes the startling claim: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats [τρώγω] me will live because of me." Jesus, here, connects his mission with the giving of his flesh as food for eternal life. At the same time, Jesus declares in John 17:3 that eternal life is predicated on the knowledge of God the Father and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. There seems to be a tension here in John's Gospel. Do we have eternal life by eating or by knowing?This article will explore the gift of eternal life communicated through the sacramental eating and drinking of Christ's body and blood and its relation to our coming to know the Father and the Son. It will be divided into two main parts. The first part will explore this as revealed in the text of the Gospel of John by examining what it means "to know God." Next, I will show that Jesus has the power to give eternal life because he is Life itself and that John points to the root of this power as being derived from Jesus's procession from the Father. Then, I will take up Jesus's mutual abiding/indwelling language in John 6 and elsewhere in the Gospel and how this contributes to bringing eternal life to believers. The second part will show how St. Thomas's teaching on the missions of the divine persons further clarifies Jesus's teaching in the Gospel of John that eternal life comes about through both eating Christ's flesh and coming to the knowledge of the Father and the Son and also gives greater theological insight into the Johannine theology of the Eucharist as the source of eternal life.Gospel of JohnJohn 17 and the Relational Name of the Father and the Son in Relation to Eternal LifeIn John 17, Jesus prays from the vantage point of already having completed (17:4; τελειώσας) the work that the Father has given him to do. The work that Jesus speaks of is both a past event, consisting of the signs that witness that the Father has sent him (see 5:36; τελειώσω), but also the future event of the Cross(see 19:30; τελειώσω),2 Here, Jesus requests glorification by the Father in order that he, as Son, may glorify the Father in return. This mutual glorification is rooted in the power (ἐξουσίαν) that the Father has given to the Son over all flesh—the power to grant eternal life (17:2). Jesus [End Page 1172] then defines eternal life in 17:3 as "to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent." There is an intimate connection, here, between knowing the Father ("the only true God") and Jesus. Eternal life is not merely knowledge of the Father, but knowledge of the Father as the one who sent the Son.3 How does one know the Father? John 17 suggests that it is through the revelation of his name. There is a repeated refrain in John 17 of Jesus making known the Father's name (17:6, 26) and keeping them in this name (17:11, 12). Looking back in the Gospel, we can recall that in John 5:43, Jesus associates the "Father's name" with his mission: "I have come in my Father's name." The same can... (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked (...) like Jesus, at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Best RhetorologistWayne C. BoothAristotle’s Rhetoric: An Art of Character, by Eugene Garver; 328 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $53.95.Eugene Garver’s new book is not only an original and challenging account of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It is one of the fullest and most responsible encounters ever with philosophical, political, and ethical issues raised by the theory and practice of rhetoric. I’ll go even further. Because Garver grapples so (...) well with how Aristotle’s problems differ from ours, and how his solutions do not quite fit what we most need, I hereby confer upon him, without irony, the title of supreme “rhetorologist” (a term he needs but does not use).A rhetorologist is not just “rhetorician” or “rhetorical theorist” or “philosopher of rhetoric.” Garver’s work dramatizes our need for a term for the “comparativist of rhetorics,” the thinker who probes how disparate rhetorical practices and theories compete and are finally, inescapably related. In earlier times when all philosophers were trained to think about rhetoric the term “genuine philosopher” might have served the trick. But it won’t work today.Garver has spent decades on this masterwork of rhetorology, and he thus joins those rare masters-of-interrelated-rhetorics—Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, who else?—those who do justice both to the importance and the complexities of a subject that Aristotle has led us into but himself could never have dreamed of, since he had available no fully developed alternative “rhetorics” to do a “-logy” on. [End Page 116]The book is too ambitious and complex to allow full justice here. It is a book not just to read but to study; it is a book to teach from. All attentive readers will find themselves drawn into issues previously dodged, or engaged in quarrels about theses they’ve never met before. Those like me whose interests overlap strongly with Garver’s will of course dispute about some points. What will prove important, as the book gets discussed, will be our recognition of just why the project itself has led Garver, and leads us, into some inescapable juggling with several different and potentially contradictory theses, each of them so important that it must at moments have invited Garver to consider it as primary. Indeed, when an original thinker bites off more than anyone can chew, let alone fully digest, we should not be surprised if we have a hard time deciding just what the main point is. Several times in my first reading I thought, “Garver has mistitled this book: it should be called...”—and then I’d try out a title that fit the argument at that point but would not fit precisely what came next.The result is that different sympathetic readers will find different books here, with at least the following ambiguously related purposes—all of them to my mind either firmly achieved or at least pursued so effectively that refutation will prove difficult. Some of them are the overt theses of particular chapters, but all are found echoed or implied in every chapter. And all are finally and impressively interrelated.IFirst, Garver works, as he must, to show the faults of past readings of the Rhetoric. The chief of these has been the reduction to a handbook for rhetors; it is not a technical handbook, though it can be used as that, but an effort to “construct a civic relation between argument and ethos, so between techn̄e and phron̄esis [prudence]” (p. 77). “Aristotle’s political project is to maximize the active—energeia—side of rhetoric and so civilize the activity of influencing beliefs and judgments and convert into a minor irritant the role played by disreputable tactics such as playing on irrelevant emotions in the hearers” (p. 40). “I have... assumed that instead of doing that job [the ‘handbook’ job] badly, Aristotle is in fact trying to accomplish something else. I see him exhibiting the internal values and standards of rhetorical argument to legislators and citizens” (p. 235), [and thus making possible] “a new conception of the ethical, and of the relation of logos and ethos” (p. 16). “Aristotle’s Rhetoric is about a civic art... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jesus, Man of Sin: Toward a New Christology in the Global EraSoho MachidaSin as the Common GroundThe blasphemous title of this article is likely to outrage more than a few devout Christians. I am aware that most Christians view Jesus as the most immaculate and beautiful person who ever lived. As a Buddhist scholar and practitioner, however, I cannot extinguish a long-held question from my mind. Was Jesus really (...) free from sin? I do not object to the view of those Christians who see him as the greatest living expression of compassion and courage. But the Christian construction of an untainted, perfect image of Jesus, the Son of God, raises certain problems that I would like to address. Although Jesus, the Anointed, could have had a special mission in the human world, the Son of Man did not appear as the Holy Ghost. He was incarnated in human form: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father” (John 1:14).It is important to carefully consider the meaning of the Incarnation. The fact that Jesus came to be born with flesh in this world means that he chose to stand on the common ground of sin with us. The sin that I refer to here is the most ontologically fundamental sin that is at the core of human experience. What links us with Jesus is none other than so-called Original Sin.To be sure, as a man who comes from a different religious tradition, I do not make this outrageous claim because I want to dispute the value of the divine personhood of Jesus, or because I am cynical about the most sacred object of Christian faith. I have a deep respect for the greatness of the Christian tradition that has developed around this very unusual person, Jesus Christ.On a personal level too, I do not think of Jesus as a distant figure, as merely the god of another religion. During my boyhood in Japan, I often attended an Episcopal church; and the first academic degree I earned in the United States was in theological studies. In light of all that I have learned from my own personal involvement with Christianity, I still believe that Jesus was a person who suffered like us as a sinful human being.If I were to choose the most important of Jesus’ words from the Bible, I would not hesitate to point to the following passage: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you deserted me?)” (Mark 15:34). It is surprising how few Christian scholars have offered persuasive interpretations of these words, which Jesus is said to have uttered in the final moments of his life. Many Christians would rather not hear such contradictory, despairing words come from the mouth of Jesus. Yet [End Page 81] these words of extreme suffering contain the key message at the core of Christian faith.Though I am also interested in Jesus’ historical background and the political role he played in a tiny corner of the Roman Empire, it is not the purpose of this article to investigate the historicity of Jesus’ life, as many theologians and historians have attempted to do in recent years. I will focus instead on the philosophical implications of Jesus’ life and his physical body, and why I believe it is important to develop a new Christology for the coming global era.The Karmic Body of JesusFirst, why did Jesus have to experience the suffering of crucifixion? The evident answer might be explained this way: because he sacrificed himself to redeem the human race, which has been sinning since the time of Adam and Eve. I would like, however, to suggest a totally different answer: Jesus was crucified to atone for his own sin. He courageously showed the way each of us must take responsibility for our own lives. He deserves our high admiration, but not excessive mystification.I do not mean that Jesus committed any specific sin in his lifetime, but rather that as the Son of Man he too was... (shrink)

The current two-sample investigation explores the role of enactment as a boundary condition in the relationship between experienced incivility and workplace outcomes. We integrate the tenets of the transactional model of stress and sensemaking theory to explain why enactment is a psychological sensemaking capability that can neutralize the adverse effects of experienced incivility on workplace outcomes. The results across two samples of data supported the study hypotheses by demonstrating that experienced incivility had stronger adverse effects on employees’ job satisfaction, OCBs, (...) and turnover intent for employees who reported lower levels of enactment than employees who reported higher levels of enactment. This study’s results make three important contributions to theory and research. First, we make an empirical contribution by examining enactment as a psychological sensemaking capability that can neutralize the adverse effects of experienced incivility on workplace outcomes. Second, we make a theoretical contribution by integrating the tenets of the transactional model of stress and sensemaking theory in a novel way that explains why enactment is a psychological sensemaking capability that can neutralize the adverse effects of stress on strain. Third, we demonstrate that enactment is the boundary condition that explains why incivility does not have universally adverse effects on employees’ outcomes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reach Without Grasping: A Retrospective Appreciation of Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet LOUIS A. RUPRECHT JR. Everything I know about love and its necessities I learned in that one moment when I found myself thrusting my little burning red backside like a baboon at a man who no longer cherished me. There was no area of my mind not appalled by this action, no part of my body that (...) could have done otherwise. But to talk of mind and body begs the question. Soul is the place, stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind, where such necessity grinds itself out. Soul is what I kept watch on all that night. —Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay” (1995) It is always tricky, the question of whether to read an author’s work in light of his life or not. —Anne Carson, The Albertine Workout, no. 56 (2014) anne carson (b. June 21, 1950, in Toronto, Canada) is one of the most versatile of contemporary writers in the English language who have drawn deeply from the Classical well. She has achieved a unique place in the realm of North American letters, and much deserved recognition in the past twenty years: she was awarded the Lannan Literary Award in 1996; the Pushcart Prize in 1997; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998; the MacArthur Foundation arion 27.2 fall 2019 “genius grant” in 2000; the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001 (the first woman to be so recognized); the T. S. Eliot Prize also in 2001; the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 2010; and a second Griffin Poetry Prize in 2014 (the only person ever to receive this award twice). in 2018, she was an Inga Maren Otto Fellow at the Watermill Center in Watermill, New York, on leave from a Creative Writing position at New York University. Trained as a classicist—she received her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Toronto in 1981, and an Honorary Degree in 2012—but better known as an accomplished poet and translator, Carson burst on the scene in 1986 with the publication of her first and most philosophical work, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay.1 What this book announced most clearly, in addition to Carson’s complex identity as a poet-and-classicist-and-philosopher-in-one, was her unique ability to work against the expectations and across the loose boundaries which define a genre, and thus to create new genres along the way. In this essay, I would like to offer a retrospective appreciation of Carson’s first book, published (it is scarcely believable to note) more than thirty years ago. There are historical precedents to her achievement in this text, as I hope to show, but her authorial voice is altogether unique, and the reach of her influence has been long. ❖ on rare occasion, a first book may give us a telling glimpse into everything that will follow. Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet is such a first book. What the book does best is to announce itself, and its author, as the bearer of unconventional news, reported in an unconventional manner, all of it expressed in uncommonly luminous prose. It is a book that refuses to be categorized, a book that refuses genre— strangely enough, virtually by creating one. And along the way of creating—that is, of poeticizing—in its singular way, this book generates new desires all its own. There is a history to such literary and generic non-conformity. 138 reach without grasping When Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was invited to take up a professorship at the astonishing age of 24, without even having produced his dissertation yet, the expectations surrounding his first book were elevated, to say the least. Well aware of this, aware too of having been described by his mentor as “the future of Classics in Germany,” Nietzsche published The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music in 1872.2 He was still just 26 years old, and very few classicists knew what to make of it; even his mentor regretted the rashness of the thing. Meaner spirits mockingly called it a work of “future-philology!” suggesting that... (shrink)

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F. H. Bradley and the Working-out of Absolute Idealism* JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. FRANCIS HERBERTBRADLEY (1846-1924) 1 agreed with the other English idealists that the real world is the experienced world. But he started with the fundamental conviction that "experience" is more than "thought," as Green had maintained. Bradley's basic drive is the refusal to abolish "feeling" in favor of knowledge and intelligibility. "Feeling" is a fundamental and (...) ineradicable aspect of "reality"m more fundamental, in fact, than thinking. In the immediately experienced world, all intelligible distinctions and relations are merged in a "whole of feeling" which is the ultimate subject-matter of philosophy. "Thought" arises out of feeling, out of "immediacy," as an interpretation of immediate experience by distinguishing relations and aspects in it. "Knowledge " is only one aspect of the experienced world; it needs blending with "feeling" and will to include all the experienced aspects. "Feeling" starts for Bradley, in his Principles of Logic (1883), in pretty much the empiricist sense, as isolated sensations, and as subjective (in flavor at least). It then becomes neutral: "feeling" is identified with "the felt"; and it grows richer, attempting to include the whole wealth of immediate experience. Thus Bradley gets very close to Dewey's conception of "direct experience," "non-reflective experience," without, however, Dewey's biological analysis. It is through this conception of experience that Bradley approaches the naturalism to which his thinking almost arrived at the end. Thought, that is, has a setting in experience " it is relational, and by its analysis it breaks up experienced and felt wholes. There is a double insistence in Bradley. On the one hand, reality is experienced, but is not adequately expressed in thought. On the other, reality/s accessible to knowledge. What has often been called Bradley's "skepticism" is really an objective relativism. Thought, logical structure, is not ultimate. In Appearance and *This study of F. It. Bradley is based on one of five chapters on post-ttegehan philosophical Ideahsm in Britain and America to be included in my forthcoming Career oJ Philosophy in Modem Times, Vol.III: The Hundred Years Since Darwin. ISee Bradley ed. of Mind, XXXIV (1925); A. E. Taylor, "F. H. Bradley"; J. H. Muirhead, "Bradley's Place in Philosophy." See also T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy (London: 1910), chap. VII, 2rid part; Rudolf Kagey, F. H. Bradley's Logic (New York: 1931). The best philosophical analyses of Bradley are Robert D. Mack, The Appeal to Immediate Experience (New York: 1945),and Richard Wollheim,F. H. Bradley (Pelican Books, 1959). [245] 246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Reality, he insists it is really self-contradictory; then later he emphasizes rather that it is always relative to its particular subiect-matter. The real, experienced world is never identical with the intelligible world, yet it is also never "extraneous " to it. The relation of the two can be said to be, in Aristotelian terms, that of substance to form, that of what is to its intelligible aspect. The intelligible world, the system of science and knowledge, thus fundamentally needs criticism in the light of its setting in the experienced world. This is not only the entire drive of Dewey's Experience and Nature; it is the expression of that whole current of thought on the Continent which began with the criticism of Hegel's "panlogism" in the 1840's and is today called "Existentialism." Bradley is the British counterpart of all those who have criticized philosophies of logical structure like T. H. Green's, or like the other contemporary forms of Neo-Kantianism in Germany and France. The "known world" is a world of relations distingflished in the richer "real world." These distinctions are ultimately relative to their particular setting, but in that setting they are valid enough. Bradley's celebrated doctrine of the "degrees of truth and reality" means that practically knowledge is "true"; any idea which fulfills its purpose of rendering some portion or aspect of experience intelligible and significant and meaningful, and which is not ousted by a better idea, Bradley is willing to say is "so far true." It is valid, in its own sphere and purpose, despite its ultimate inconsistency; the wave-theory... (shrink)

Kenneth Burke is, at long last, beginning to get the attention he de- serves. Among anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and rhetori- cians his "dramatism" is increasingly recognized as something that must at least appear in one's index, whether one has troubled to understand him or not. Even literary critics are beginning to see him as not just one more "new critic" but as someone who tried to lead a revolt against "narrow formalism" long before the currently fashionable explosion into the "extrinsic" (...) had been dreamed of. I have recently heard him called a structuralist-before-his-time-and what could be higher praise than that! But in almost everything said about his literary criticism, there is an air of condescension that is puzzling. The tone seems usually to echo that of Rene Wellek , who, as Burke himself laments , "almost overwhelms me with praise," referring to "men of great gifts, nimble powers of combination and association, and fertile imagination," but then deplores Burke's irresponsibility, repudiates his critical judgments, condemns his general method without bothering to look closely at it, and in general makes him look like some sort of idiot savant-a buffoon with a high IQ.Wayne C. Booth received the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award in 1962 for his book The Rhetoric of Fiction. His most recent works, A Rhetoric of Irony and Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, appeared this year. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Irony and Pity Once Again: Thais Revisited" , "M.H. Abrams: Historian as Critic, Critic as Pluralist" , "THE LIMITS OF PLURALISM: 'Preserving the Exemplar': Or, How Not to Dig our Own Graves" , "CRITICAL RESPONSE: Notes and Exchanges" , "Metaphor as Rhetoric: The Problem of Evaluation" ,"Ten Literal 'Theses" , with Wright Morris: "The Writing of Organic Fiction: A Conversation" , and with Robert E. Streeter and W.J.T. Mitchell: "EDITORS' NOTE: Sheldon Sacks 1930-1979". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Lewis E. HahnGeorge C. H. Sun, President, John Howie, Professor Emeritus, Thomas Alexander, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Professor and Chair, Randall Auxier, Professor, Robert Hahn, Professor, Joseph Wu, Professor Emeritus, Elizabeth R. Eames, Professor Emeritus, Martin Lu, Professor of Philosophy, George Kimball Plochmann, Professor Emeritus, Matt Sronkoski, Philosophy Graduate and Academic Adviser, Dave Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Professor Emerita, Hans H. (...) Rudnick, Professor Emeritus, Stephen Bickham, Professor EmeritusPresident, and Don Mikula (bio)The following testimonials were offered on the occasion of a memorial gathering for Dr. Lewis E. Hahn held on February 19, 2005, and were compiled for presentation here by Sharon (Hahn) Crowell.A Tribute to Dr. Lewis E. Hahn (1908-2004) from a Global PerspectiveGeorge C. H. Sun President, Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc., Mobile, AlabamaAmong the philosophical community in both the East and the West, no word of introduction is needed for our beloved Master, who was the recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, with titles that included "Man of the Year in Philosophy" and "Award of Lifetime Achievement." The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself already stands now for genuineness, dedication, and fulfillment.A great work is a dialogue with eternity; a great person is such a work. In less than thirty years he succeeded in developing Carbondale from what had been a small college town in the Midwest into the Mecca of American philosophy. His most important achievements were the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives that he helped install at SIUC These, among other such institutions, will remain a unique contribution, a glory of American philosophy, and a monument in the history of human thought.For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for one human being to have accomplished so much, so well, and in so short a span of time—less than one century—in breadth, depth, and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the gap between the New World and the Old, William James was hailed as the great genius of international friendship among philosophical thinkers, but we now find a greater genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who succeeded in bringing together the peoples of East and West from at least four continents: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia. To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries have been half so widely read and liberal-minded as he was, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers that he helped continue after the passing of its founder, Dr. Paul A. Schilpp.What type of man was Hahn, our younger generation will wonder? Only a pluralist approach can help us understand the true character of such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In short, he was "a full personality." As I recall, while working on my dissertation with him in the 1970s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" was his laconic assessment. Suddenly I realized, to quote the Analects: "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, only one who has philosophy can appreciate philosophy. Many friends [End Page 1] of my generation admire him so much; Te Chen of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America." Those who regret the loss of many precious Confucian virtues in China today have now rediscovered them in the person of Lewis E. Hahn! If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had not encountered our own Master.A paradigm of academic leadership, Dr. Hahn is simply irreplaceable—this is a tribute I personally heard in Carbondale in the late 1960s. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a superb administrator, and he could have been the best Secretary of the State we ever had, for he possessed more in the way of philosophical wisdom than all his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he was no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John P. Sisk DOCTOR JOHNSON KICKS A STONE Readers OF Boswell's Life ofJohnson will remember the great Doctor's refutation of Bishop Berkeley's idealism. He and Boswell had just come out of a church in Harwich and were discussing the Bishop's "ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter." Boswell observed "that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it." To mis (...) Johnson responded, "striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, T refute it thus.'" For Boswell diis was an argument from first principles diat are as fundamental to metaphysics as axioms are to mathematics. To use Johnson's own phrase, it is an argument based on "the experience of mankind" — the ground upon which he confidendy stood when he expressed his disapproval of such other phUosophical contemporaries as Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau (the latter "a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society"). Or as WalterJackson Bate puts it in TheAchievement ofSamuelJohnson, the first principle ofhis thinking was "To go back to the living and concrete nature of experience."1 Boswell thought Johnson a philosopher, though he admits in a famous passage that his table manners might have suggested otherwise. Apparently G. K. Chesterton thought he had some claim to the term, for he called Johnson's novel Rasselas "a sort of philosophical satire on philosophy." Most likelyJohnson thought ofhimselfas among many other things a philosopher: the humanities had not yet setded snugly into dieir modern compartments. Now, of course, any undergraduate student of philosophy is willing to believe that Johnson's argument against Berkeley isn't worth much (he may be no less willing to believe that the Bishop's argument isn't worth much eitiier). He may also know that in the perspective of die modern physicist Johnson's stone was not as solid as Johnson thought it was — though it is likely he would have thought diis information 65 66Philosophy and Literature no more relevant to die argument dian Thaïes' belief diat all diings are made of water or Pydiagoras' diat all diings are numbers. The important thing was whether a drinker violated die experience of mankind. When the Scotchman Lord Hunderland praised the ancient philosophers for the candor and good humor widi which they disputed with one anotherJohnson would have none of it: "They disputed with good humour upon dieir fanciful dieories," he said, "because diey were not interested in the truth of them." It is not hard to imagine the Doctor's reaction to our own fanciful theories in philosophy, linguistics, and literary criticism. Suppose him at the Mitre Tavern for an evening's defense of die experience of mankind against die ingenious sophistries of a company made up ofJacques Derrida, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Stanley Fish, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, and Jacques Lacan — the lot of them variously committed to the belief diat the proper job of philosophy is not the pursuit of the truth but the pursuit of die trudi about die pursuit of die truth. Johnson eyes die group warily, expecting the worst. There are too many Frenchmen present, and as he made clear at supper one July evening in the Turk's Head coffee house, French writers are superficial "because they are not scholars, and so proceed upon the mere power of dieir own minds." Nevertheless, the assembled gendemen present their positions: we are all prisoners ofthe total epistemological environment of our age, our episteme; locked linguistically into interpretive communities, we cannot know die text in itself; die proper function of the critic is creative free play, the text being merely a convenient occasion; language, being self-referential, cannot reveal a subject; human agency is a flattering but deceptive myth; transcendent systems of thought are impossible; if literature touches reality anywhere we cannot know it. MeanwhileJohnson, than whom no man ever had "a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it," is in high dudgeon, kicking figurative stones right and left, no real ones being available inside the Mitre. His adversaries observe him with indulgent good humor, amused but not impressed with this crude bourgeois display, having... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Lewis E. HahnGeorge C. H. Sun, President, John Howie, Professor Emeritus, Thomas Alexander, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Professor and Chair, Randall Auxier, Professor, Robert Hahn, Professor, Joseph Wu, Professor Emeritus, Elizabeth R. Eames, Professor Emeritus, Martin Lu, Professor of Philosophy, George Kimball Plochmann, Professor Emeritus, Matt Sronkoski, Philosophy Graduate and Academic Adviser, Dave Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Professor Emerita, Hans H. (...) Rudnick, Professor Emeritus, Stephen Bickham, Professor EmeritusPresident, and Don Mikula (bio)The following testimonials were offered on the occasion of a memorial gathering for Dr. Lewis E. Hahn held on February 19, 2005, and were compiled for presentation here by Sharon (Hahn) Crowell.A Tribute to Dr. Lewis E. Hahn (1908-2004) from a Global PerspectiveGeorge C. H. Sun President, Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc., Mobile, AlabamaAmong the philosophical community in both the East and the West, no word of introduction is needed for our beloved Master, who was the recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, with titles that included "Man of the Year in Philosophy" and "Award of Lifetime Achievement." The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself already stands now for genuineness, dedication, and fulfillment.A great work is a dialogue with eternity; a great person is such a work. In less than thirty years he succeeded in developing Carbondale from what had been a small college town in the Midwest into the Mecca of American philosophy. His most important achievements were the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives that he helped install at SIUC These, among other such institutions, will remain a unique contribution, a glory of American philosophy, and a monument in the history of human thought.For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for one human being to have accomplished so much, so well, and in so short a span of time—less than one century—in breadth, depth, and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the gap between the New World and the Old, William James was hailed as the great genius of international friendship among philosophical thinkers, but we now find a greater genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who succeeded in bringing together the peoples of East and West from at least four continents: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia. To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries have been half so widely read and liberal-minded as he was, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers that he helped continue after the passing of its founder, Dr. Paul A. Schilpp.What type of man was Hahn, our younger generation will wonder? Only a pluralist approach can help us understand the true character of such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In short, he was "a full personality." As I recall, while working on my dissertation with him in the 1970s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" was his laconic assessment. Suddenly I realized, to quote the Analects: "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, only one who has philosophy can appreciate philosophy. Many friends [End Page 1] of my generation admire him so much; Te Chen of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America." Those who regret the loss of many precious Confucian virtues in China today have now rediscovered them in the person of Lewis E. Hahn! If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had not encountered our own Master.A paradigm of academic leadership, Dr. Hahn is simply irreplaceable—this is a tribute I personally heard in Carbondale in the late 1960s. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a superb administrator, and he could have been the best Secretary of the State we ever had, for he possessed more in the way of philosophical wisdom than all his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he was no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than... (shrink)

From the viewpoint of its Stalinist-era creators, the IKKN/INS could at best be described as a mixed success. Despite heroic efforts, it failed to train the cadres that might have permeated Polish scholarship with Marxism-Leninism. If it was the major channel for transmitting Soviet experience to Polish academia, then Poland's universities would not learn to be Soviet—the Polish historian Jerzy Halbersztadt has made the point that the institute was the only direct conduit of Soviet experience into Polish academic life. It (...) even had a major role in educating some of Poland's most famous critical thinkers, although they, unlike their master Adam Schaff, seem less fond of reminiscing about the institute. Leszek Koŀakowski writes that he does not regard his role in the ideological struggles of the early 1950s as a “source of pride”.90The legacy of the IKKN/INS has also been a mixed one. It was not only a “foundry of revisionists”. For every future critical thinker of world repute, it graduated several cadres who served the PZPR loyally over decades. Adam Schaff recognises this dual legacy. Looking back on a long and active life, he has called the institute a “pearl in my crown”.91 Its members filled top party and government posts throughout the history of People's Poland. Andrzej Werblan served as Central Committee secretary and a member of the Politburo, Sylwester Zawadzki became minister of justice, Stanisŀaw Wroński was minister of culture, Mieczysŀaw Jagielski was the Politburo member who negotiated the Gdańsk accords, Stanisŀaw Kania succeeded Edward Gierek, and Mieczysŀaw Rakowski acted as General Jaruzelski's Party First Secretary.92Undoubtedly much of the institute's strange course is to be attributed to the designs of Adam Schaff. Despite his Moscow training, Schaff retained an attachment to the Polish academic milieu which had formed him. He may have believed in Stalinist doctrine, but he also believed that this doctrine would show its superiority in competition with other views—even if the competition was far from a fair one. Of course, Schaff tried to retain ultimate control, and to play, as he now calls himself, the “grey eminence”. Nevertheless, his was a very unstalinist way of propagating Stalinism, and he must be given credit for helping to keep a spirit of intellectual inquiry alive in Poland during the dark years of the early 1950s.Yet Schaff tends to exaggerate his personal role in educating philosophers, dissidents and critical thinkers. This tendency is itself a legacy of the Stalinist period and its concentration of power. Stalinists view the present as their personal creation and therefore reject all criticisms of the past. At the final meeting of the Crooked Circle Club in 1962, Schaff encountered unwonted criticism from, among others, Andrzej Walicki. Schaff shot back at him: “You are ours, you are our creation, a creation of socialism ... we educated you, and we didn't do such a bad job.” But far from being a “creation” of Schaff's, the non-party member Walicki had been denied admission to graduate studies in philosophy. He felt relieved when those in attendance, who knew him better than Schaff did, burst out laughing.93The point is that the Polish intellectual world maintained its integrity outside the IKKN/INS, and in the end it was the institute which merged into the Polish intelligentsia, rather than the opposite. After 1957 the non-Marxist sociologists and philosophers made their way back to academia, and were joined by many former INS staff members. The basic unity of Polish social science training, and of the Polish intelligentsia, was restored.94Of course in a larger sense the fate of the IKKN/INS had little to do with the designs of its master. Schaff admits as much, proclaiming that “I did this because I did not know what I was doing!” If he had been asked to start such a project five years later, the answer would have been: “No!”95 The fatal flaw of the Institute for Training Scientific Cadres was cadres: Poland did not have them. By 1956, Schaff and the party leadership, and perhaps Soviet advisers as well, had learned that one could not create an elite party scientific institution almost out of nothing. It would either be party or scientific, because apparatchiki could not become scientists, scientists would not become apparatchiki, and students could not produce teachers. In the Stalinist period, Polish intellectual life had stood in the shadow of the party; yet during the Thaw the relationship was reversed—increasingly the tiny party training institute was engulfed by the shadow of the resurgent Polish universities. Talented young people, even those in the party, made their way into the traditional higher educational establishment.The IKKN/INS did not, therefore, fail because of its own failings, nor succeed because of its own successes. It was a failed part of a failed whole. To succeed, “mild” revolution would have required decades, and Poland's Stalinists had only a few years. To make matters worse—or better, depending on viewpoint—they did not use these years in a conventional Stalinist manner. Under Schaff's guidance and at somewhat erratic Soviet bidding, the institute became an awkward series of half-measures, reminiscent of much of Polish Stalinism. When Poland's communists fell back and regrouped in 1956, the IKKN/INS occupied a lonely position they preferred to abandon. (shrink)

An excerpt from the INTRODUCTORY chapter: THE word "aesthetic," which originally meant perception by the senses, has had its meaning particularized so that it usually is associated with perception of a specific kind. In this sense it is applied to the appreciative attitude of the discerning mind towards the beautiful in art and in nature. Philosophy has spent not a little time and trouble on the attempt to formulate and define the essential nature of the beautiful; but what one regards (...) as beautiful, another will either lack interest in or even positively dislike, and such attempts, therefore, have not been particularly successful. This conflict of tastes is particularly noticeable in the case of the Art of Music. One age has its ideals which are often — if not usually — opposed to those of the succeeding generation; people in one country will take pleasure in a type of music which appears incomprehensible to those of another; and, even in the case of individuals of the same time and place, what one may admire and love another will abhor and detest. In the case of Music, therefore, it seems well-nigh hopeless to attempt to formulate or define what is the "beautiful," and I have no intention in this little book of trying such an unpromising task. Each of us has his or her own ideas of what constitutes musical beauty, and in most cases the criteria on which our judgments are based are not themselves fixed but are in a state of flux and development. Many people, it is true, seem obliged to adopt a fixed standard of artistic value to which they refer and on which their artistic judgments depend, and strenuously endeavor to prevent any change in, or deviation from, the rigorous formulae which regulate their musical thinking. An enlightened and progressive attitude is, naturally, for such, an impossibility, and the inevitable and necessary developments of Art pass unnoticed or misunderstood. Some aesthetic standards, however, are necessary, and if they are allowed to share in the inevitable process of development — if they are living, not dead — assist that process by giving it both direction and progressive energy. It is not even necessary that the musician should be able to formulate clearly what are the conditions and factors in a work in virtue of which it appeals to him as beautiful or the reverse. To reduce these aesthetic values to a clean-cut statement of relations intellectually apprehended, would, by that very act, tend to induce reference to dead and mechanical standards. The feeling of the beautiful is something which is intuitive, and which neither needs to be explained, nor can be explained, in terms of reason. In fact, it is something apprehended immediately, "perceived through the senses," and can no more be "explained" than those sensations which we call heat, cold, sweet, sour, etc. The Art of Music as practised in countries which owe their culture and civilization to Western Europe is the outgrowth of a body of doctrine and dogma which is extremely elaborate and complex. But for the fact that much of it is obviously derived from convention and custom rather than from natural law, it might almost be called a Science. It is very doubtful, however, if the feeling for the beautiful in Music is more keen in the case of the individual expert in the niceties of this quasi-science than in him who is entirely ignorant of its laws and conventions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.1 (2000) vii-ix [Access article in PDF] In Memory of Henry I first met Henry W. Johstone Jr. during the spring of 1968. I was a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin and Henry was in Madison as part of a distinguished visitor series hosted by my mentor, Lloyd Bitzer. Lloyd had invited a group of graduate students to his home to meet the guest (...) of honor. I was particularly excited because Henry had accepted my paper on Aristotle's theory of exemplification to appear in the new international journal Philosophy and Rhetoric, which he edited. This was my first publication and I wanted to thank him, which seemed to this novice the appropriate thing to do. I remember that evening for Henry's seeming reserve, which I later learned was a deep shyness that masked his capacity for uncanny directness and a wicked sense of humor, and for his generosity in deflecting my naiveté about the basis for editorial judgments. I also remember it for his deft way of engaging a room of young rhetoricians with questions that conveyed his doubt about their subject (he later changed his mind) without clouding his sincere openness to what we had to say. The following fall, we met again during my interview for a position in the Speech Department at Penn State University. I was offered the position and became Henry's colleague as Book Review Editor of P&R. For the next thirty years, I was blessed to serve as Henry's partner-in-crime in the joys of life that may remain today only among the professoriate. We shared in the editorial work of the journal, in co-teaching our graduate seminar in Philosophy and Rhetoric, in our intellectual passion for the bonds and wars between philosophy and rhetoric, and in the pleasure of choosing the right bottle of wine. But more than that, we shared these common pursuits in contexts of luncheons, dinners, and social occasions that mixed intellectual work with the pleasure of treasured company.My son phoned today to tell me that Henry had died. His passing leaves a void in my life that goes beyond the loss of a friend and colleague. Henry was the person who, through patient selection of manuscripts for me to referee and guidance, taught me how to read journal submissions and offer critiques that might help the author to improve and the journal to prosper. Henry was the person who taught me the value of generosity with junior colleagues by his respectful and serious engagement of my own work. He had a marvelous capacity to entertain any idea seriously, to consider the possibility that even a far-fetched conjecture might have value rather than rejecting it out of hand. He lived the ideas he wrote about as a philosopher, arguing always ad hominem and con amore. Henry was the person who took me in tow as a young Turk and suffered my impatience with the conservative ways of our established institution [End Page vii] by taking me to lunch, engaging me in discussions of ideas, and sharing the delights of intellectual work, and in the process helping me retain my ideals and my focus.Lunch for Henry was more than a noontime meal. It was the way he sustained bonds with those he valued as friends and colleagues. He would call two weeks in advance to arrange a date at the Allen Room of the State College Hotel. He would arrive at my office ten minutes early and we would take a leisurely stroll along the Old Main Mall to the hotel. Our arrival was announced by the host with "Good afternoon Dr. Johnstone," that showed in its formality deep respect and in its tone equally deep affection. Henry always took a cocktail with lunch, inviting his companion to join him, and unless you were specific about the bill beforehand, Henry usually insisted on paying. Settling the bill was never an issue for Henry. He often included a graduate assistant from the journal or an assistant professor in our party and seemed to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Authorship of the Abstract Revisited John 0. Nelson More than a dozen years ago, in the pages of The Philosophical Quarterly,1 this writer contested Sraffa and Keynes' claim, advanced in the introduction to their edition ofthe Abstract? that it was Hume and not Adam Smith (as traditionally supposed) who was the author of that work. The traditional view, which might be called the Adam Smith authorship-theory, (...) was largely inspired by and seemed nailed shut by Hume's reference to a "Mr Smith" in a letter to Francis Hutcheson, datedMarch 4, 1740.3There appeared tobe goodreasonsforidentifying this "Mr Smith" with Adam Smith and then the latter with the undivulged author of the Abstract. It was known, for instance, that previous to March 4, 1740, Adam Smith had been a student of Hutcheson's and that Hutcheson was in the habit of setting his students the task of writing abstracts of newly published philosophical works.4 Since Hutcheson had originallylooked with favor on both the Treatise and its author,5 it had to seem more than likely that he had set his students the task ofwriting an abstract ofthe newly published Treatise ofHume. It was known, too, that Adam Smith was in possession of a copy ofthe Treatise soon after the date of H.6 Who, then, might be the "Mr Smith" adverted to in H's "My Bookseller has sent to Mr Smith a Copy of my Book, which I hope he has receive, as well as your Letter," except that same student of Hutcheson's, Adam Smith? What other Smith might have been known to Hutcheson, whom Hume could have wanted to refer to? No other Smith appeared to fit the bill. But why should Hume have wanted to refer in his correspondence with Hutcheson to an obscure, sixteen-year-old student ofHutcheson's, besides going to the trouble of having his bookseller send him a copy of the Treatise, unless that student had in some way made himselfnot only known to Hume but so highly regarded that Hume would want to favor him, presumably at his own expense, with a copy ofthe Treatise? The only tenable answer had to seem to be that this same student had composed such a perceptive and laudatory précis of the Treatise for Hutcheson that the latter had shown it to Hume and Hume, in the honest attempt to excite interest and sales of that languishing work, had seen to its publication as the Abstractl These are the reasonings Volume XVII Number 1 83 JOHN O. NELSON and considerations that inspired and seemed to confirm the Adam Smith authorship-theory.7 As can be perceived, these reasonings and considerations all revolve around the reference to a "Mr Smith"in H andthe identification of that Smith with Adam Smith. When, therefore, Sraffa and Keynes in the introduction to their edition oftheAbstract pointed out that there existed another Smith who might arguably be the Mr Smith referred toin H, namely, the DubUn publisher oftwo ofHutcheson's works, John Smith "at the Philosopher's Head on the Blind Quay," its major prop being seemingly knocked out from under it, the Adam Smith authorship-theory crashed—at least in the eyes of the general world—to the ground. And in thelatter's place, various ofits supporting reasons being given a lease on life, such as Hume's well-known endeavors and desires to excite interest in this first work of his, the Hume authorship-theory, so to speak, seated itself. In my previous venture into this subject, "Has the Authorship of An Abstract ofa Treatise ofHuman Nature Really Been Decided?"8 I tried, I believe with some success, to show that Sraffa and Keynes' arguments were not so unanswerable as they were generally taken to be and that, in fact, they presented various difficulties which the traditional theory avoided. But what then occasions this new excursion into these troubled waters? What more is to be said that I did not say in "Decided"? In "Decided" I presented various arguments and considerations that showed that it was unlikely either that Hume was the author of theAbstract or that the Mr Smith referred to in H... (shrink)

Rene Descartes's motto challenges his would-be historians: "He lives well who hides well." He hid even in the Discourse on Method, where he professed to recount the story of his "entire life, " but said almost nothing about his childhood and youth. He mentioned neither family nor friends, and he boasted a total freedom from irrational passions. In the Discourse, which presented a new way of achieving certain truth through mathematical reason, Descartes stressed just one event, a day of thinking (...) at the beginning of winter, 1619. Tucked away in an unpublished notebook, however, Descartes also left the Olympica, which documented the wildly irrational dreams he had the night of November 10, 1619, and gave his own enthusiastic interpretations. Embarrassed scholars have tried to reason away this record and even the dreams themselves. Adapting clinical methods to historical research, John Cole offers the first systematic interpretation of the Olympian dreams. He argues that they expressed and masked Descartes's unresolved conflicts: his guilt at having rejected the law career for which he had been trained and which his lawyer father had wanted him to pursue, and his shame over early failures to satisfy the high expectations of his friend and mentor, Isaac Beeckman. Cole shows us how a critical historian can make sense of such irrational material and lets us see the creation of an egocentric and rationalist philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PHILOSOPHY AND STYLE: WITTGENSTEIN AND RUSSELL by John Hughes Was there ever a great philosopher who was not also a distinctive stylist, whose modes of elucidation or comprehension were not inseparable from wholly individual ways of writing? If it is true that this is a fact often noted by commentators or philosophers, it is also true that its implications are somewhat neglected. A study of a philosopher 's (...) characteristic uses of language can suggest a great deal about the relationships between thought and personality—between what is said or written, and how or why. The aim of what follows is briefly to compare Wittgenstein and Russell in these terms, to suggest something of how a study of this kind can deepen our understanding of the personal sources and contexts of philosophy. Russell's daughter Katherine once wrote of her father that although he was "a passionate believer in liberty and equality" he was, in practice, incapable of "fraternity," an aristocrat "who had been taught to think himselfsuperior."1 Such paradoxes and blind spots are, ofcourse, often noted in men of vision and principle, and it would be invidious to lay too uncharitable an emphasis on these words. However, the comment does indicate a track of vision fundamentally characteristic of Russell. In intellectual terms he was capable of imposing upon phenomena of the most diverse kinds a synoptic perspective of supreme sweep and rigor which, nevertheless, coexists with all sorts of necessary simplifi332 John Hughes333 cation, even evasiveness. As an aspect ofthis his prose can come to seem both satisfied in its own superior lucidity, and tendentious. An obvious, if perhaps slighdy unfair, example of the personal aspect of this is a passage from the beginning of the Autobiography: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither... over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair...."2 The self-esteem which sustains and is sustained by this prose lacks relation to words, reader, and world. The vocabulary, sentiments, and syntax of this sentence assume an impossible grandeur which merely encloses Russell within his own expansive sense of his destiny. The comparisons here are worth pursuing. Russell depends on a congenial sense of an historic philosophical mission, and is adept at conveying his sense of this to the reader. However, he remains unreflective about the implications or nature of the process, and this may excite orirritate us depending on how we react to thewriter's assumption of our acquiescence in his own estimation of himself. The later Wittgenstein, in contrast, is far more suspicious of the way philosophy can be compromised by self-satisfaction: "A beautiful garment that is transformed (coagulates, as it were) into worms and serpents if its wearer looks smugly at himself in the mirror...."3 As has been implied, for Wittgenstein philosophy, in one aspect, was an attempt to authenticate self-presentation, as it was also an attempt to evade "the edifice of... pride."4 The unremitting grappling with words reveals the man to the reader, while the exacting inner focus and process ofthe philosophy exclude any composed consciousness of self. What of Russell's writing on other topics? Here is an example picked more or less at random from On Education: But that is not the real issue; the real issue is: should we, in education, aim at filling the mind with knowledge which has direct practical utility, or should we try to give our pupils mental possessions which are good on their own account? It is useful to know that there are twelve inches in a foot, and three feet in a yard, but this knowledge has no intrinsic value; to those who live where the metric system is in use it is utterly worthless. To appreciate Hamlet, on the other hand, will not be much use in practical life, except in those rare cases where a man is called upon to kill his uncle; but it gives a man a mental possession which he would be soriy to be without, and makes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anthropological Perspectives in Psychiatric NosologyJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)KeywordsDSM, etiology, Aristotelian causes, social dramasPsychiatry and clinical psychology, as we learn in this paper, are disciplines in need of an ontological perspective. Very few branches of contemporary learning share this characteristic. Probably only theoretical physic and theology—as the rest have long ago given up trying to define and understand the essence of their object, for example, (...) life in the case of biology or mind in psychology. Consequently, the paper by Pérez-Álvarez, Sass and García-Montes, “The Ontology of Mental Disorders in Constructivist Perspective,” (2008) should be welcomed and indeed included in the reading lists for trainees in psychiatry and clinical psychology.The authors propose an approach to the understanding of mental disorders that is extremely attractive and well articulated, and which also has practical implications for clinicians. It is not just another “philosophical divertimento” devoid of scientific and practical importance. Let us analyze the article in an orderly way.Less DsmThe authors of the target paper disapprove of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-III/IV approach to defining illnesses by starting from the symptoms that are present—on the grounds that this may lead clinicians to assume that their sole role is to identify, fight, and suppress the symptoms by whichever procedure. They propose an alternative that is dear to myself because it follows the path of the so-called “anthropological” psychiatry of Binswanger, von Gebsattel, Erwin Strauss, Zutt, López-Ibor, Sr., and others. In essence, this is a phenomenological approach to the meaning of mental diseases, one that emphasizes how the illness is revealed to the patient him- or herself.The target article’s criticism of DSM should be considered in the context of the abuses committed on its behalf. The DSM is not a textbook of psychiatric disorders, nor does it contain a definition of the diseases. The DSM does not tell what a disease is (Klerman et al. 1984)—something that is impossible with a classification system based on the manifestations of the diseases, the signs and symptoms. The DSM, as its title states, is just a diagnostic and statistical manual, which does not contain anything about the origin of [End Page 259] any disease nor an explanation of why it exists or what it means. The DSM is, in fact, just a tool to determine whether a disease is present, and therefore to facilitate communication between professionals and with other individuals, without saying anything about the disease’s aitia—a key term (associated with notions of essence as well as cause) to be discussed below. In theory, most clinicians should understand these limitations; it may be, however, that this is not really the case for many who read or use the DSM. In the world there are around 200,000 psychiatrists; since 1980 the number of DSM copies sold is in the order of several hundred thousand.The misuse of a classification system is even more noticeable in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 Research Version. The instructions for the use of this version recommend that the first step is to make an inventory of all the symptoms present, and then to construct a diagnosis based on them. This how all computer-assisted systems work. This procedure can, however, only be valid if the clinician has already reached a diagnostic conclusion by other means—a diagnosis then to be confirmed for research purposes. It may be that this is one of the reasons why the ICD-10 Research Version has almost never actually been used for research.Furthermore, the concept of symptoms in psychiatry applies only to organic mental disorders (Schneider 1959), conditions in which the patient’s attitude and way of experiencing the symptoms do not play the kind of role that they play in schizophrenia and other mental disorders. The quotation from the important paper by Sass and Parnas in this context is most appropriate. It is indeed that case that “subjective experience can play an important causal role in the progressive experiential transformations of a developing schizophrenic illness... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Office of Scientific IntegrityDavid P. Hamilton (bio)For most of the 1980s, the specter of scientific fraud popped into public view every few years, usually only to submerge again. Faced with several well-publicized cases of scientists who blatantly faked their data—among the best-known being Harvard cardiologist John Darsee (whose colleagues watched him forge data) (Broad and Wade 1982, p. 14) and Sloan-Kettering Institute immunologist William Summerlin (who painted (...) black spots on white mice to simulate tissue grafts) (Broad and Wade 1982, p. 155)—the scientific community as a whole tended to dismiss the phenomenon as the work of a few deviants. Called in 1981 to testify before then-Representative Albert Gore Jr.'s subcommittee on investigations and oversight, Philip Handler, then-president of the National Academy of Sciences, told the panel that science was perfectly capable of regulating itself, and that the problem of scientific fraud had been "grossly exaggerated" by the press (Broad and Wade 1982). The message was clear: Congress should stick to its knitting, and science would take care of itself.Now, however, scientists are faced with a very different situation: a permanent federal bureaucracy, known as the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), devoted to the investigation of alleged scientific wrongdoing. The transition from the days of laissez-faire, when universities were entrusted with all investigations unless they were handled so badly that the federal government was forced to take notice, has been an uncomfortable one for many researchers. Lately, this discomfort has taken shape as a vocal protest against OSI. Largely as a result of this protest, federal officials recently promoted a plan to restructure OSI and change some of its operating procedures, a move with unpredictable consequences for universities and researchers alike.OSI was born largely because of investigations by two influential congressmen: Representatives John Dingell of Michigan and Ted Weiss of New York. While both claimed they acted mainly to make sure taxpayer dollars were not spent on fraudulent research, both also maintained a strong interest in protecting "whistleblowers," the often vulnerable, and usually junior, scientists who first raise questions about bad research. And Dingell seemed to take special pleasure in pointing up the deficiencies of investigations run by universities and by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) itself. (For reasons that are not well understood, [End Page 171] biomedical research seems far more prone to fraud than any other field of science. As a result, NIH, which funds most biomedical research in the United States, has held ultimate responsibility for most prominent cases of fraud.) Plagued as they often were by conflicts of interest, shoddy methodologies, and, in some cases, a willingness to believe any excuse by the accused, no matter how far-fetched, these investigations made easy targets. And the notion that science could "govern itself" grew harder to sustain.In late 1988, Dingell and other congressmen began circulating draft bills that would have created a new office for investigating scientific fraud. Dingell would have placed such an office under the aegis of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, raising the possibility that scientific fraud might be probed by the same criminal investigators who unravel Medicare fraud. Unsettled by this vision of the "science police," NIH officials moved quickly to pre-empt Congress. On March 16, 1989, they published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the creation of OSI, an office with responsibility for ensuring thorough university investigations of misconduct and the authority to conduct its own investigations when necessary.From the beginning, OSI took an unusual approach to its work. For one thing, the office had a broad mandate: Although located within NIH, it was responsible for research funded throughout the entire Public Health Service, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control. Furthermore, it was not restricted to scientific fraud. Departmental lawyers, wishing to avoid the legal connotations of the term "fraud"—in particular, a requirement that fraudulent actions not only mislead others but also cause them noticeable harm—decided instead to adopt the term "scientific misconduct," defined as "fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that deviate... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to DialogueJohn BorelliChristianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue. By Jacques Dupuis, SJ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. 276 pp.Why read Jacques Dupuis's Christianity and the Religions (2001) when his more comprehensive, ground-breaking Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis, 1997) is still available? Father Dupuis reminds us in the introduction to Christianity that he has actually written three (...) books on the same subject—Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions (Orbis, 1991) being the first—but he reaffirms the central importance of Religious Pluralism. After publication of this second work, his editors wanted another volume on the same topic, "less ponderous, more accessible, and aimed at an audience broader than the circle of specialists and the academy." That was the origin of Christianity and the Religions, a story Fr. Dupuis related to me when I visited him at Gregorian University in early February 2001. It was meant to be an easier-to-read version of Religious Pluralism, something for students who do not need abundant references to authors and historical developments. Circumstances, however, added another dimension to the need for yet another volume. [End Page 182]Christianity and the Religions was ready for publication in early 2001, but Fr. Dupuis was waiting for "official notification" from the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding its charges that Religious Pluralism contained "serious doctrinal error." By then, the case was in its thirty-second and final month, for later in February 2001 he received word from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation, that the charge had been reduced to "ambiguities and difficulties on important points which could lead a reader to erroneous or harmful opinions." Dupuis last appeared before Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation's advisers on the day before Dominus Iesus was released in September 2000, accompanied by Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Jesuits, and Dupuis's advocate and colleague at the Gregorian University, Fr. Gerald O'Collins. Dupuis used the opportunity of a more accessible version of the book in question to address squarely the charges raised against him. He writes in the introduction to Christianity and the Religions: "Suffice it to say that in this new book I have scrupulously avoided all expressions that could raise any misunderstanding or create ambiguity over either the content of the faith or my thought." Dupuis dedicated the book to retired Cardinal Franz Kōnig. He chose to quote an earlier (1963) text by Cardinal Ratzinger on the page following the dedication: "What the Church needs today, as always, are not adulators to extol the status quo, but men whose humility and obedience are no less than their passion for truth: men who brave every misunderstanding and attack as they bear witness; men who in a word, love the Church more than ease and the unruffled course of their personal destiny." In 1999, Ratzinger and Kōnig had exchanged views, point and counterpoint, in the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, over Dupuis's earlier Religious Pluralism.Fr. Jacques Dupuis died of an apparent stroke on 28 December 2004 at age 81. Although the investigation had brought him increased attention and invitations to speak, he was in Rome, his home since 1984, at the time of his death. When I visited him in 2001 and again heard him speak at the Catholic University of America just twenty-four days before his death, it was clear how much the case and accompanying suspicion had hurt him. Dupuis was principally a theologian who had considered it his good fortune to have lived and taught in India for thirty-six years. He also had taught theology for nearly fifteen years at Gregorian University, the premier university of his religious order. Many viewed the outcome of the investigation as a vindication of his work because he did not have to change a single sentence in Religious Pluralism for it to remain in publication, but the success of his defense came at a great price. The shadow of suspicion never left him. He had adopted a style of stopping, often amidst reflections on religious... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.4 (2005) 307-310 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetics, Criticism, and Psychotherapy John Z. Sadler Keywords aesthetics, psychiatry, psychotherapy, Sibley In his wide-ranging survey of how Kantian aesthetic theory is implicated in psychothera-py, John Callender has raised at least a dozen potentially profound and rewarding possibilities in applying aesthetic theory to psychiatry and psychotherapy. Although the idea of marrying aesthetic theory to psychiatry and (...) psychotherapy is not new, Callender's direction of the merger is distinctively novel. The mid-twentieth century had a distinct literature in applying psychoanalytic and psychiatric theory to aesthetic experience, summarized by the sizable bibliography by Norman Kiell, Psychiatry and Psychology in the Visual Arts and Aesthetics: A Bibliography (1965). This line of interdisciplinary work influenced a later generation of art historians and literary theorists in applying (particularly) psychoanalytic theory to interpretation and appreciation of the arts, contributions that are still being developed today, along with the emergence of complementary viewpoints from cognitive neuroscience (Peretz and Zatorre 2003; Rose 2004; Zeki 1999). Callender's project, however, is quite the converse—he wishes to show how philosophical aesthetics can contribute to psychiatry and clinical psychology. Exploring the aesthetics of psychiatry is the innovation.Before focusing my own comments on a few of Callender's points, I wish to call attention to the substantive questions he has directly raised or implied by his discussions. These questions are worthy of further development in this and other journals, and I hope that Callender will succeed in engaging the minds of his readers and inspire them to work in this exciting area in the philosophy of psychiatry. In his elegant review of Kant's key theoretical points of aesthetics, his discussion provokes us to consider the kinds of evaluations that patients make of themselves (moral? aesthetic? others?), as well as the kinds of evaluations clinicians make in their judgments of psychopathology. Evolutionists may wonder about the adaptive significance of aesthetic capacities (e.g., derivatives of grooming? mating displays?). In presenting Kant's notion of "disinterestedness" or contemplative judgment, readers may wonder about overlap with notions of therapist neutrality and unconditional positive regard. Should therapist relationships with patients be dominated by a similar aesthetic sensibility? What does the aesthetic posture have to do with the therapist posture?Importantly, Callender notes the connections and ambiguities between moral values and aesthetic values. This is borne out in his later discussions of clinical case material (considered again below). He focuses primarily on the duplication of aesthetic and moral values in the same terms of praise (honesty, integrity, originality), but there is no question that aesthetic experiences are had by viewers of art exhibiting perverse or depraved [End Page 307] imagery (consider, for instance, Francis Bacon's "3 Screaming Popes" or, even more extremely, the grotesque staged photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin). The implication here is that (as an example) to understand the aesthetics of sadomasochistic art may help us to understand the psychology of sadomasochistic people.By the time he introduces his case material, Callender has raised the issue of intersubjectivity in aesthetic experience, an experience that may be devoid of discursive cognitive content but may be profound with emotional content, thus challenging tenets of cognitive psychology and psychotherapy. His discussion of cases reflecting elements of Kant's components of aesthetic judgment point toward new ways of understanding psychopathology as disturbances in aesthetic self-appraisal.I would like to return to the problem of moral and aesthetic judgments in psychotherapy and in psychopathology. Dr. Callender presents three cases—a woman who has been traumatized by multiple instances of sexual abuse, a young girl with postpartum depression with fears of losing her child because of bad mothering, and a third patient with anorexia nervosa who demonstrates the typically distorted body self-image. I suggest that the aesthetic nature of these patients' self-judgments is not so clear cut as Callender suggests. His sexual abuse case summary certainly suggests a woman consumed by shame. Because shame is a typical "moral emotion," the question is raised of moral badness being involved in her self-concept as well as, or perhaps... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Divine Grace and the Play of OppositesTrent PomplunIn Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Donald Lopez treats his readers to a provocative but entertaining history of Western fantasies about Tibet. Lopez discovers at the root of these fantasies a "play of opposites" between "the pristine and the polluted, the authentic and the derivative, the holy and the demonic, the good and the bad."1 Not surprisingly, Catholic missionaries (...) to Tibet play an important role in Lopez's history, and he depicts them as prisoners to the play of opposites par excellence. Truth be told, it is difficult to deny his charges; in a passage quoted by Lopez, the seventeenth-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher describes Tibetans' veneration of the Dalai Lama in these words:Strangers at their approach fall prostrate with their heads to the ground, and kiss him with incredible Veneration, which is no other than that which is performed upon the Pope of Rome; so that hence the fraud and deceit of the Devil may easily and plainly appear, who by his innate malignity and hatred, in way of abuse hath transferred, as he hath done all the other Mysteries of the Christian Religion, the Veneration which is due unto the Pope of Rome, the only Vicar of Christ on Earth, unto the superstitious Worship of barbarous people.Whence as the Christians call the Roman High-Priest Father of Fathers, so these Barbarians term their false Deity the Great Lama, that is, the Great High-Priest, the Lama of Lamas, that is, the High-Priest of High-Priests, because that from him, as from a certain Fountain, floweth the whole form and mode of their religion, or rather mad and brain-sick idolatry, whence also they call him the Eternal Father.2Lopez explains this passage in light of what he calls the "doctrine" of demonic plagiarism, a relatively common belief among Christian theologians that resemblances between Christianity and other religions could be explained as parodies of the true faith authored by the Devil. Athanasius Kircher undoubtedly believed in such parodies; in point of fact, he had much stronger views about them than many of his contemporaries. But Lopez continues,Why must this appearance be demonic? The answer derives in part from the Christian Church's claim to historical and ontological particularity. It is the [End Page 159] task of the missionary to transmit the word of particularity to those realms where it has not spread, to diffuse it from its unique point of origin. To carry its accoutrements from Rome in a time and to a place they could not possibly have been taken before, and to find them already there, suggests the workings of a power beyond history, which could only be seen as demonic.3I would like to take issue with this unfortunately misleading presentation of Christian theology. No orthodox Catholic theologian believed that such appearances were necessarily demonic, nor did any think that demonic influences ruled out other, more positive, ones. A cursory reading of the writings of Ippolito Desideri, the Jesuit adventurer and missionary who lived in Tibet from 1716 to 1721, should demonstrate that Roman Catholic theologians developed several complex theories about the resemblances between Christians and non-Christians in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. If we situate the Jesuit missionary squarely in the theological currents of the seventeenth century, especially in debates about the salvation of non-Christians, I think we can come to see that the views of Roman Catholic missionaries about Tibetans, and non-Christians in general, were considerably more complex than Lopez imagines.Ippolito Desideri on the Salvation of Tibetan BuddhistsIppolito Desideri arrived in Lhasa on March 18, 1716. As a result of his acquaintance with Khang chen nas and Don grub tshe ring, Desideri quickly gained access to the court of the Qōśot Mongol chieftain Lha bzang Khan.4 Much to the missionary's delight, the Khan granted his request to preach the Gospel in Tibet with great enthusiasm and—if we are to believe Desideri's account—no small amount of paternal sentimentality. In order to facilitate his preaching, Desideri composed a small book explaining the errors... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rembrandt BookProfessor Emeritus John Adkins RichardsonThe Rembrandt Book by Gary Schwartz. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006, 384 pp. $40.95, cloth.This truly is the Rembrandt book. Substantial in every way, it is physically imposing, magnificently printed on heavy, glossy stock and profusely illustrated with splendid color reproductions of all the master’s major works and many sketches and preparatory drawings, as well as etchings and dry-point engravings. (...) Gary Schwartz, who studied art history at New York University and Johns Hopkins University, is now living in the Netherlands. The merits of his book are enormous. Not only is it filled with magnificent reproductions, there are tables and graphs detailing such things as the number of Rembrandt paintings in catalogues from 1836 to 1992; analyses of the artist’s borrowings and adaptations in five-year periods; key dates in the life of the man; Rembrandt’s relation to the forms of sale for paintings in the Dutch seventeenth century; and so on. There is even a computer rendering of the famous depiction of Captain Banning Cocq’s Company of Guards at the Gates of Amsterdam (popularly called The Night Watch), specifying the weapons shown and identifying all present, either by name and title or by a description, such as “girl in gold and blue,” “pikeman,” “musketeer,” etc.A sampling of the chapter headings and subcategories suggests just how comprehensive is Schwartz’s treatment: 1. Introduction, 2. A Dutch Artist’s Life, 3. Family, Loved Ones, Households, 4. Craft, 5. Earning and Spending, 6. Patrons, 7. Landscape, 8. Humankind, 9. Man and God. Just the specifics of the last chapter are remarkably capacious: Holy Family; Christ’s Ministry; Passion, Death and Afterlife; Divine Intervention; Holy People; Moral Examples from the Old Testament; The Man of God, Simeon; Afterlife; and Rembrandt as a Christian Rhetorician of the Brush. It’s hard to imagine a better reference for the lay reader than The Rembrandt Book.The book is also full of interesting contrasts of opinion as well as some surprising remarks. As for one of the latter, Schwartz writes that Rembrandt’s “portraits are said to be more ‘psychological’ than those of his contemporaries. What this might mean I frankly do not understand” (213). He goes on to note that the field of psychology did not exist in Rembrandt’s time. However, from long before its invention people spoke of Rembrandt’s ability to reveal the soul of the sitter. Indeed, the reason I was not surprised, although somewhat distressed, when the Rembrandt Research Project—a group of connoisseurs set up in 1969 with the explicit charge of authenticating all works ascribed to the master—announced in 1985 that The Man with a Golden Helmet in Berlin was not by the master at all, was that I had all along been troubled by this face that lacked the quality of animation in repose so [End Page 115] characteristic of Rembrandt portraits. Schwartz thinks the artist would have to have relied upon the ancient theory of the humors to do “characterological descriptions” of his sitters, and that in portraiture, “such characterizations would quickly resemble caricatures.” And, indeed, they do, but in profoundly subtle ways, much as someone like the popular illustrator Norman Rockwell employed tiny caricature-like distortions to project a kind of homely Americanism. I’m not comparing Rockwell to Rembrandt but choosing a realistic illustrator in whose work the trick is more apparent. Caricature can be as broad as it is in Jacques Callot, William Hogarth, or Honoré Daumier and yet be a feature of true art. Or so it seems to me, admittedly, a sometimes cartoonist as well as painter and engraver.Schwartz’s completeness of coverage leads him to include, in addition to superb drawings and prints, some that are so careless and hasty as to make one doubt their authenticity. One of the works of marginal quality is an etching of Six’s Bridge, which is said to have been created outdoors, hastily, on the site. This is a hotly debated issue. Rembrandt is known to have carried “varnished”—that is, grounded—copper etching plates, so there wouldn’t seem much reason to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Persians TIMOTHEUS (Translated by John Warden)... urging on their floating bronze-beaked chariots ram by ram furrowing the waves with pointed teeth....... with humped heads stripped away arms of fir, thumped ’em on the left, mariners tumbled, smashed ’em on the right in their pinewood towers, back on their feet again. Ha! Tear off flesh to their rope-bound ribs, sink ’em with thunderbolts, rip away gilded splendour with (...) iron-helmed rams. Thonged javelins fly fire-like, shafts trembling in pierced limbs, wood slivers ablaze long-winged brazen-headed, slaughtered victims swarm. ◊♦◊ Sea with glass-green hair its furrows stained with blood; shouts of victors, screams of vanquished; the barbarous fleet borne away over the fish-crowned gleaming curves of Amphitrite’s breast. ◊♦◊ Lord of a daywide land, islander out for a sail ha! listing, tipping, arms and feet arion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 96 the persians thrashing in the buffeting waves, cries to the sea god, “Father...” Winds drop and veer, smite him on the other side. No Bacchus poured that liquid into his wine jar belly. He vomits up the boiling sea flood, screaming through clenched teeth against the defiling sea: “Was once not enough to have your proud neck yoked with bonds of hemp? See, now my lord will churn you with pine trees born in the mountains, encompass your watery plains with mariners, you madcap, long-loathed, faithless plaything of the swift-surfing winds.” Gasps out the words and a disgusting stream of sour sea water comes belching from his belly. ◊♦◊ Homeward they scurry, the Persian fleet, the foreigners squadron smashing into squadron in the long-necked strait jolts from their hands their mountain feet, leap from their mouths their gleaming helpmates; bodies without breath, without light, festoon the starsprent sea, weigh down the headlands. Survivors on the shore sit naked and freezing, tears dripping from their howled laments. Possessed by the dirge-song of grief, they keen and beat their breasts: “O vales of Mysia with your trees like a woman’s hair, take me home. For the winds are carrying me away. Timotheus 97 Never will the dust of earth receive my body....... in a cave where nymphs are born, below the ocean floor. Protect me from Helle, ship-bridged bringer of war. Had my lord not built that far-travelled causeway, never would I have come from Tmolus or Lydian Sardis to keep at bay the Greek war god. But now where shall I find sweet refuge from unbending fate? Who will free me from suffering and bring me home to Troy? Could I but fall at the ivy-robed knees of the Queen, the Mountain Mother, embrace her lovely arms and pray: ‘Goddess of golden hair, mother, I beg you rescue me, rescue me from the devious steel that slits the throat, from the wave-skimming gales, ship breakers, from Boreas that freezes by night. The winds will dash me to pieces. Already the cruel waves have torn the clothing from my body. Now I shall lie wretched, my flesh a feast to the tribes of birds.’” ◊♦◊ See a Greek with a sword of iron grab a man from Celaeno, rich in flocks, bereft in battle, drag him by the hair. Arms twined around knees, he breaks the seal of his lips seeking Greek in the shrill voice of Asia: Listen Mister not me why come. Not me, no never, big master send me, me no never come fight. Stay home Sardis, Sousa, Ecbatana. Great god Artemis 98 the persians Ephesus guard me. Swift-running backward-running they pursue their flight, cast from their hands the twin-mouthed javelins, tear the flesh from their faces, rip from their breasts their sumptuous Persian gowns, raise in one voice their Asiatic wailing. Those round the King are loud in panic at the coming disaster. The King looks down at the mingled host in flight, falls to his knees, defiles his body. Tossed in fate’s waves he speaks: Root and branch my house has fallen! The flaming ships of the Greeks have slain the flower of our youth. There is no way home, our ships consumed by the blazing might of harsh... (shrink)

Gregory Pappas faced a difficult task in offering a critical response to this book, as he is not only the current philosopher who is most cited in the book, but the book frequently acknowledges his work as being the single greatest intellectual bridge between the various filosofías vivas (living philosophies) of the Americas. I am humbled by Goyo's (Pappas's) kind words and thankful for his critiques.Pappas's most significant critique concerns Part II of the book, the part that investigates the danger (...) that inter-American philosophy might function, intentionally or not, as a form of US propaganda. Pappas suggests that this section descends into an oversimplified kind of cultural Manichaeanism, where all of Latin America's problems are explained as being due to yanqui colonialism and the peoples of Latin American countries are all virtuous, long-suffering victims with no agency or accountability themselves. Worse yet, Pappas raises the possibility that I have foolishly set out on a Quest for Purity (fighting words to be sure since he knows how much I dig Dewey's Quest for Certainty!) where I make it my mission to imagine an American philosophical discourse disinfected of all North American colonialism. Pappas's critique is fair and insightful. I am most concerned that in my effort to take seriously the linkages between American pragmatism and American colonialism that Rodó, Vasconcelos, and others allege exist, I have painted an oversimplified and crude picture that, most troublingly, elides the moral agency of the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America. Please let me offer a few responses to his critique that the book lacked subtlety in its analysis of colonialism as it relates to inter-American philosophy and North American Pragmatism.First, Pappas is undoubtedly correct that the United States is not to blame for all the problems that beset the peoples of Latin America, and that every country has its own, homegrown problems of corruption and vice. However, a philosophy centered on the problems of life recognizes our contexts and various situated positions. Therefore, as a gringo (even a gringo Boricua who was raised in Puerto Rico), I contend it is not my place to remove the mote of moral failures from those living within a colonial system while the beam of white colonialism still blinds most white Americans (including me) from properly seeing ourselves in this system. Pappas is, of course, correct when he says that the “other side also needs some correction.” However, as a white US citizen who has benefitted from these colonial systems, I think it is most productive and appropriate for me, for reasons of pragmatist fallibilism if nothing else, to attend to my side in the problem, which is the history and present of US colonialism in the Americas. While I accept that my analysis lacked balance and subtlety, as Pappas rightly notes, the reason was that I was trying to write consistently from my position as a yanqui who wanted to thematize the role of US colonialism within Latin America, not to strive for purity, but instead a full reckoning of a system that my privilege encourages me to ignore.This leads to a second valence of my response to Dr. Pappas's critique, one that regards how my affinities impact my epistemology. If some readers find the critique of American Pragmatism in Part II to be too vociferous (though, I am sure many others will find the critiques too tame), it was because I was intentionally trying to write with my off-hand, as it were. The chapters of Part II strive to charitably consider and make room for the charge that was suggested by Frondizi and strenuously argued by Vasconcelos, Rodó, and Albizu, that philosophies of the Global North, including Pragmatism, facilitate systems of oppression in the Global South. I did so to try to correct for the fact that my starting point is one of great admiration and even love for American Philosophy, including many English-language North American pragmatists like Dewey, James, and Addams. One of the premises of this book is that the academic discourse of inter-American philosophy is ready to grow past the initial stage of development, which has heretofore focused on delineating points of affinity between the intellectual traditions of the Americas, and to start to contend with points of discord and contention. So while I was (and truthfully still am not) convinced by José Vasconcelos's depiction of John Dewey as the High Priest of the American Empire, I also know that since Dewey is one of my greatest influences, my personal affinity might lead me to exculpate him even if a critique is valid. Therefore, I argue that it is appropriate and necessary to offer a charitable summary of these critiques so that other scholars with different perspectives and starting points might weigh in on these and other critiques. The purpose of this book was less to argue a position about many of these issues, than it was to invite and foster a broader, truly inter-American community of inquiry to engage with these questions to have a full and complex assessment of the questions. Somewhat ironically, I dedicated a third of this book to making charitable room for critiques of North American Pragmatism for good pragmatist reasons. One of the most significant values of philosophical Pragmatism is its prioritization of a particular method of inquiry that is democratic and sincere above any particular claim. In this case, that means it is more important to have an inter-American philosophical dialogue that makes room for and charitably considers all claims (including claims that are profoundly distrustful of Pragmatism by thinkers like Rodó and Vasconcelos) than it is for me, as one voice speaking at what I think is still an early stage of the conversation, to defend or refute particular claims about philosophers. A full scholarly discourse developed by an inter-American community of philosophical inquiry will yield the sort of subtle and nuanced historical understanding Pappas calls for. The intent was to move this discourse toward the more contentious points of inter-American philosophical exchange and precisely because I believe that fostering a broader, truly American philosophical discourse is a legitimate aspiration. The Deweyan in me believes that this kind of community of engaged inquirers is the best group to encourage the sort of ground-up change that Alexis Massol and others call us to make.Finally, the most personally authentic response to Pappas's critique is that the parts of the book that sought parallels between the horrific crimes and injustices of American imperialism and American Pragmatism were my attempt to heed Anzaldúa's imperative from Borderlands/La Frontera to accept the doppelganger in our psyches, to acknowledge and correct the “negative” parts of ourselves that we have pushed onto mexicanos and other latine peoples for centuries (Anzaldúa 86). Since I take to heart her claim that the tendency of white Americans is to displace our problems onto others, it is essential for me to fully know myself and my cultures in the context of colonialism. While Pappas is, of course, right to say the problems are not entirely due to yanqui colonialism, it is also certainly the case that white Americans are still casting their faults onto people they frame as Others and scapegoating Latin American immigrants as the source of their woes. So, as with the responses above, it felt right to me to air out these more critical perspectives on not just US foreign policy but also the philosophies of the United States, in order to work against the tendency that Anzaldúa sees in white folk to let ourselves off the hook and the push our faults onto others.As with Pappas above, I am greatly honored that Alexander Stehn would write such a thoughtful and nuanced critique that demonstrates such a careful reading of the book. I am heartened that a scholar as well versed as Alex would say that he learned from the book. If that is so, I am sure that it is because this book's primary value is ostensive: it hopefully functions as a signpost directing the reader to dig deeply into the works of thinkers like Pedro Albizu Campos, Fernando Zalamea, and Henríquez Ureña, who are still little-read in English-language settings. I am excited for Stehn's students to get to read Albizu's political philosophy alongside works by Socrates, King, and Zea! Still, Stehn is too gracious by directing the first part of his comments to developing insights that are largely praiseworthy of the book.However, I have long noticed that whenever a philosopher starts a critique with kind and thoughtful comments of praise, they will follow with a shot to the heart. Stehn's third point, which is well-warranted and framed very gently, is that I fail to give the reader enough access to my inner life. Stehn is correct to note that this is a significant failing on my part since I specifically frame the book in part as my effort at an Anzaldúan autohistoria that strives to draw insights by blending personal introspection with traditional approaches to history and theoretical analysis. My friend and colleague Alex is correct that the moments of self-reflection are too few and certainly less brave and self-revelatory than those of first-order writers in this genre, like Anzaldúa, Lugones, and Mariana Alessandri.1Therefore, my first response to Stehn's critique is to simply cop to the fact that I am less skilled and less brave than these and other authors that I emulate and hold up as guides. For what it's worth, that was me, as someone from an Irish-Italian Catholic family who learned to repress and conceal all problems at an early age, trying to be self-revelatory! However, Stehn is correct that the book certainly would have been stronger had I delved more deeply into the truths of my life being brought up as a gringo in Puerto Rico. A more authentic autohistoria would have done a more thorough job of reclaiming my own doppelganger and illustrating what it might mean to be a white, straight guy who sincerely strives to adopt his version of the mestiza consciousness that Anzaldúa argued we all need to develop. In particular, I should have connected the dots more explicitly between the colonial laws and policies that enabled my parents and me to move to Puerto Rico in the 1970s and the colonial and white supremacist ideas and habits that I learned from my family and perpetuated myself that often put me out-of-sorts with the people I was lucky to be raised with.Stehn asks what experiences still haunt me about my childhood that I did not address in the book. There are lots and too many to talk about today, but I will say the most difficult ones center around my mom, Joan, who passed away a few weeks before our panel in Boston. She was born into crushing poverty in New York City during the Great Depression and learned early-on to be ashamed of her poverty as well as her Italian heritage, which she learned to associate with poverty. She spent most of her life working hard to care for her five kids and to make sure we were well-prepared to “succeed in life,” which to her meant to make the most of white privilege by doing well financially and getting as far as possible from the rough Bronx upbringing she had. She therefore found it a cruel and mirthless joke to have worked her way all the way to the comfort and status of the white-flight New Jersey suburbs only to find herself back in an apartment in a crowded city. She also manifested and conveyed to me the logic of a white supremacist ideology that sorted people according to the same racial taxonomy that she learned as a kid, the one that made her suspicious to my dad's Irish father, but nonetheless just barely inside the lines of whiteness. If I were a braver writer, I would have perhaps written about the wounds within mi propia alma (my own soul) born of being taught by the person who loved me best in the world that I should be terrified of “the Puerto Ricans” and then to have to go make friends and live in Puerto Rico.There is, perhaps, a mitigating factor to Stehn's critique that I do not bring myself sufficiently to account in my work, and I offer this not by way of self-defense, but to hopefully illuminate a significant point. As with my response to Pappas's critique above, I strove through this work to eschew any pretense of a view sub specie aeternitatis in favor of a work that was mindful of my context and situatedness. So while Stehn is right that the work would have been more valuable were I braver in my self-analysis, I think that, as a person situated in a context of great lived privilege, it is proper for me to balance out a tendency toward taking up more space than is fair. To make the point simply, I did not want the work to be about me, but instead about how I might open an important discussion on how to develop an inter-American philosophical community capable of addressing the legacy of US colonialism across the Americas. Therefore, perhaps autohistoria should look different for me than it did for Anzaldúa. If I am lucky enough to have my gig as a professor long enough to write another book (my university just announced we were moving to a “polytechnic” model that emphasizes STEM and professional fields even more than they already are, so perhaps I will yet become another over-educated Irish-American bartender after all!), I will continue to find the right balance between being forthright about my own efforts to reclaim my doppelganger and heal the splits in my heart and being humble and quiet in the self-awareness that people like me have spoken too much already, and that sometimes the wisest thing for me to do is to stop talking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, RhetoricJohn NicholsonPaul MacKendrick. The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, Rhetoric, with the technical assistance of Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. London: Duckworth, 1995. viii + 627 pp. Cloth, £55.Readers familiar with MacKendrick’s 1989 study of The Philosophical Books of Cicero will have an idea what to expect from his new companion work on Cicero’s speeches. It is essentially a factual handbook providing a (...) full and careful summary of the contents of Cicero’s major orations, along with some basic background information and a rhetorical analysis. The treatment is quite detailed so that, despite a length of well over 600 pages, the book covers only half of the fifty-eight extant Ciceronian speeches. Regrettably omitted on account of limitation of space are all the Verrines and all the Philippics, as well as any representatives of the early orations. But otherwise, we get a judicious, well-balanced selection from all rhetorical types, lengths, and audiences.MacKendrick begins in medias res. What he calls chapter 1 is actually only a two-page chronological outline of Cicero’s life, and this is the only preface we get before plunging into the presentation of the first speech (On Pompey’s Command) which comprises chapter 2. It would have been helpful if MacKendrick had begun with some kind of statement about his aims and methods, and perhaps some introduction to the ways and means of classical rhetoric in general, and of Ciceronian oratory in particular. Such preliminaries will be especially missed by neophyte readers who select this book as an introduction to Cicero’s speeches. Otherwise the work is well suited to this audience since MacKendrick takes little for granted, translates into English virtually all the Latin he quotes, and repeatedly defines technical terms.The format of each chapter is strictly uniform, divided into four sections. First comes an outline summarizing in full detail the content of the speech under consideration, with the standard divisions marked off and labeled. (Here alone MacKendrick fails to define rhetorical terminology; structural labels like narratio, partitio, peroratio, etc. are left unexplained.) Second, there comes a section called “Context” succinctly describing the historical background. Third, MacKendrick gives a summary of the legal points raised by each speech, which is kept quite brief, depending largely on the conclusions of standard modern authorities, especially A. H. C. Greenidge’s time-honored Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time (which is unfortunately missing from the intended key reference on 460). The fourth and final section, called “Rhetoric,” is the fullest, and is divided into the subcategories of Word Frequency, Metaphor, and Other Rhetorical Devices.While the first three sections of each chapter merely rehearse basic information in a useful handbook format, it is in the fourth section on rhetoric that we get MacKendrick’s main original contribution, essentially a quantified word study of the speeches. Though he nowhere explicitly declares his analytical strategy, an early note decrying “the shapeless gobbledegook” (460 n. 2) of much [End Page 654] modern criticism reveals his contempt for sloppy subjective evaluation. Accordingly, his own approach here is largely statistical in nature, presumably based on computer-generated tabulations. The preoccupation is with quantitative analysis via word frequency lists and the counting and cataloging of metaphors and various rhetorical figures used by Cicero over the course of his career.MacKendrick first examines the semantic range and varying significance of the most commonly repeated words in each oration, and shows how Cicero manipulates them in different contexts. Personal pronouns usually head the lists, followed by terms such as res publica, urbs, civi[ta]s, consul, senatus, salus, omnis, lex, dignitas, bellum, and populus Romanus.Next he counts and classifies metaphors, a category which he defines very broadly—at times to the point of robbing the term of practical descriptive value inasmuch as extremely common words are analyzed as though poetic figures. For example, the verb fero and its many compounds are considered “metaphors of touch” even in standard idioms such as legem fero, while aequus is called a “metaphor of earth” (a subcategory of “metaphors of nature”), and intellego is called a “metaphor of agriculture” (since it literally means “to glean... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:154, DAVID HUME'S PRACTICAL ECONOMICS As Professor Eugene Rotwein emphasized in his introduction to David Hume: Writings on Economics (Madison, 1955), the philosopher made his observations on the eve of the industrial revolution in a period of accelerating change. Very often — as in the latter half of the seventeenth century — times of flux and turmoil call forth Utopian thinkers, who propose the creation of hierarchical, communal, authoritarian (...) societies, often patterned after a supposed golden 2 age. Hume emphatically rejected Utopian schemes of this kind. "All plans of government which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind," he said, 3 "are plainly imaginary." He repeatedly warned as well that "projectors" and visionaries would disrupt the balance in government between liberty and authority. Thus he could speak of or make reference to "the visionary system or ravings of Plato" (in The Republic), the ultimate impracticality of More's Utopia and James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, and the absurdity of Robert Wallace's theories on 4 population and the paper money schemes of John Law. Even the Utopian republics of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the Scottish patriot whom Hume admired as "a man of undaunted courage and inflexible principles," were dismissed with the others on practical grounds. The key word we have extracted from Hume's economics is practicality. Much as Hume would have liked to have designed an empirical "science of man" — which, incidentally, would have permitted him to propose his own infallible scheme of political economy — he realized that his own attempts had fallen far short of his goal. Thus his nine essays devoted especially to economics: "Of Commerce," "Of Refinement 155. in the Arts," "Of Money," "Of Interest," "Of the Balance of Trade," "Of the Jealousy of Trade," "Of Taxes," "Of Public Credit," and "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," are cautious in approach and pragmatic in spirit. Most of these essays were specifically designed to challenge prevailing assumptions and Utopian grand schemes of one sort or another. In "Of Commerce," for example, Hume rejects the idea that a nation can achieve greatness as an agricultural utopia. In "Of Refinement in the Arts" he takes issue with certain religious thinkers who 7 denote luxury as evil. In "Of Money" he is critical of those who believe that an injection of money into O the economy will work long-term wonders, and in "Of Interest" he argues with those who reason that the 9 plenty of money leads to low interest rates. "Of the Balance of Trade" and "Of the Jealousy of Trade" are directed against the protectionist policies of the mercantilists, "Of Taxes" rejects the French physiocratic single tax on land, and "Of Public Credit" deplores the expedients of Lord Oxford's partisans to draw bills on posterity and imprudently 12 use public credit to create paper riches. Finally, he addressed his essay, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations" to a refutation of the doomsday thinking of 13 the Reverend Robert Wallace of Edinburgh. This is not to imply, however, that Hume's economic thought was merely negative, or that he believed governments could safely entrust their powers over the economy to an "invisible hand." Even Hume's advocacy of free trade (which his friend and pupil Adam Smith, of course, applied with less caution) left the government with room to maneuver. Hume was willing to employ both the market and authority in designs for human progress. In seeking his mix of "action, 156. consumption, liveliness and indolence," a contradictory, counter-poised economic actor, the individual, was not a simple pleasure maximizer, nor did the acquisition of wealth and luxury make him a villain. He was a person in whom the complex springs of action, the causes of labour, needed first one, now another counter-weight. Society benefited from both 14 free trade and from tariff. Hume believed that industrial development and the advancement of commerce were the springboards to progress and happiness. Less is less and more is more; Hume never got these simple verities mixed up. "The same age," he said, "which produces great philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skillful weavers, and ship-carpenters.... The spirit of the age... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning in Dramatic and Virtual Worlds:What Do Students Say About Complementarity and Future Directions?John O'Toole (bio) and Julie Dunn (bio)A top financial backer has arrived to determine which team of computer interaction designers has developed the most exciting and innovative proposal for the Everest component of the Virtually Impossible Computer Company's Conquerors of the World Series. Tension is high as the presentations begin, but this tension soon turns (...) to outright conflict as some proposals suggest George Mallory as the conqueror, and the financial backer will have none of him. The backer, it seems, has her own agenda and is determined to allow for only one view of history—the one that records Sir Edmund Hillary as a New Zealand hero and the only real conqueror of the tallest mountain on earth. The designers become more and more agitated until suddenly someone bangs their hand on the table and calls out, "Hang on... just because you've got the money doesn't mean... kids need to learn about both these men... they need to learn about history." With that the drama is cut by the teacher. The deep understandings about "history's purchased page" that can be generated when drama and computers are brought together for learning have been made explicit... but could these same outcomes have been achieved using just one of these approaches?IntroductionThe research explored within this article was generated as part of the Media Station, a project funded by the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID), with an overall mission to investigate the potential of massively multiplayer online games for learning. This particular subproject, History's Purchased Page, saw researchers from interaction design [End Page 89] and drama education come together with a group of young learners to investigate their perceptions of the complementarity of computers and live classroom drama and to brainstorm future possibilities for applying computer-based technologies to drama-based learning. We sought to discover the following:• What do young learners say about how they experience and value learning in a context involving a combination of drama and computers?• What ideas do these young learners have about how future technologies might enrich the complementarity of this combination?As the drama researchers involved in this project, we had been experimenting with this perhaps slightly unusual combination for over a decade by incorporating computers into a number of our drama units within our primary textbook Pretending to Learn.1 Our goal in these experimentations had always been to enrich the classroom drama experience by taking advantage of the information capacity of the Internet and other computer-based resources, including databases. For example, we had used The First Fleet Database2 to support a drama unit where the learners take on the role of convicts arriving in Australia in 1788. We discovered that this material, combined with other documentation and historical materials available via the Internet, greatly enhanced not only the historical accuracy of the work but also the level of engagement experienced by the learners when in role. Therefore, we were very keen to extend this work by exploring new possibilities and were especially keen to develop a better understanding of what the learners made of this interactivity.In recent years the partnering of these two quite different approaches to learning has developed quite a research following, and a number of drama teachers and researchers have become interested in the complementarity of these ways of learning.3 At the same time, researchers and designers from the field of computer-assisted learning have also noted these connections. This goes back to the work of Brenda Laurel, who first drew attention to the intriguing links between computers and theatre in her now famous text Computers as Theatre.4 With the rapid growth of interactive learning tools such as 3-D immersive worlds, blogs, and online voice and text chat spaces, the opportunities for exploration of these connections have also grown, with each of these offering exciting new possibilities when used in conjunction with the highly interactive and engaging strategies of process drama.Process drama is a way of group learning, through whole-class improvised drama, with students (and sometimes the... (shrink)

INTRODUCTION BY NANCY FUMERO What is a translation that stalls comprehension? That, when read, parsed, obfuscates comprehension through any language – English, Portuguese. It is inevitable that readers expect fidelity from translations. That language mirror with a sort of precision that enables the reader to become of another location, condition, to grasp in English in a similar vein as readers of Portuguese might from João Guimarães Rosa’s GRANDE SERTÃO: VEREDAS. There is the expectation that translations enable mobility. That what was (...) written in one language be accessible in another. And that a translator is to serve as a mediator, acting ultimately in service to ideas within the source text. To disperse them. However, this notion of translation is partly antithetical to the ideas in Rosa’s work. Or, alternately, to convey the despair of terrain slipping beneath one’s feet, and to encounter the heightened suspense of magic, the translation, as part of its strategy, cannot devotedly rely on its original language, not as its source text. The work undertaken by Felipe W.Martinez is a new form of translation that risks everything in order to encounter the same treacherous knowing Rosa had traversed. And it takes its risks by not taking risks: by being, almost word for word, a literal translation. This is an approach that reductively converts, as opposed to translates. The idiomatic differences between English and Portuguese are not accented. The syntax is not finessed. Liberties are not assumed on account of improving readability. What stands, resoundingly amid such absences, is the awakened challenge of reading. The genuine peril of not knowing. That is, this translation, one that purports to know nothing, creates access into the guileful world Rosa had created in Portuguese. But not by translating. If anything, GRANDE SERTÃO: VEREDAS is speaking a cosmic language through a linguistic one. And W.Martinez does us the service of recognizing this, as what configures the shapes of words and sentences is not as simple as neologisms, portmanteaus, and digressions, but as terrifying as the path the fool traverses: all paths. As such, this translation doesn’t speak English, just as the original does not speak Portuguese. It is the assemblage of paradox as a new logic that can be navigated, if only one could suspend the comfort of readability, of expectation. If one could descend a mountain in the pitch dark of night, each step shocking the body, unable to acclimate to the unleveled heights. Without a doubt, the translation is incongruous to the Portuguese. Taking a small excerpt to compare: Eh, well, thereafter, the rest the Sir provide: comes the bread, comes the hand, comes the god, comes the dog. What is striking is the interplay between “god” and “dog”. To most English speakers, this anagram is a familiar one. But in Portuguese the words god (“deus”) and dog (“cão”) are not so closely linked. In fact, there is no direct mention of “deus” in Rosa’s text: Eh, pois, empós, o resto o senhor prove: vem o pão, vem a mão, vem o são, vem o cão. Both are fascinating. In Rosa’s excerpt, the rhythm is unmistakable and precise, despite, of course, the indices of hesitation: the commas, the Eh, the uncomfortable way of searching through prolongation and wait. This is the sort of paradox Rosa can engage within a sentence. W.Martinez’s does this as well, at a scale that reverberates beyond the sentence, and with one noticeable addition: deus. What may appear to be an overstep, to add such a weighted word that draws out wordplay but is, nevertheless, not in the source text, is exemplary of risk. The translation buzzes because of it. This is because throughout the text we encounter dogs frequently, as some primal beast on par with humans. The dog is one that masters and can be mastered. A creature that is at times its face, and at others a mask. It is a powerful presence. For the translator to be attuned to the reverent undercurrent attributed to this animal, and create within the translation such charged play in English from what was only an implication in Portuguese, is in tribute to the grand beauty within dissonance. What aberrant modes of writing and translation can teach us most assuredly, is that things, words, are not in states of rightness or wrongness, but of oscillation. This isn’t so different from what Rosa says himself: The Sir look…see: the most important and beautiful, of the world, is this: that the people are not always same, still were not completed — but that they go always shifting. They tune or detune. We find this so readily in W.Martinez’s translation, this tuning and detuning. Nancy Fumero Los Angeles GRAND SERTÃO: VEREDAS BY JOÃO GUIMARÃES ROSA TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE BY FELIPE W.MARTINEZ Nonothing. Shots that the Sir heard were man brawling not, God be. Bleach white sights on the tree in the backyard, down in the river. By my right. I do this every day, I like; from the bad of boyhood. Thereof they came to call on me. Case of a calf: a white calf, errorful, eyes of to not be—saw selves—; and with a mask of a dog! They told me; I didn’t want to catch a sight. Same that, by the defects of birth, upturned lips, looked to be a laughing man. Folkface, dogface: they determined—it was the devil. Bananas. Killed it. Do not know who owned it. They came to borrow my guns. I caved. I’ve no power to impose. Oh, sir, you laugh certain laughs…Look: when it’s a true shot, first the dogs begin to bark, instantly—after, then, you see who’s handed death. Sir, endure, this is the Sertão. Some want that it is not: that situated Sertão is in and out of those general fields, they say, end of the road, highlands, the other Urucuia. Toleima. For those of Cortino and of Curvelo, then, isn’t here said Sertão? Ah! That there’s more! To place the Sertão it’s told: it’s where the pastures lack latches; where one can tear off ten, fifteen leagues without running into a houseinhabitant; where criminalousness lives out its christ jesus. Sifted out from the tightening grip of the law. The Urcuia comes from the western mountains. But today, its banks, give all—farmlands of farms, pastures of meadows of good yield, low tides, cultures that go kill for kill, until these virgins there are. The general fields run round. These general fields are without size. Ultimately, whichever one one approves, the Sir knows: bread or breads, it’s a question of heads…the Sertão is everywhere. Of the devi? No comment. Sir ask the dwellers. Falsely I fear they unspeak that name of his—only say: whatsitcalled. Volt! no… Whosoever over avoids it, lives with it. In the sentence of one Aristides—who exists in the first palm grove on the right hand side, called Vereda-of-Cow-Calm-of-Saint-Rita—everyone believes: he can't pass in three designated places: then can be heard the tiny cry, behind, a little voice warning:— "Here I come! Here I come!... "— that is the Capirote, the whatsitcalled... And one Jise Simplicio—who anyone from here will swear he keeps an imp in house, a little satanite, imprisoned and obliged to help in all greedful deeds; reason that Simplicio emprises en route to complete riches. As such, for this they say too that his beast bristles and refuses, denying his banner, unyielding, when he wishes to mount... Superstition. Jise Simplicio and Aristides, continue getting fatter, thence unheard or heard. Still the Sir study: right now, in these days of time, you have people purporting that the devil proper stopped, mid-passage, in Andrequice. A boy out of there, to whom'd appeared, and there lauded that, to get here—normally, by horse, a day-n-half—he was capable of such with only some twenty minutes enough... by coasting the River of Chico by the headwaters! Or, too, who knows—sans offense—will not have been, for example, even yourself the Sir who announced such, when you passed by there, for fun run funny? Thereof, not my given crime, I know that wasn't. And evil I wanted not. Only that one question, in hours, at times, brightens peaceful reason. But, the Sir understand: if such a boy, there was, he wanted to dupe. Because, hey, that, to cut the river off by the springs, would be the same thing as one redoubling in the internals of this our state of ours, costant of a journey of some three months... Then? Whatsitcalled? Dodo. The fantastication. And, the respect of giving him such these names of delicacy, is what it is for one to want to invoke that he form of form, with his presence! Not that is. I, personally, almost that have lost in him the creed, deserving to Deus; is the that to the Sir I say, to pure-secret. I know that it is well established, that it greases our Saintly-Gospels. On occasion, I conversed with a young seminarian, super suitable, conferring in the book of prayers and coated in vestments, with a stick of black-sage in hand—prosed that he went auxilitator to the father, to extract the Cujo, from the body living of an oldwoman, in Waterfalls-of-Bulls, he went with the vicar of Field-Round... I conceive. The Sir not is as I? I didn't believe a single thing. Compadre mine Quelemem describes that that which reveals effect are the low spirits meager, of third, adoing in the worst darkness and with anxieties of connecting selves with the livers—they give support. Compadre mine Quelemem is who much me consoles—Quelemem of Goias. But he has to live far from here, in Jijuja, Vereda of Buriti Dark... Ahrr, I leave myself there, that in enevildemonment or with support—the Sir too must have had known diverse, men, women. As not yes? For me, umpteen I've seen, that I've learned. Ma-Neigh, Blood-o'Other, or Legion-Lips, or Tear-em-Down, Cold-Cutter, or Sissy-Goat, one Treciziano, or Verdigris... or Hermogenes... o'them, pileload. If I could forget so many names... I'm not a man for calming horses! And, same, whom of yes of to be jagunço self enters, yea is for some competence entrant of demonion. Will it not? Will it? From first, I made and mixed, and to think not I thought. I didn't have the deadlines. I lived pulling difficult from difficult, fish alive on griddle: who lives asp'rously, no fantasies. But, now, fete of fate to me comes, and sans little disquietudes, I'm from creaky net. And myself invented in this like, of to speculate ideas. The devil exists and nonexists? I say the saying. Opennouncement. These melancholies. The Sir sees: exists waterfall; and since? But waterfall is gulch of ground, and water so pouring from it, retumbling; the Sir consume that water, or undo that bankment, remainder waterfall any? To live is negotiation much perilous. I explain to the Sir: the devil vigors inside of human, the wrinkles of human— or is the human ruin, or the human of adversess. I free, per se, citizen, is that not has devil notone. Notone!— is the that I say. The Sir approve? Me declares total, frank— is high merit that me make: and to beg might, increased. This case— by rashtravagance that me they see— is of mine certain importance. God grant not was... But, not say that the Sir, awised and instructed, that agrees in people of them?! Not? You I appreciate! Your high opinion composes my value. Yea I knew, waited for it— yea the field! Ah, a we, in oldness, we lack of to have plowing of rest. You I appreciate. Is devil notone. Nor esprit. Never I've seen. Someone ought to see, then was I myself, this your servant. Was I you to tell... Well, the devil regulate his state black, ins creatures, ins womens, ins humans. E'en: ins childrens— I declaim. Since not is said: "boy—trainee of the devil"? And ins thes uses, ins plants, ins waters, in terra, in wind... Manures. …The devil in the street, in the middle of the vortex... Hey? Hey? Ah. Figuration mine, of worse by back, the certain memories. Mal-make me! I suffer pain of to tell not…Meliorate, if chillingly: well, in a ground and with equal format of branches and leaves, not give to cassava-calm, that is eaten common, and the cassava-mad that kills? Now, the Sir yea saw a strangeness? A cassava-sweet can rapidly to turn agonizing— motives not I know, at times is said that is for replanted in the terrain always, with mutations then, of caules—go embittering, of s’much in s’much, of its self takes poisons. And, well look: the other, the cassava-mad, too is that at times can fix calm, the estimate, of is to eat sans notone mal. And what this is? Eh, the Sir yea saw, for to see, the ugliness of hate pleated, facetorqued, on the faces of one cobrarattlesnake? Observed the porker fat, capita day more felicity brute, capable of, could, snort and engulf for its own dirty coziness the world total? And sparrowhawk, blackbird, some, the features of they yea represent the need of cleave for before, rend and shred by beak, appears a knife much fine for ruin I desire. Total. Has even twisted races of stone, horrorous, venomous— that spoil mortal the aquas, if they are buried beneath of well; the devil inside of them sleeps: they are the devil. Is known? And the demon— that is only thus the significance of one mercury malign— have order of to follow the path of him, have license to brag?! Arr, he is variegated in all! What the what wastes, goes spending the devil of inside of the people, by itttybits, is the reasonable to suffer. And the delight of love—compadre mine Quelemem says. Family. Really? Is, and not is. The Sir think and not think. Total is and not is… Almost all more grave criminous ferocity, always is much good husband, good son, good father, and is good-friend-of-your-friends! I know of those. Solo that have the afters— and Deus, joined. I spy many nimbi. But, in veracity, son, too, softens. Look: one called Aleixo, resident a league from Step-of-Sour, in Of-Sand, was the man of major badness calm that yea you saw. Me agreed that near the house of his had a weir, amidst the palms, with traíras, for souls of enormous, desenormous, to the real, that received fame; the Aleixo gave of to eat to them, in hours just, they self accustomed to if assuch of lunacies, in order to gobble, seemed to be fishes instructed. One day, solo for grace rustic, he killed an oldman who by there passed, destitute begging alms. The Sir not doubt—have people, in this bored world, that kill solo in order to see someone make grimace… Eh, well, thereafter, the rest the Sir provide: comes the bread, comes the hand, comes the god, comes the dog. This Aleixo was man afamilied, had children small; they were the love of his, total, absurdity. Gave good, that not even a year there passed, of to killed the oldman poor, and the children of Aleixo there they asickened. Smallepidemic of measles, they said, but complex; they never heal. When, then, they healed. But the eyes of theirs vermillionized high in an inflame of spraining to rebellion; and nexthing— the that not I know is if they went of at once, or one later and later other and other— they remained blind. Blind, sans remission of one sweet of light of this Ours! The Sir imagine: stairset— three boys and one girl— all blind. Sans remediable. The Aleixo not lost the judgment, but he changed; ah, mutated complete— now lives of band of Deus, sweating to be good and charitous in all his hours of night and of day. Appears even that he fixed the felicity, that before not was. He himself says he was a man of luck, because Deus wanted to have pity of him, to transform for there the route of his soul. That I heard, and me it gave rage. Reason of the children. If being castigated, what culpa of the let-there-bes of Aleixo those little children had?! Compadre mine Quelemem reproved my uncertainties. That, for certain, inother life returnaound, the children too had been the most wicked, of the mass and part of the father, demons of the same kettle of place. Sir the what thinks? And the oldman, assassinated? — I know the Sir goes to discuss. Well, too. In order that he had a sin of crime, in the body, by to pay. If the people— conforming compadre mine Quelemem is who says— if the people turn to to incarnate renovated, I contemplate even that enemy of death can come as son of the enemy. Look see: if to myself I say, has a subject Pedro Pindo, neighbor of here more six leagues, man of good for all in all, he and the woman of his, always been good, of goodness. They have a son of some ten years called Valtei—name modern, is the that the population of here now appreciates, the Sir knows. Well this-little-thing, thislet, since that some understanding illuminated in him, deed demonstrated the that is: petition stepfather, acid burner, likeful of ruin of inside of the profundity of the species of its nature. In which that torments, to the slowly, of all beasts or raisinglings little that quarrel; one time he found a creole woman hooched foolish sleeping, he arranged a shard of bottle, lashed at three points on the stern of the legs of hers. The what this boy drooled seeing, is bleeding hen or to knife pig.— “I enjoy of to kill…”— one occasion he teeny me told. He opened in me a fright; because: birdy that self leans over— the flight yea is ready! Well the Sir oversee: the pa, Pedro Pindo, mode of to correct this, and the ma, they give in him, misery and mast—they cast the boy sans to eat, they tied to trees in the yard, he nude, unplumed, even in June cold, they tilled the bittybody of his with the trammel and with the goblet, after they cleansed the skin of the sanguine, with bottle gourd brine. The people know, spy, fix wasted. The boy yea relowered of thinness, the eyes entering, caress of bones, enskulled, and tuberculated, the time total hacking, coughness of the that draw parched pectorals. Arr, that now, visible, the Pindo and the woman self habituated of on him hit, of little bit in little they were creating in this a pleasure ugly of diversion— as they regulate the canings in hours certain comfortable, until they call people to see the example good. I think that boy not endure, yea there is in the ta-da, not arrive for the lent to come… Ooee-ooee, then?! Not being as compadre mine Quelemem to want, that explication is that the Sir bestowed? That boy had to be a man. He should, in swing, terrible perversities. Soul of his was in the pitch. Demonstrated. And, now, paid. Ah, but, happens, when he’s crying and paining, he suffers equal that as was as a boy good… Bird, I saw all, in this world! Yea I saw even horse with hiccups… —the that the thing most costous that is. Good, but the Sir may say, should of: and in the start— for offenses and arts, the people— as for that was that s’much amended was started? Ey, ey, ey all collided. Compadre mine Quelemem, too. Am solo a sertanite, in these high ideas I navigate mal. Am much poor poor-thing. Envy my pedigree and of ones conform the Sir, with total reading and doctoration. Not is that I be illiterate. I spelt, years and middle, midly speller, memory and palmer. I had master, Master Lucas, in the Curralinho, he memorized grammar, the operations, rule-of-three, even geography and study patria. On leaves great of paper, with caprice I traced handsome maps. Ah, not is for to speak: but, since of the start, me they thought sophisticated of side. And that I merited of to go to course latin, in Lesson Waterlily—that too they said. Time nostalgic! Going today, I appreciate a good book, despaced. On the farm The Lilittlelemon, of one mine friend Vito Soziano, so sign of this almanac thick, of logoglyphs and conundrums and other divided matters, all year come. In s’much, I place primacy is in the reading advantageous, life of saints, virtues and examples— missionary astute engambling the Indians, or Saint Francis of Assis, Saint Anthony, Saint Gerald… I like much of moral. To ratiocinate, exhort the others for the good way, to acounsel to just. Mine woman, that the Sir knows, vigils for me: much prayer. She is a blessable. Compadre mine Quelemem always says that I may to aquiet my fears on conscience, that being well-attended, terrible good-esprits me protect. Eep! With like… As is of saint effect, I help with mine to want to accredit. But not even always can I. The Sir knew: I total the mine life I thought for me, lining, I am born different. I am and I same. I divert of total the world… I almost that nothing not I know. But I disconfide of many things. The Sir, conceding, I say: in order to think long, I am dog master— the Sir loose in mine front an idea ease and I research that by profundity of total the backwoods, amen! Look: the should of to have, was of so reunited-selves the wise, politicos, constitutions graded, closed the definitive the notion— to proclaim for one time, art assemblies, that not have devil notone, not exists, not possible. Valor of law! Solo assuch, they gave tranquility good to the people. Because the government not cares?! Ah, I know that not is possible. Not me settled the Sir for philistine. One this is to place ideas arranged, other is to deal with country of people, of flesh and sanguine, of thousand-and-many miseries… S’many people—gives scare of to know—and notone so calms: All nascenting, crescendoing, so wedding, wanting collocation of employment, consumables, health, abundance, to be important, wanting rain and affairs good… Of luck that lacks of so to choose: or we t’weave of to live in the salacious common, or care solo of religion solo. I could to be: father clergyman, if not chief of jagunços; for other things not was I birthed. But mine oldness yea principaled I erred of total account. And the rheumatism… There as whom says: in the primers. Ahem. Hey? Hey? The that more I think, I testify and explain: all-the-world is mad. The Sir, I, we, the people all. For this is that so lacks principally of religion: in order to desendodorize, to disdodoate. Pray is that heals of lunacy. In the general. This is that is the salvation-of-the-soul…Much religion your servant! I here, not I lose occasion of religion. I profit of all. I drink water of all rivers… One solo, for me is little, maybe not me arrives. I pray christian, catholic, I burrow the certain; and I accept the prayers of compadre mine Quelemem, doctrine of he, of Kardec. But, when I can, I go in the Mindubim, where one Matias is believer, methodist: the people so accuse of sinner, reads high the bible, and why, singing hymns beautiful of his. Total me quiets, me suspends. Whatever small shade me refreshes. But is solo much provisory. I wanted to pray— the time total. Many people not me approve, they think that law of Deus is privileges, invariable. And I! Doof! I Detest! The what I am? — the what I do, that want, much curia. And in face of total I face, executed. I? —not I trammel. Look: I have a black girl, Maria Leoncia, long from here not she lives, the prayers of her afame much virtue of power. Well to her I pay, every month— ordering of to pray for me one third, every saint day, and, on the Sundays, a rosary. Value, so values. Mine woman not sees mal in this. And I am, yea mandated word for an other, of the voyage-voyage, a Izina Calanga, in order to come here, I heard of that prayer too with grand mermermerits, I go to effect with she treatment equal. I want handful of those, me defending in Deus, reunited of me in volta… Cuts of Christ! To live is much perilous… To want the good with too much force, of incertain way, can yea to be being so wanting the mal, per to initiate. These humans! All they pull the world for itself, for the to concert amended. But capita one solo sees and understands the things of one his world. Amountain, the most supro, most serious was Mediero Vaz. That one man ancient… his Joaozy Ben-Ben, the most brave of all, no-one never can decipher how he by inside consisted. Joca Ramiro— grand man prince!— was politico. Zé Bebelo wanted to be politico, but had and not had luck: fox that lingered. So Candelario so demonized, by to think that was with illness mal. Titao Passos was the by the appreciation of friends: solo per via of them, of his same amities, were that such high so ajagunçoed. Antonio Do— severe bandit. But by half, grand majority half that be. Andalecio, in the profound, a good man-of-good, being raving in his total justice. Ricardao, same, wanted was to be rich in peace: for this he warred. Solo the Hermogenes was that born formed tiger, and assassinite. And the “Ofidios White”? Ah, not me speak. Ah this… joyless mischeivious, that was— that was a poor boy of the destiny… So good, congruous. The Sir heard, I you told: the ruin with the ruin, they terminate by the spine-bushes so to crack— Deus awaits that spendance. Boy!: Deus is patience. The contrary, is the devil. So consumes. The Sir file knife on knife— and file— that so they scrape. Even the rocks of the profound, one of in the other, they go-so aroundabounding even, that the rivulet rolls. Per enquantity, that I think, total as hath, in this world, is because so merits and lacks. Afterly precise. Deus not so reports with rifle, not garrotes the regulation. For what? Quit: goof with goof—one day, some illumination and learn: smart. Solo that, at times, for most auxiliar, Deus begets, in the middle, a pinch of pepper… Therebe? Well, for example: some time, I went of train, there in Seven-Lagoons, for parts of to consult a medical, of name me indicated. He went vested well, and in car of first, by via of the doubts, not me they shadowed for jagunço ancient. It goes and happens, that, close same of me, enfront, he took aseat, returning from the wild North, a mac Jazevedao, delegate professionale. Came with a capanga of his, an undercover, and I well knew the two, of that s’much a was ruin, as the other ruin was. The veracity to say, first I had the strict of me to surpasss for one lonng, to mutate of my place. Judgement me told, meliorate stay. Well, looking, I looked. And— you I tell: never I saw face of man furnished of brutez or malady more, of the them in that. As that was ogre, trussed of thickset, relustered of crude in the eyes small, and armed a chin of stone, toweringbrow; not of mid nor forehead. Not laughed, not so laughed not even one time; but, speaking or silent, the people appeared always to him some teeth, prey pointed of canids. Arr, and blustered, an ittybit. Solo growled curt, low, the mid-words grizzled. He came relooking, historicizing the documents— one by one the leaves with portraits and with the blacks of the digits of jagunços, lifters of horses and criminouses of death. That application of work, in one thing of those, generated the ire in the people. The undercover, busybodyguard, total close, seated joined, attending, excelling of to be dog. Me made a dread, but solo in the goof of the corpus, not in the intern of the courages. One hour, one of those reports fell— and I bent quickly, I knew there precisely by why, not I wanted, not I thought— even today I raise shame of this— I picked the paper of the ground, and delivered to him. Thereof, I say: I had more rage, because I did that; but there yea it was done. The man not even me looked, not even said notone thankfulment. Event he soles of the shoes of his— solo looking— that soles rough thick, bent of enormous, appearing iron bronzed. Because I knew: This Jazevedao, when he apprehended someone, the primary quiet thing that proceeded was that he came entering, sans to have to to say, feigning some hurry, and go stepping on the top of the feet of the poorthings. And that on these occasions he gave laughters, gave… Well, geck! I delivered to him the leaf of paper, and went leaving of there, by to have hand on me of not to destroy by shots that subject. Meat that much they weigh… And umbilicated beginning of belly pot bellied, that me created will… With my lightness, joyful that I’d kill. But, the barbarities that this delegate made and happened, the Sir not even has callus in heart to be able me to hear. He achieved of many men and women to cry blood, for the simple universolo ours here. Sertão. The Sir knows: sertão is where mandates who is strong, with the guile. And bullet is a tidbit of metal… S’much, I say: Jazevedao— one assuch, should of to have, needed? Ah, need. Leather ruined is that calls goad of point. That there be that, after— business particular of he— in the life or in the other, each Jazevedao, accomplished the that he has, desclimbs in his time of pain, too, until to pay the that he gave— compadre mine Quelemem is there, in order to fiscalize. The Sir knows: the peril that is to live… But solo of the mode, of these, by ugly instrument, was that the jagunsaga so finished. Sir thinks that Antonio Do or Olivino Oliviano were going to fix goodies by pure spelling of itself, or by begging of the infelicitous, or by always to hear sermon of father? You I think! In the aims… Of jagunço comported active in order so to repent in the middle of his jagunsagas, solo I lay of one: called Joe Cazuzo— was in smashing of one shotshow, for on the summit of the place Sierra New, district of river rusted, on the stream Traçadal. We made mal minority small, and they closed in order summit of us the personnel of one Coronel Adalvino, forted politico, with many soldiers uniformed in the center, commanding of the Lieutenant Epiphany Helm, that after fixed captain. We lasted hour more hour, and yea gave almost of encircled. There, of misslip, that Joe Cazuzo— man much valiant— so kneeled turned on the ground of the thick, lifted the arms that not even shoots of Jatoba dry, and solo yell, howl clear and howl deaf:— “I saw the Virgin Ours, in the resplendor of the Heavens, with her children of angels!... ” He screamed not touched. — “I saw the Virgin!... ” He ensouled? We desequaled. Bolt for my horse—that I thought— I leaped in mal seat, noteven I knew in which rupture-time I unfastened the halter, of tied up it foot of timber. I flew, arrived. Bullet come. The pasture roared. In the brush, the fear of the people so goes to the whole, one fear intentional. I could to lash out, fated burro brute, giv-that, giv-that. Some two or three bullets so drovein the pad of the mine saddle, they perforated of to tear away almost much the kapok of the filling. Horse trembled in pro, in middle of gallop, I know: thinks in the owner. I not fit of to be more well shrunken. Bulleted came to the sack that I had on the back, with few mine things. And other, of fusil, in ricochet decreed, heated my thigh, sans me wound, the Sir see: bullet does the what to want—so pierced impressed, between in me and the harness! Times crazy… Burumbum!: the horse so kneeled in the fall, dead perhaps, and I yea falling for front, embraced in foliage full, branched and linias, that me swayed and skewered, done I was pendulating in web of spider… Whither? I traversed that life total… Of fear of anxiety, I ruptured to read with mine corpus that forest, I know there — and me fell world below, rolled for the hollow of a grotto closed of shrubs, always me grasped— rolled same assuch: after: after, when I saw mine hands, total on they that not was withdrawn sanguine, was smeared green, on the digits, of leaves living that I pulled and mashed… I landed on the sedge of the profound— and a beast dark gave a releap, with a sneeze, too mad of fright: that was a papa-mel, that I descried; in order to flee, this is solely. Bigger being I, me doused mine overcoat; I spigotted total. And of one bit of thought: if that beast irara lying there then there not had cobra. I took the place of his. Existed cobra notone. I could me to lose. I was solo spineless, softness, but that not deadened, inside, the collisions of the heart. I gasped. I conceived that they came, me kill. Not even did mal, me mattered not. Assuch, some moments, at least I guarded the license of term in order me to rest. Conforming I thought in Diadorim. Solo I thought was in he. One joão-congo sang. I wanted to die thinking in my friend Diadorim, hand-o-bro, who was on the Sierra of WoodO’Bow, almost on the border baiana, with our other half of the so-candelarios… With my friend Diadorim me embraced, sentiment my went-flew right for he… Ay, arr, but: that this mine mouth not has order notone. I am accounting outside, things divagated. In the Sir me confide? Til-that, til-that. Say the angel-of-the-guard… But, conforming I came: after so knew, that same the soldiers of the Lieutenant and the goats of Coronel Adalvino remitted of to respect the blast of that Joe Cazuzo. And that this ended being the man most pacificious of the world, fabricator of oil and sacristan, in the Saint Sundays White. Times! For total, cleaned revelation, I fix thinking. I like. Meliorate, for the idea if well to open, is travelling in train-of-iron. Could, lived to top and to bottom, inside of it. Information that I ask: same in the Heavens, end of end, how is that the soul wins so to forget s’much sufferments and maladies, in the received and in the given? The how? The Sir knows: are things of hideous ofmuch, have. Pain of corpus and pain of idea mark forted, that forted as the total love and rage of hate. Goes, sea… Of luck that, then, the Firmiano, by appellationed Louse-of-Snake, so leoprosized with the leg disconformed, thickening, of that disease that not so cures; and not discern almost more, constant the branchials in the eyes, of the cataracts. Of before, years, had to of so disarray of the jagunsaga. Well, one occasion, some was on the ranch of his, on the High Jeuitai, after accounted—that, turns time, comes subject, he would say: “Me give yearning is of to seize a soldier, and such, for one good flay, with knife blind… But, first, to castrate…” The Sir conceive? Who has more dose of demon in self is Indian, any race of brusque. Folk see nation ofthese, for there profound of the generals of Goias, theofwhere has vagarous grand rivers, of aquas always so clear pleasantly, running of down crystal rosed… Louse-of-Snake gave of sanguine of heathen. Sir me will say: but that he pronounced that out of mouth, manner of to represent that yet not was old decadent. Opus of to oppose, for fear of to be tame, and cause in order so to see respected. Total listened for such rule: palavered of ruins, for more so valued, because we to the environs is hard durability. The worst, but, is that they finish, through the same ford, given of one day to execute the declared, in the real. I saw s’much crudity! Pain not pays to account; if I go, I collide. And me dedrip, three that me sicken, this total. Me convokes that the personnel, today in day, is good of heart. This is, good in the trivial. Malices wildwants, and perversities, always have some, but scarcities. Generation mine, true, was not assuch. Ah, goes to turn a time, in which not is used more to kill people… I yea am old. Good, I was saying: question, this that me excavates… Ah, I formed that question, for compadre mine Quelemem. That me responded: that, for close to heaven, we so amplified so, that total the uglies past so exhaled of not to be—fated sans-modus from time of youngster, mal-arts. As we not lack of to have remorse of the which divulged in the pulsation of his nightmares of one night. Assuch that: fleeced-so, flourished-so! Ahem. For this said, is that the journey to the Heavens is delayed. I confide with compadre mine Quelemem, the Sir knows: reason of creed same that has—that, for total the mal, that so does, one day so repays, the exact. Subject assuch rises three times, in ante of to want to facilitate in any minutia reprehensible… Compadre mine Quelemem never speaks vacant, not subtreats. Solo that this to he not I go to expose. We never should have to declare that accept entire the alien—that is what is the rule of the king! The Sir look…see: the most important and beautiful, of the world, is this: that the people are not always same, still were not completed — but that they go always shifting. They tune or detune. Truth major. Is the that the life me taught. This that me animates, mound. And, other thing: the devil and the brutes; but Deus is treacherous! Ah, a beauty of treacherous— gives like! The force of his, when he wants— boy!— me gives the fear dread! Deus comes coming: no one not sees. He does in the law of gentle— assuch is the miracle. And Deus attacks beautiful, so amusing, so economizes. The well: one day in a tannery, the little knife mine I had dropped inside of a tank, solo soup of bark of tan, stryphnodendron adstringens, angico, there I know. —“Tomorrow I try…”— I said, withmyself. Because it was of night, light notone I not disputed. Ah, then, I found: on the other day, early, the knife, the iron of it, had been gnawed, almost by half, by that aqua dark, total quiet. I left, for more to see. Crack, fuse! Know the what was? Well, in that same of afternoon, there: of the little knife solo so found the handle… The handle, for not to be of cold metal, but of horn of deer. There is: Deus… Good, the Sir heard knows, the that knows me understands… We sum, not think that religion fractures. Sir think the contrary. Visible that, those other times, I painted—belief that the neoglaziovia variegata lifts the flower. Ah, good my joy… Boyhood. But boyhood is task for more later so to deny. Too, I of that of to think in vague in s’much, lost mine hand-of-man for the management hot, in the middle of all. But, today, that I ratiocinated, and think the endeavor, not nor for this not I give for low my competence, in a fire-and-iron. The to see. Would approach would come here with war on me, with bad parts, with other laws, or with excessive looks, and I even draw to ignite this zone, ay, if, if! Is in the mouth of the blunderbuss: is in the rete-te-tem… And lonelyonly not I am, there-of-the. For not this, I was I placed encircle my mine people. Look the Sir: here, close, vereda below, the Paspe — cropper my — is mine. More league, if that, have the Herpetotheres, and have the compadre Ciril, him and three children, I know that they serve. Band of that hand, the Alaripe: knew the Sir the that is that so boasts, in rifleation and by the knife, one cearense did this! After more: the João Innatal, the Quipes, Lophiosilurus-of-claws. And the Fafafa— this gave fights high, all side with me, in the combat old of the Anteater-such: we cleaned the wind of whom not had order of to respirate, and ante these we desencompassed… The Fafafa has a mass of mares. He raises horses good. Even a little more distant, on the ped-of-sierra, of band mine was the Sesfred, Jesualdo, the Nelson, and João Concliz. Some others. The Triol… And not I go valuing? I leave terra with them, of theirs the what is mine is, we close that we not even brothers. For what I want to gather richness? They are there, of arms aireated. Enemy to come, we cross called, gathering: is hour of one good shotshowerment in peace, they exp’riment to see. I say this to the Sir, of confidence. Too, not go to think in double. We want is to work, propose tranquility. Of me, person, I live for mine woman, that total mode-meliorate merits, and for the devotion. Well-to want of mine woman was that me assisted, prayers of hers, graces. Love comes of love. I say. In Diadorim, I think too— but Diadorim is the mine nebulina… Now, well: not I wanted to touch on this more— of the Tineaous; arrive. But has a nevertheless: I ask: the Sir believe, think trust of truth in that parlance, of with the demon so to able to deal with pact? No, no is no? I knew that not there. I spoke of favas. But I like of total good confirmation. To vend you proper soul… Inventionate false! And, soul, the what is? Soul of has to be thing internal supremed, much more of the of inside, and is solo, of the that one if thought: ah, soul sheer! Decision of to vend soul is fearless moll, fantasied of moment, has not the obedience legal. Can I to vend those good terras, thereof of between the Veredas-Four— that are of one Mr. Admiral, who resides in the capital federal? Can I some? Then, if one boy boy is, and for this not so authorizes of to negotiate… And we, this I know, at times is solo fated boy. Mal that in mine life I prepared, I was in a certain infancy in dreams — total runs and arrives so swift —; will be that if hath flame of responsibilities? If dream; yea so did… I gave rapadura to the chump! Ahem. Well. If his soul, and has, it is of Deus established, not even that the person want or not want. Not is vendible. The Sir not thinks? Me declare, frank, I beg. Ah, you I appreciate. You so see that the Sir knows much, in idea firm, beyond of to have letter of doctor. You I appreciate, for much. Your company me gives high pleasures. In terms, I liked that I would live here, or close, was a help. Here not so has conviviation that to instruct. Sertão. Knows the Sir: sertão is where the thought of the people so forms more forted of the than power of the place. To live is much perilous… Eh, that you so go? Yeayea? Is that not. Today, no. Tomorrow, no. Not I consense. The Sir me forgive, but in endeavor of mine friendship accept: the Sir stay. After fifth of-morning-early, the Sir wanting to go, then goes, same me leaves feeling your absence. But, today or tomorrow, no. Visit, here in house, with me, is for three days! But, the Sir really intends to trespass the field this sea of territotires, for sortment of to confer the what exists? You have your motives. Now— I say for me — the Sir comes, came late, Times were, the customs mutate. Almost that, of legitimate loyal, little surplus, not even no excess more nothing. The bands good of valientoughs they reparted their end; many who were jagunço, by ouch pain, beg alms. Same as the herdsmen they doubt of to come in the commerce vested of clothes entire of leather, they think that garb of jerkin is ugly and boor. And even the herd in the shrubbed pasture goes waning less mad, more educated: casted of zebu, dissee with the rest of corralers and captiveborns. Always, in the generals is to the poverty, to the sadness. A sadness that even gladdens. But, then, for a crop reasonable of bizzarancies, I recounsel of the Sir to entest journey more dilated. Not were my desmight, by acids and rheumatism, there I went. I guided the Sir till total. March 2013 San Diego, CA ORIGINAL TEXT NONADA. TIROS QUE O SENHOR ouviu foram de briga de homem não, Deus esteja. Alvejei mira em árvores no quintal, no baixo do córrego. Por meu acerto. Todo dia isso faço, gosto; desde mal em minha mocidade. Daí, vieram me chamar. Causa dumbezerro: um bezerro branco, erroso, os olhos de nem ser – se viu –; e com máscara de cachorro. Me disseram; eu não quis avistar. Mesmo que, por defeito como nasceu, arrebitado de beiços, esse figurava rindo feito pessoa. Cara de gente, cara de cão: determinaram – era o demo. Povo prascóvio. Mataram. Dono dele nem sei quem for. Vieram emprestar minhas armas, cedi. Não tenho abusões. O senhor ri certas risadas... Olhe: quando é tiro de verdade, primeiro a cachorrada pega a latir, instantaneamente – depois, então, se vai ver se deu mortos. O senhor tolere, isto é o sertão. Uns querem que não seja: que situado sertão é por os campos-gerais a fora a dentro, eles dizem, fim de rumo, terras altas, demais do Urucuia. Toleima. Para os de Corinto e do Curvelo, então, o aqui não é dito sertão? Ah, que tem maior! Lugar sertão se divulga: é onde os pastos carecem de fechos; onde um pode torar dez, quinze léguas, sem topar com casa de morador; e onde criminoso vive seu cristo-jesus, arredado do arrocho de autoridade. O Urucuia vem dos montões oestes. Mas, hoje, que na beira dele, tudo dá – fazendões de fazendas, almargem de vargens de bom render, as vazantes; culturas que vão de mata em mata, madeiras de grossura, até ainda virgens dessas lá há. O gerais corre em volta. Esses gerais são sem tamanho. Enfim, cada um o que quer aprova, o senhor sabe: pão ou pães, é questão de opiniães... O sertão está em toda a parte. Do demo? Não gloso. Senhor pergunte aos moradores. Em falso receio, desfalam no nome dele – dizem só: o Que-Diga. Vote! não... Quem muito se evita, se convive. Sentença num Aristides – o que existe no buritizal primeiro desta minha mão direita, chamado a Vereda-da-Vaca-Mansa-deSanta-Rita – todo o mundo crê: ele não pode passar em três lugares, designados: porque então a gente escuta um chorinho, atrás, e uma vozinha que avisando: – “Eu já vou! Eu já vou!...” – que é o capiroto, o que-diga... E um José Simpilício – quem qualquer daqui jura ele tem um capeta em casa, miúdo satanazim, preso obrigado a ajudar em toda ganância que executa; razão que o Simpilício se empresa em vias de completar de rico. Apre, por isso dizem também que a besta pra ele rupeia, nega de banda, não deixando, quando ele quer amontar... Superstição. José Simpilício e Aristides, mesmo estão se engordando, de assim nãoouvir ou ouvir. Ainda o senhor estude: agora mesmo, nestes dias de época, tem gente porfalando que o Diabo próprio parou, de passagem, no Andrequicé. Um Moço de fora, teria aparecido, e lá se louvou que, para aqui vir – normal, a cavalo, dum dia-e-meio – ele era capaz que só com uns vinte minutos bastava... porque costeava o Rio do Chico pelas cabeceiras! Ou, também, quem sabe – sem ofensas – não terá sido, por um exemplo, até mesmo o senhor quem se anunciou assim, quando passou por lá, por prazido divertimento engraçado? Há-de, não me dê crime, sei que não foi. E mal eu não quis. Só que uma pergunta, em hora, às vezes, clareia razão de paz. Mas, o senhor entenda: o tal moço, se há, quis mangar. Pois, hem, que, despontar o Rio pelas nascentes, será a mesma coisa que um se redobrar nos internos deste nosso Estado nosso, custante viagem de uns três meses... Então? Que-Diga? Doideira. A fantasiação. E, o respeito de dar a ele assim esses nomes de rebuço, é que é mesmo um querer invocar que ele forme forma, com as presenças! Não seja. Eu, pessoalmente, quase que já perdi nele a crença, mercês a Deus; é o que ao senhor lhe digo, à puridade. Sei que é bem estabelecido, que grassa nos Santos- Evangelhos. Em ocasião, conversei com um rapaz seminarista, muito condizente, conferindo no livro de rezas e revestido de paramenta, com uma vara de maria-preta na mão – proseou que ia adjutorar o padre, para extraírem o Cujo, do corpo vivo de uma velha, na Cachoeira-dos-Bois, ele ia com o vigário do Campo-Redondo... Me concebo. O senhor não é como eu? Não acreditei patavim. Compadre meu Quelemém descreve que o que revela efeito são os baixos espíritos descarnados, de terceira, fuzuando nas piores trevas e com ânsias de se travarem com os viventes – dão encosto. Compadre meu Quelemém é quem muito me consola – Quelemém de Góis. Mas ele tem de morar longe daqui, na Jijujã, Vereda do Buriti Pardo... Arres, me deixe lá, que – em endemoninhamento ou com encosto – o senhor mesmo deverá de ter conhecido diversos, homens, mulheres. Pois não sim? Por mim, tantos vi, que aprendi. Rincha- Mãe, Sangued’Outro, o Muitos-Beiços, o Rasgaem-Baixo, Faca-Fria, o Fancho-Bode, um Treciziano, o Azinhavre... o Hermógenes... Deles, punhadão. Se eu pudesse esquecer tantos nomes... Não sou amansador de cavalos! E, mesmo, quem de si de ser jagunço se entrete, já é por alguma competência entrante do demônio. Será não? Será? De primeiro, eu fazia e mexia, e pensar não pensava. Não possuía os prazos. Vivi puxando difícil de dificel, peixe vivo no moquém: quem mói no asp’ro, não fantaseia. Mas, agora, feita a folga que me vem, e sem pequenos dessossegos, estou de range rede. E me inventei neste gosto, de especular idéia. O diabo existe e não existe? Dou o dito. Abrenúncio. Essas melancolias. O senhor vê: existe cachoeira; e pois? Mas cachoeira é barranco de chão, e água se caindo por ele, retombando; o senhor consome essa água, ou desfaz o barranco, sobra cachoeira alguma? Viver é negócio muito perigoso... Explico ao senhor: o diabo vige dentro do homem, os crespos do homem – ou é o homem arruinado, ou o homem dos avessos. Solto, por si, cidadão, é que não tem diabo nenhum. Nenhum! – é o que digo. O senhor aprova? Me declare tudo, franco – é alta mercê que me faz: e pedir posso, encarecido. Este caso – por estúrdio que me vejam – é de minha certa importância. Tomara não fosse... Mas, não diga que o senhor, assisado e instruído, que acredita na pessoa dele?! Não? Lhe agradeço! Sua alta opinião compõe minha valia. Já sabia, esperava por ela-já o campo! Ah, a gente, na velhice, carece de ter sua aragem de descanso. Lhe agradeço. Tem diabo nenhum. Nem espírito. Nunca vi. Alguém devia de ver, então era eu mesmo, este vosso servidor. Fosse lhe contar... Bem, o diabo regula seu estado preto, nas criaturas, nas mulheres, nos homens. Até: nas crianças – eu digo. Pois não é ditado: “menino – trem do diabo”? E nos usos, nas plantas, nas águas, na terra, no vento... Estrumes. ... O diabo na rua, no meio do redemunho... Hem? Hem? Ah. Figuração minha, de pior pra trás, as certas lembranças. Mal hajame! Sofro pena de contar não... Melhor, se arrepare: pois, num chão, e com igual formato de ramos e folhas, não dá a mandioca mansa, que se come comum, e a mandioca-brava, que mata? Agora, o senhor já viu uma estranhez? A mandioca-doce pode de repente virar azangada – motivos não sei; às vezes se diz que é por replantada no terreno sempre, com mudas seguidas, de manaíbas – vai em amargando, de tanto em tanto, de si mesma toma peçonhas. E, ora veja: a outra, a mandiocabrava, também é que às vezes pode ficar mansa, a esmo, de se comer sem nenhum mal. E que isso é? Eh, o senhor já viu, por ver, a feiúra de ódio franzido, carantonho, nas faces duma cobra cascavel? Observou o porco gordo, cada dia mais feliz bruto, capaz de, pudesse, roncar e engolir por sua suja comodidade o mundo todo? E gavião, corvo, alguns, as feições deles já representam a precisão de talhar para adiante, rasgar e estraçalhar a bico, parece uma quicé muito afiada por ruim desejo. Tudo. Tem até tortas raças de pedras, horrorosas, venenosas – que estragam mortal a água, se estão jazendo em fundo de poço; o diabo dentro delas dorme: são o demo. Se sabe? E o demo – que é só assim o significado dum azougue maligno – tem ordem de seguir o caminho dele, tem licença para campear?! Arre, ele está misturado em tudo. Que o que gasta, vai gastando o diabo de dentro da gente, aos pouquinhos, é o razoável sofrer. E a alegria de amor – compadre meu Quelemém, diz. Família. Deveras? É, e não é. O senhor ache e não ache. Tudo é e não é... Quase todo mais grave criminoso feroz, sempre é muito bom marido, bom filho, bom pai, e é bom amigo-de-seus-amigos! Sei desses. Só que tem os depois – e Deus, junto. Vi muitas nuvens. Mas, em verdade, filho, também, abranda. Olhe: um chamado Aleixo, residente a légua do Passo do Pubo, no da-Areia, era o homem de maiores ruindades calmas que já se viu. Me agradou que perto da casa dele tinha um açudinho, entre as palmeiras, com traíras, pra-almas de enormes, desenormes, ao real, que receberam fama; o Aleixo dava de comer a elas, em horas justas, elas se acostumaram a se assim das locas, para papar, semelhavam ser peixes ensinados. Um dia, só por graça rústica, ele matou um velhinho que por lá passou, desvalido rogando esmola. O senhor não duvide – tem gente, neste aborrecido mundo, que matam só para ver alguém fazer careta... Eh, pois, empós, o resto o senhor prove: vem o pão, vem a mão, vem o são, vem o cão. Esse Aleixo era homem afamilhado, tinha filhos pequenos; aqueles eram o amor dele, todo, despropósito. Dê bem, que não nem um ano estava passado, de se matar o velhinho pobre, e os meninos do Aleixo aí adoeceram. Andaço de sarampão, se disse, mas complicado; eles nunca saravam. Quando, então, sararam. Mas os olhos deles vermelhavam altos, numa inflama de sapiranga à rebelde; e susseguinte – o que não sei é se foram todos duma vez, ou um logo e logo outro e outro – eles restaram cegos. Cegos, sem remissão dum favinho de luz dessa nossa! O senhor imagine: uma escadinha – três meninos e uma menina – todos cegados. Sem remediável. O Aleixo não perdeu o juizo; mas mudou: ah, demudou completo – agora vive da banda de Deus, suando para ser bom e caridoso em todas suas horas da noite e do dia. Parece até que ficou o feliz, que antes não era. Ele mesmo diz que foi um homem de sorte, porque Deus quis ter pena dele, transformar para lá o rumo de sua alma. Isso eu ouvi, e me deu raiva. Razão das crianças. Se sendo castigo, que culpa das hajas do Aleixo aqueles meninozinhos tinham?! Compadre meu Quelemém reprovou minhas incertezas. Que, por certo, noutra vida revirada, os meninos também tinham sido os mais malvados, da massa e peça do pai, demônios do mesmo caldeirão de lugar. Senhor o que acha? E o velhinho assassinado? – eu sei que o senhor vai discutir. Pois, também. Em ordem que ele tinha um pecado de crime, no corpo, por pagar. Se a gente – conforme compadre meu Quelemém é quem diz – se a gente torna a encarnar renovado, eu cismo até que inimigo de morte pode vir como filho do inimigo. Mire veja: se me digo, tem um sujeito Pedro Pindó, vizinho daqui mais seis léguas, homem de bem por tudo em tudo, ele e a mulher dele, sempre sidos bons, de bem. Eles têm um filho duns dez anos, chamado Valtei – nome moderno, é o que o povo daqui agora apreceia, o senhor sabe. Pois essezinho, essezim, desde que algum entendimento alumiou nele, feito mostrou o que é: pedido madrasto, azedo queimador, gostoso de ruim de dentro do fundo das espécies de sua natureza. Em qual que judia, ao devagar, de todo bicho ou criaçãozinha pequena que pega; uma vez, encontrou uma crioula bentabêbada dormindo, arranjou um caco de garrafa, lanhou em três pontos a popa da perna dela. O que esse menino babeja vendo, é sangrarem galinha ou esfaquear porco. – “Eu gosto de matar...” – uma ocasião ele pequenino me disse. Abriu em mim um susto; porque: passarinho que se debruça – o vôo já está pronto! Pois, o senhor vigie: o pai, Pedro Pindó, modo de corrigir isso, e a mãe, dão nele, de miséria e mastro – botam o menino sem comer, amarram em árvores no terreiro, ele nu nuelo, mesmo em junho frio, lavram o corpinho dele na peia e na taca, depois limpam a pele do sangue, com cuia de salmoura. A gente sabe, espia, fica gasturado. O menino já rebaixou de magreza, os olhos entrando, carinha de ossos, encaveirada, e entisicou, o tempo todo tosse, tossura da que puxa secos peitos. Arre, que agora, visível, o Pindó e a mulher se habituaram de nele bater, de pouquinho em pouquim foram criando nisso um prazer feio de diversão – como regulam as sovas em horas certas confortáveis, até chamam gente para ver o exemplo bom. Acho que esse menino não dura, já está no blimbilim, não chega para a quaresma que vem... Uê-uê, então?!Não sendo como compadre meu Quelemém quer, que explicação é que o senhor dava? Aquele menino tinha sido homem. Devia, em balanço, terríveis perversidades. Alma dele estava no breu. Mostrava. E, agora, pagava. Ah, mas, acontece, quando está chorando e penando, ele sofre igual que se fosse um menino bonzinho... Ave, vi de tudo, neste mundo! lá vi até cavalo com soluço... – o que é a coisa mais custosa que há. Bem, mas o senhor dirá, deve de: e no começo – para pecados e artes, as pessoas – como por que foi que tanto emendado se começou? Ei, ei, aí todos esbarram. Compadre meu Quelemém, também. Sou só um sertanejo, nessas altas idéias navego mal. Sou muito pobre coitado. Inveja minha pura é de uns conforme o senhor, com toda leitura e suma doutoração. Não é que eu esteja analfabeto. Soletrei, anos e meio, meante cartilha, memória e palmatória. Tive mestre, Mestre Lucas, no Curralinho, decorei gramática, as operações, regra-de-três, até geografia e estudo pátrio. Em folhas grandes de papel, com capricho tracei bonitos mapas. Ah, não é por falar: mas, desde o começo, me achavam sofismado de ladino. E que eu merecia de ir para cursar latim, em Aula Régia – que também diziam. Tempo saudoso! Inda hoje, apreceio um bom livro, despaçado. Na fazenda O Limãozinho, de um meu amigo Vito Soziano, se assina desse almanaque grosso, de logogrifos e charadas e outras divididas matérias, todo ano vem. Em tanto, ponho primazia é na leitura proveitosa, vida de santo, virtudes e exemplos – missionário esperto engambelando os índios, ou São Francisco de Assis, Santo Antônio, São Geraldo... Eu gosto muito de moral. Raciocinar, exortar os outros para o bom caminho, aconselhar a justo. Minha mulher, que o senhor sabe, zela por mim: muito reza. Ela é uma abençoável. Compadre meu Quelemém sempre diz que eu posso aquietar meu temer de consciência, que sendo bem-assistido, terríveis bons-espíritos me protegem. Ipe! Com gosto... Como é de são efeito, ajudo com meu querer acreditar. Mas nem sempre posso. O senhor saiba: eu toda a minha vida pensei por mim, forro, sou nascido diferente. Eu sou é eu mesmo. Diverjo de todo o mundo... Eu quase que nada não sei. Mas desconfio de muita coisa. O senhor concedendo, eu digo: para pensar longe, sou cão mestre – o senhor solte em minha frente uma idéia ligeira, e eu rastreio essa por fundo de todos os matos, amém! Olhe: o que devia de haver, era de se reunirem-se os sábios, políticos, constituições gradas, fecharem o definitivo a noção – proclamar por uma vez, artes assembléias, que não tem diabo nenhum, não existe, não pode. Valor de lei! Só assim, davam tranqüilidade boa à gente. Por que o Governo não cuida?! Ah, eu sei que não é possível. Não me assente o senhor por beócio. Uma coisa é pôr idéias arranjadas, outra é lidar com país de pessoas, de carne e sangue, de mil-e-tantas misérias... Tanta gente – dá susto de saber – e nenhum se sossega: todos nascendo, crescendo, se casando, querendo colocação de emprego, comida, saúde, riqueza, ser importante, querendo chuva e negócios bons... De sorte que carece de se escolher: ou a gente se tece de viver no safado comum, ou cuida só de religião só. Eu podia ser: padre sacerdote, se não chefe de jagunços; para outras coisas não fui parido. Mas minha velhice já principiou, errei de toda conta. E o reumatismo... Lá como quem diz: nas escorvas. Ahã. Hem? Hem? O que mais penso, testo e explico: todo-omundo é louco. O senhor, eu, nós, as pessoas todas. Por isso é que se carece principalmente de religião: para se desendoidecer, desdoidar. Reza é que sara da loucura. No geral. Isso é que é a salvaçãoda- alma... Muita religião, seu moço! Eu cá, não perco ocasião de religião. Aproveito de todas. Bebo água de todo rio... Uma só, para mim é pouca, talvez não me chegue. Rezo cristão, católico, embrenho a certo; e aceito as preces de compadre meu Quelemém, doutrina dele, de Cardéque. Mas, quando posso, vou no Mindubim, onde um Matias é crente, metodista: a gente se acusa de pecador, lê alto a Bíblia, e ora, cantando hinos belos deles. Tudo me quieta, me suspende. Qualquer sombrinha me refresca. Mas é só muito provisório. Eu queria rezar – o tempo todo. Muita gente não me aprova, acham que lei de Deus é privilégios, invariável. E eu! Bofe! Detesto! O que sou? – o que faço, que quero, muito curial. E em cara de todos faço, executado. Eu não tresmalho! Olhe: tem uma preta, Maria Leôncia, longe daqui não mora, as rezas dela afamam muita virtude de poder. Pois a ela pago, todo mês – encomenda de rezar por mim um terço, todo santo dia, e, nos domingos, um rosário. Vale, se vale. Minha mulher não vê mal nisso. E estou, já mandei recado para uma outra, do Vau-Vau, uma Izina Calanga, para vir aqui, ouvi de que reza também com grandes meremerências, vou efetuar com ela trato igual. Quero punhado dessas, me defendendo em Deus, reunidas de mim em volta... Chagas de Cristo! Viver é muito perigoso... Querer o bem com demais força, de incerto jeito, pode já estar sendo se querendo o mal, por principiar. Esses homens! Todos puxavam o mundo para si, para o concertar consertado. Mas cada um só vê e entende as coisas dum seu modo. Montante, o mais supro, mais sério – foi Medeiro Vaz. Que um homem antigo... Seu Joãozinho Bem-Bem, o mais bravo de todos, ninguém nunca pôde decifrar como ele por dentro consistia. Joca Ramiro – grande homem príncipe! – era político. Zé- Bebelo quis ser político. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao AbeJohn B. Cobb Jr.Masao Abe spent a year at the Blaisdell Institute in Claremont, 1965–1966. I was on sabbatical in Germany that year. On return I learned from many people that I had missed a great opportunity for an authentic encounter with a living Buddhist thinker who understood Christianity very well. Fortunately, he visited Claremont again, although more briefly, and this time I was able to take advantage (...) of his visit.I was, and am, convinced that Whiteheadians have much to gain from the encounter with Buddhists. At one level we can grasp and assimilate the idea of dependent origination or pratitya samutpada quite easily. For Whitehead too the ultimate reality consists in the many becoming one. For Whitehead human experience is an example of this reality and, indeed, that example is the one he most fully analyzed.On the other hand, we Whiteheadians incline to objectify the whole process. More often than with Whitehead himself, we are describing a process that is going on objectively out there. Abe taught me the difference. He liked to distinguish the perspective of the swimmer battling against the current in dangerous waters and observers on the bank. To understand that all unit events are instances of dependent origination is one thing; to experience oneself in that way is quite another. And what is especially important is to recognize that experiencing oneself is not objectifying one’s past or imagining oneself in the eyes of an observer. It is embodying the absolutely immediate, ever-changing reality that is experience now.Whitehead never thought of his ontological analysis as having direct religious importance. For him, as part of the understanding that all things are perpetually perishing, it constituted the ultimate threat to the meaningfulness of life. The religious dimension came as a response to this threat.For Abe, of course, the full existential realization of what we are, is in itself salvific in the sense of healing. It puts an end to guilt, defensiveness, and attachment, and it makes us wholly acceptant of whatever is. It leads to, or perhaps is, enlightenment, expressing itself in wisdom and compassion. Given the history of Buddhism, one must accept the profound truth in this affirmation, although, given the history of Buddhism, one must also recognize that matters are never as simple as this formulation sounds.I have spoken personally of an example of what and how I learned from Abe. This is a testimonial that can be matched by scores, perhaps hundreds, of others. Certainly [End Page 119] in our ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue group, Abe was the foremost teacher. My goal in helping to organize this group was to give my fellow Christian theologians the chance to learn from him and other Buddhists. I am proud of the extent to which, especially because of Abe’s gifts as a teacher, my purpose was fulfilled.Appreciating the truth of Buddhism, and agreeing with Abe that Christian theology through the centuries has been distorted by clinging to substantialist modes of thought, I was particularly eager to engage him in a dialogue about the relation of Buddhism and Christian process theology, in particular a Christian process theology that recognized and appreciated the spiritual value of Buddhist enlightenment. Since Abe felt that Buddhists had something to learn from Christianity about social ethics, the suggestions of Christian theology, including its process form, for modifications or developments of Buddhism were not wholly lost on him. He supervised two dissertations by Buddhists on this topic, of which I was the official advisor, one by a Zen Buddhist (Chris Ives) and the other by a Pure Land Buddhist (John Ishihara, now Yokota). He criticized fellow Buddhists in our dialogue group for not being as open to learning from their Christian dialogue partners as these partners were open to Buddhist insights. In short he supported real dialogue, always ready to share his wisdom, and encouraging openness to further development of Buddhism.None of us is perfect, or, at least, none of us fulfills what someone else would see as perfection. In my judgment Abe was unnecessarily wedded to features of his Buddhist tradition that inhibited learning from Christianity, particularly in its process... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 107-124 [Access article in PDF] Shakespeare and Political Philosophy John D. Cox Though Shakespeare has been praised as one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, he has no standing in the history of Western philosophy, being at best a footnote to the derivative neo-Platonists and skeptics of the late Renaissance. He died in 1616, more than twenty years before Descartes's Discourse on (...) Method heralded the autonomous rationalism of the Enlightenment, and Shakespeare did not achieve a reputation as a deep thinker until the nineteenth century, as a consequence of admiration for his characters. People seemed to think that a reflective and witty prince who could say to his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" must be the product of a keenly philosophical intelligence—never mind that Hamlet is referring to the "antique Roman" philosophy he so admires in Horatio, i.e., Stoicism, which by 1599 was little more than an oft-repeated set of moral and social platitudes. 1 To assert that there are more things in heaven and earth than late Renaissance Stoicism is not to assert very much.But other ways of thinking about Shakespeare philosophically are more promising than character analysis. He was indeed a thoughtful playwright, and though he had no university education, he was a voracious and incisive reader, so the influences on his plays and poems include many writers who have some standing in the history of philosophy. More complex than discerning historical philosophical influences on Shakespeare is what might be called the hermeneutical approach, i.e., the interpretation of the plays and poems with particular philosophers and philosophies in mind, regardless of their possible historical influence in the sixteenth century. To survey the range of philosophical influences and hermeneutical approaches is impossible [End Page 107] in a single essay, but a manageable example of Shakespeare's thinking is his political philosophy, where both ways of understanding him can be discerned. The most influential interpreter of Shakespeare's history plays for the second half of the twentieth century, for example, was E. M. W. Tillyard, who purported to excavate the neo-Platonic assumptions of Shakespeare's political culture: order, degree, hierarchy, and obedience. 2 Though questions were increasingly raised concerning Tillyard's assumptions and documentation, the decisive challenge to his authority was issued in the 1980s by New Historicists and Cultural Materialists, whose allegiance was more or less explicitly Marxist, and who therefore interpreted Shakespeare in light of a particular nineteenth-century philosophy. 3 A clearer example of the difference between history and hermeneutics in understanding Shakespeare is hard to imagine.The clarity of the difference, however, does not mean that the two approaches are mutually exclusive. Tillyard construed Shakespeare's emphasis on hierarchical order as an advocacy of divine-right monarchy, and much in the plays of Shakespeare supports this construal. Despite his sympathetic portraits of particular characters, including commoners, remarks in his plays about commoners taken together ("the people") are always slighting and mistrustful—often indeed scornful—and the proportion of upper-class to lower-class characters reflects their perceived social importance, for the former invariably outnumber the latter, even in the comedies, whereas the aristocracy were a tiny fraction of the total population in Shakespeare's England. Shakespeare's portrayal of pre-imperial Rome, in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, shows little understanding of, and less sympathy with, republican alternatives to one-person rule. Shakespeare was not responsive to Calvin's spirited defense of the "poor common people" against rapacious kings (even, or especially, under godly magistrates), and Shakespeare's plays offer no support to the nascent republicanism of those who took arms against the king of England in the mid-seventeenth century, largely inspired by Calvinism. 4 Shakespeare, in short, was no Milton.This is not to say, however, that he was an uncritically idealizing royalist, as we can see from his first venture into writing about English history: his four early plays on the civil unrest of the fifteenth century. Three of these plays... (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Helping a Muslim Family to Make a Life–and–Death Decision for Their Beloved Terminally Ill FatherBahar BastaniI live in a city in the Midwest with a population of around two million people. There are an estimated 2,000 Iranians living in this city, the vast majority of which belong to Shia sect of Islam. [End Page 190] However, the vast majority is also not very religious. Over the past two decades (...) that I have been living in this city, professionally in the capacity of a physician and university faculty at a school of medicine, and socially as one of the community leaders with a particular role in religious matters, I have acquired the trust of my community. Following one of my yearly routine travels to my homeland, Iran, I had just returned to work when I received a phone call from one of the Iranian community members. He informed me that his father was very ill and was hospitalized, and that the physicians had introduced the idea of stopping life support. The family was experiencing a significant emotional, moral and religious dilemma as to whether they could consent to this. I was requested by the patient’s children to help them make the right decision.I requested that the oldest son, who had called me, to ask the three other siblings and their mother to be present at the bedside of the patient that night, so that we could discuss the matters face–to–face. That same night, all requisite family members and myself gathered at the bedside of this 88–year–old husband and father, who had developed multi–organ failure, which commenced with an infection following a heart valve replacement, followed by bacteremia and sepsis. Moreover, the patient was hypotensive, had developed respiratory failure requiring intubation and artificial ventilation, and had also developed hematologic coagulation abnormalities secondary to sepsis. Because of the sepsis, hypotension, and multiple drugs, including antibiotics and vasopressors, his kidneys had also failed, and there was a need to start hemodialysis if his life was to be maintained. After speaking with the intensive care physicians who were taking care of this elderly gentleman, it became clear to me that further care was futile, and there was absolutely no hope for him to recover from his multiple organ failure. I presented all the facts that I had acquired to the family members, and expressed my own viewpoint that I agreed with those physicians and that further care of their beloved, terminally ill husband and father was futile and only extended his dying. My assurances made it easier for the family members, particularly for his four sons who were present, to come to the decision to withdraw life support. After I informed the intensive care physicians of the family’s decision, the patient was heavily sedated with morphine, and the intravenous fluids, antibiotics, vasopressors, and the ventilator machine were all stopped. Over the next several minutes, the patient developed agonal breathing, his blood pressure dropped to zero, and his heart stopped. During the last few minutes of his life, I held the hands of the family members, we all prayed Islamic prayers to bless his soul while departing from his body. The next day, I supported the family with funeral services that included the Islamic prayers for the dead, the ceremonial religious washing of the body of the deceased, and the ceremonial religious burial.The dilemma that this family faced was multi-factorial: (1) the children had spent all of their adult life in America, and were unfamiliar with Islamic end of life and funeral traditions; (2) they had been asked by their father’s physicians to make a decision regarding the withdrawal of life support, which posed a moral and ethical dilemma; (3) they did not know whether it was religiously acceptable to withdraw life support; and (4) they did not know what type of funeral service would be acceptable to the religious beliefs of their deceased father.My presence as a trusted community leader, physician and religious leader was reassuring to the family members that the decision to stop life support for their loved one with a terminal illness and multiple organ... (shrink)

Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 82:6, ‘I said, You are gods’, a riposte to the accusation that he had blasphemed by making himself equal to God, has attracted considerable attention. The latest suggestion by Jerome H. Neyrey rightly insists that any solution to the problem should take account of the internal logic of the Psalm and argues that it derives from or prefigures a rabbinic Midrash on the Psalm which refers it to the restoration of the immortality lost by Adam to (...) Israel at the giving of the Torah on Sinai. This immortality was then lost again because of the sin of the golden calf. Whilst agreeing that the Psalm is interpreted in the context of the giving of the Torah on Sinai, this article argues that its reference is directed towards Moses on Sinai rather than Israel in general. This accords with the interpretation of Philo and Josephus and other sources much earlier than the Mekkilta de Rabbi Ishmael that Moses is rightly called a god and is assumed to heaven in glory without dying. Rather than deny this attribution of divine features to Moses due to his reception of the Torah on Sinai, John argues that the Torah was received from the hands of Jesus as the Logos. Therefore, Moses’s derivative divine features simply confirm the true divinity of the Logos as the expression of the Father. Moses could be called a god because he knew Jesus as Logos and wrote about him (5:45–5:47), but he sinned and died like any mortal. The corollary is that Moses and his disciples lost their status and died like any mortal, whilst the disciples of Jesus who are ‘taught by God’ and believe in the Incarnate Logos (6:45), have not only seen the glory denied to Moses but are born from above to become divinised as tekna theou (1:12) and do not die. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Could Understanding Harm?Iskra Fileva, PhD (bio) and Linda A.W. Brakel, MD (bio)We would like to thank the editors for organizing this symposium and our commentators—Marga Reimer and James Phillips—for the thought-provoking feedback. Although we had thought about the ideas we discuss from many different angles, our commentators raised several interesting issues we had not considered. We are grateful for the opportunity to continue the conversation.Reply to ReimerAs Professor Reimer (...) notes, we advocate an approach to self-constitution that we dub “understanding first.” On this approach, non-moral and non-normative understanding of the origin of maladaptive traits must precede moral evaluation and attempts to free oneself—or as we say “prune”—undesirable traits. Professor Reimer presents several interesting cases meant both to extend and test the limits of our proposal. We appreciate this approach and respond to each case in turn.Genes and AlcoholismSuppose Alejandro, an adult raised by adoptive parents, struggles with alcohol addiction. He learns that his biological parents died of alcoholic liver disease and comes to believe that his alcohol problem is caused by a genetic propensity toward alcohol abuse. One can ask: “Does an understanding first approach have the potential to undermine the sense of agency that is necessary for the effective treatment of maladaptive traits?”Answer: It can be explained to Alejandro that genetic proclivities are just that—proclivities—that can be overridden. In fact, behavior can alter our very genes—although not at the sequence level— changes known as “epigenetic.” And the liver disease of the biological parents can serve as a cautionary tale. If even in light of these considerations, Alejandro’s tendency to see genetic propensities as deterministic persists, it is worth asking why. There is no evidence that “genes are destiny,” so the disposition to see them that way must have a psychological explanation. What is the explanation? A self-destructive desire? Fear of freedom? This exploration can itself be empowering. [End Page 211]Adaptive ForgettingSuppose Beata, who has an eating disorder, was molested by her own father when she was a child. Subsequently, her father shot himself and now she has no recollection of the molestation. However, Beata’s eating disorder is largely a result of those experiences. It is quite possible that if Beata were to recall being molested, that would do more harm than good. In this connection, one can ask together with Reimer: “Does an understanding first approach have the potential to undermine an adaptive ‘forgetting’ of root causes of maladaptive traits?”Answer: Here, understanding the history, instead of forgetting it, might allow Beata to gain insight into and empathize with possible motives that may have led to becoming obese. For example, she might have the phantasy that if she had been obese and unattractive, she could have prevented the molestation—hence, become that way now to prevent it from happening again, and more wishfully reverse it. (In unconscious goings-on time is thought to be in the “unexamined present” (Brakel 2009, p. 63; 2015, p. 131; 2022, p. 4; 2023, p. 404.) One benefit of this is that in gaining this type of recognition, Beata might find it easier to change her behavior that she otherwise would not have; it was never her responsibility to prevent her own molestation, and there is no reason whatsoever for her to now make herself unattractive to her deceased father, and very little reason to remain obese in an attempt to deter current day men.Ego-Syntonic Maladaptive TraitsClaire is a concert pianist and alcoholic. Importantly, Claire does not see her own desire for alcohol as destructive but rather, as something constitutive of her own identity. “I wouldn’t be myself without alcohol,” she says. Reimer asks whether our approach would “work for cases where the agent sees a maladaptive trait as constitutive of their identity?”Answer: Although no approach can guarantee success, our claim is that our approach has a better chance than the main alternative known as the pruning view. Since Claire, by stipulation, is not inclined to see her own drinking as a problem, a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Paradoxical Pleasures of Human ImaginationOmar Sultan HaqueHow Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, by Paul Bloom. W. W. Norton, 2010, 280 pp., $26.95.Have you heard about that chump who dished out $48,875 for John F. Kennedy's dusty old tape measure? The rock star who allegedly snorted his father's ashes with some cocaine? The creepy German guy who put out an (...) advertisement for someone who would let themselves be eaten by him (only to have hundreds volunteer)? The story about the man who was tired with his wife, but powerfully aroused when he was convinced he was with an exact duplicate of her? How can a staunch atheist also believe in the numinous? Why do people buy expensive wines, and bottled water, even though in blind taste tests, they can't distinguish them from the cheap stuff? Why buy pâté when your palate can't distinguish it from dog food? Why do people pay hundreds of dollars to hear the famous violinist Joshua Bell perform, but then cannot even spare a dime when a disguised Bell plays the same music on the subway in regular garb? Why might someone who trains people to prevent falls and injury enjoy watching a comedian fall and hurt himself? Why would someone pay a few hundred thousand dollars for art that consisted of someone else's unmade bed?It may be is easy to feel smug when thinking about this panoply of apparent irrationality in individual decisions and general human propensities. But the things that uniquely delight us may not be as [End Page 182] capricious as they seem. Many of the pleasures (curious or ordinary) that we get from our relationships with food, sex, irreplaceable objects, performances, safety and pain, music, literature and the imagination may have a deeper logic. They may be explicable by a better understanding of how our evolved minds work, and don't work, amidst our historically novel environments. Or so argues Paul Bloom—a cognitive developmental psychologist at Yale University—in How Pleasure Works, a brilliant and articulate synthesis of philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology and the arts that elucidates the seemingly whimsical and once mysterious sources of our uniquely human hedonic satisfactions.The theory Bloom utilizes to systematize aspects of a number of pleasure phenomena is called psychological essentialism. This is an idea that has been developed in the last two decades by Bloom and the psychologists Douglas Medin, Andrew Ortony, Frank Keil, and Susan Gelman, among others.1 Psychological essentialism claims that, as Bloom puts it, people reliably, at a very young age, cross-culturally and throughout history, think that "things have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly and it is this hidden nature that really matters." We assume that objects, artifacts, non-human animals, people and groups have invisible essences and unseen orders that account for their surface properties. In one of Keil's experiments, for instance, children thought that a dog made to look like a toy dog, a porcupine that had a surgery to make it look like a cactus, and a tiger stuffed into a lion suit were still a dog, porcupine and tiger, respectively. However, when each animal had its 'innards' altered, children said the animals changed into different categories, like objects or plants.2 Psychological essentialism for artifacts or tools is somewhat different from that for animate entities; the essence of artifacts is their history and the intentions of their creators.3According to How Pleasure Works, because of psychological essentialism, many human delights seem to arise that cannot be explained by simply appealing either to their low-level sensual qualities or their practical utility. Thus, the theory helps clarify some of pleasure's paradoxes. Like parents who affectionately keep tokens of their children's time as a baby, someone can enjoy owning a tape measure from a famous person because of its history of uses or other associations with important places or people. Snorting dad's ashes (however noxious to the nostrils), or pigging out on someone whom you admire, can be deeply meaningful because it feels as if one is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:196 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in 1943, was to write an Epilogue to Julian Marias' History o] Philosophy. In early 1944, the Epilogue was conceived as a volume of 400 pages, and later of 700. In 1945 a part of the Epilogue was to be detached and given the title The Origin ol Philosophy. Then one completed part of that was published in 1953 as an essay in a Festschrift (...) for Karl Jaspers. That, and other sections, have been put together here. The first part of the book treats philosophy as a cumulative enterprise in which each man rethinks and thinks further what other men have thought. Even when past thought has reached an end, or taken a direction we will not follow, it is only for the reason that it has already happened that we do not have to do it ourselves. This is not because history is rational but because thought is historical, rooted in ideas we did not ourselves create and based on methods we have acquired and sometimes altered. The second part of the book deals with the origin of philosophy--and the origin of "philosophy" for Ortega is concerned throughout with language and etymology. The word "philosophy" is not one Ortega likes; he prefers the word "aletheia," which was used by Parmenides and his contemporaries. In popular language, aletheia meant discovery, exposure, denudation, revelation. For the thinker, "aletheia" is "truth" as a verb, the activity of uncovering reality, which is concealed under the robes of appearance or falsehood. Philosophy, for Ortega, begins with Parmenides and Heraclitus; "proto-philosophers" he calls them. The Ionians had been scientists; their attempts at natural explanation upset religion and tradition, and prepared the way for philosophy. In a remarkably subtle and complex analysis for so short a space, Ortega argues that skepticism, atheism, wealth, and knowledge of nature created a freedom based on a need to create or choose one's own beliefs in a world in which relative abundance demands choice, since in poverty "an individual is never in the position of being able to choose; for choice assumes that the circle of one's possibilities is notably greater than that of one's needs" (p. 98). The social need to define the thinker and so grant him professional status that might minimize the hostility of the tradition-ridden and reactionary populace, especially in Athens, led to the name "sophist," which became disreputable to a hostile citizenry, and then to "philosopher." Socrates was, unfortunately, the only philosopher, the man who liked, had a taste for, or loved wisdom, but made no pretense that he had any, saying only he sought it. But the name persisted, and helped institutionalize the new profession. I haven't even intimated the delight of Ortega's incidental insights. He was probably justified in believing that his stature as a thinker was much greater than his reputation. A first-rate, full-scale study of Ortega in English would help, but what we need most is a collection and translation of his complete works. RSLPH ROSS ~cripps College Discourse on Thinking. By Martin Heidegger. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. (New York: Harper and Row, 1966. Pp. 93. $3.50.) This is a translation of a speech and conversation originally published under the thematic title Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Giinther Neske, 1959). Heidegger uses this unusual German word to remind us that there is another way of thinking than the calculative and dialectical modes made prominent by the mathematical sciences and modem cultural philosophy respectively. We have forgotten a less busy mode of thinking, a thinking released from all desire to control reality. Gelassenheit is rendered throughout as "releasement" in this translation. But Gelassenheit does not just mean letting go, or freedom from, as "releasement" may suggest. It also has the more positive sense of composure and a patient letting things be. In the context of Heidegger's attempts to define a mode of thinking not concerned with dominating reality, Gelassenheit comes to mean the freedom to be open to reality. BOOK REVIEWS 197 Heidegger stresses the ability to wait for insight, which is not, however, a mere passive waiting for something fixed. It would be... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 85 scientious search for principles of method (and of peace) may have been one of the reasons why he was suspect in England, as were the Ramist "methodists." In any case, it is quite clear now that Hobbes was not a materialist, not even when he was writing De Corpore. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, CallJornia Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary selections. Translated with an Introduction and (...) notes by Richard H. Popkin. (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Pp. xliv q- 456.) This new edition of selections from Pierre Bayle's famous Dictionnaire will be welcomed by historians and philosophers alike. In it we find a representative sample from the book that was both the inspiration and despair of much of eighteenth-century thought, and that still presents modem man with both questions and methodological acid that makes it difficult to find or accept "truth." The young readers who will meet Pierre Bayle for the first time in these pages will find him to be the skeptical philosopher, the ribald, sometimes lewd, even pornographic storyteller, the detached scholar who prowled through the history and the ideas of men, dissolving all certainty by analyses that peeled off layer after layer of belief until the core itself was exposed as naive or ridiculous. Had Professor Popkin done nothing more than provide us with these excellently chosen selections from the Dictionnaire, we would all be in his debt, for he gives us a chance easily to bring this important work to the attention of our students. But this volume is considerably more than simply a selection. Professor Popkin's Introduction is an important statement in the controversy over Bayle's personal beliefs and involvemeat. For more than two decades a large literature has portrayed Bayle in many different guises: for some he was still the skeptic who intentionally forged the weapons with which Voltaire and his colleagues assaulted the Judeo-Christian traditions of European men; at the other extreme he was a devout Huguenot who merely wanted to do for the Calvinist world what Bishop Huet and other Catholic skeptics did for the Catholic one, namely to prove the necessity of accepting the Christian beliefs on faith since absolute knowledge was impossible. Professor Popkin has learned Bayle's methodology too well to allow himself to be trapped by a simple explanation. He refuses to identify Bayle with a Kierkegaard or a Lamennais whose ideas would dissolve under Bayle's pen just as did Pascal's and Jurieu's. But where are we to find the secret of this man who lived out his life as a member of the French Reformed Church in Amsterdam while he unfolded the absurdity or naivet~ of every intelligible Christian theology? The problem becomes more perplexing when we note his obvious sympathy for both Manicheanism and Judaism. Could he have been the last of the Cathars or a secretly converted Jew? Popkin calls attention to Bayle's interest in and affection for Maimonides' work which he translates "Guide for the perplexed", but which could be translated "Guide for those who have lost their way" or in our parlance, "the derailed." In a way Bayle's Dictionnaire was itself a "Guide" for men in trouble with their beliefs. But Bayle's approach to this problem must be understood in light of his own discussion of religion "of the heart" and religion "of reason." Like Madame Labrousse, Popkin is much impressed by the simplicity of Bayle's last words, written on the day he died, in which he described himself as "a Christian philosopher convinced of and pierced with the mercies of God.... " The statement omits all the im~ portant theological propositions of Christian theology as well as any emotional feeling. We must see Pierre Bayle as an erudite, unemotional man whose "religion had no expressed or expressible content.., but was only in the heart in some quiet unemotional way.... " Popkin sees him as "a quite Erasmian scholar, living out his days in the city of Erasmus, examining man's intellectual heritage and intellectual world.., by patient erudition [undermining] man's intellectual frame of reference while remaining secure and tranquil in his unemotional religion of the heart." Since... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 562-564 [Access article in PDF] Louis E. Loeb. Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 280. Cloth, $42.50. As is well known, in the last year of his life, Hume repudiated his Treatise of Human Nature in an Advertisement that he had placed at the front of the volume of his writings containing (...) his mature philosophical works. He asked that only the two Enquiries and other later philosophical writings be regarded as the source of "his philosophical sentiments and principles." But not leaving it at that, he admitted that there were "negligences in his... reasoning" and in his manner of expressing himself in the Treatise. More than twenty years earlier, Hume had admitted that publishing the Treatise in its imperfect state in his youth constituted "a very great Mistake in Conduct." But he did not have sufficient foresight to see that the admission he made in his old age constituted at least as bad an indiscretion of the same kind. Acknowledging mistakes in reasoning and in expression for a philosopher [End Page 562] is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Two bulls in fact: the philosopher and the "reconstructive" historian of philosophy. The former is given ample work in correcting the older philosopher's mistakes; the latter in devising an interpretation of a text that apparently leaves itself open to many. Hence the immense popularity that Hume's Treatise of Human Nature has enjoyed in the two and a half centuries since he asked that it be disregarded. Who cares about "his philosophical sentiments and principles" anyway?Louis Loeb's study of epistemology in Hume's Treatise is both an exercise in "reconstructive history of philosophy" and a philosophical emendation of Hume's (reconstructed) "philosophical system." The first task is pursued in the first five chapters of the book; the second in the last two. "Reconstructive history" as practiced by Loeb does not try to provide "a balanced commentary" but rather "an illuminating and fruitful interpretive perspective" (viii) on what a philosopher has written. Loeb's perspective on Hume's epistemology is derived from details of Hume's psychology of the imagination developed mainly in sections 9-13 of part 3 of book 1, details which Hume himself considered "unnecessary" to the exposition of his mature epistemology in the first Enquiry. Loeb's philosophical emendations derive from his claim that Hume made certain mistakes which led him to despair of the success of his project and settle for sceptical conclusions in part 4. In the last two chapters of the book Loeb seeks to save Hume from his own sceptical conclusions.Loeb regards his account as a development and correction of the kind of naturalistic interpretation of Hume's epistemology that was originally developed by Norman Kemp Smith (21). A naturalistic theory of justification, according to Loeb, is one that grounds beliefs that one already considers to be justified in the psychological mechanisms that generate them. Whereas Kemp Smith argued that justification depends on the "irresistibility" or "inevitability" of the beliefs, Loeb holds that justification depends upon what he calls the "stability" of the belief generating mechanisms. A belief forming mechanism is stable just in case it produces a consistent set of beliefs that will stand up even under "reflection." For example, in part 3 of book 1 (81, 159, 238), Hume presents beliefs based on cause and effect as stable in this sense, and contrasts them with "unphilosophical" belief forming mechanisms such as indoctrination (education). Unlike the former, the latter mechanism generates beliefs that "are frequently contrary... to themselves in different times and places and is never on that account recognized by philosophers" (Treatise117). Furthermore, we have a positive motivation to accept stable mechanisms in that they produce ease or relief from psychological tension. Loeb links this goal both with the ancient Pyrrhonian quest for ataraxia (6-9) and with Hume's moral theory, where he seeks a general point of view as a relief from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Love, Lust, and Sex: A Christian Perspective John Berthrong Boston University School of Theology Prologue When I was assigned the topic of love and sex (and I decided to add lust/desire as the link between the two), I immediately consulted with a number of my colleagues at the Boston University School of Theology.1 The response of my colleagues was (...) uniform. Representing different theological disciplines and denominational backgrounds, they noted that the answer as to the Christian perspective on sex was simple: don't; but if you do, be sure not to enjoy it. If this seems a vast and hasty overgeneralization, please consult Mark Jordan's new book (2002) on Christian sexual ethics to see that this confident and consistent rejection of sex and pleasure has been the dominant and main position for the entire history of the cumulative Christian tradition.2 As Clifford Bishop has noted, the West has held "a wounded body" in ambiguous embrace as chronicled by the history of its written discourse and artistic representation of sex.3 Once my colleagues had delivered this ironic teaching, they did go on to give me good advice as to how to grapple with the topic, as well as to wish me well in the attempt.I then decided to take solace in Daoism, often a good idea for a despondent Christian with strong Confucian tendencies, but came across this quote from Livia Kohn's new study of the tradition: "Anyone who commits debauchery and indulges in sex will suffer from insanity. Having passed through this, he will be born among the sows and boars."4 So much for differences between Daoism and Christianity—though I should point out that Kohn blames Buddhist influence for such a retrograde teaching. One wonders what will happen to women who act in a similar fashion. However, I was cheered in my search when I read the great Tiantai master Zhiyi's account of the matter: "It is like fighting bandits. Bandits are the root of glory; it is because a general is able to destroy bandits that he attains fame and reward. Infinite lust is a seed of the Tathagata in just the same way. It makes the bodhisattvas come up with an infinite number of Dharma-ages in response."5According to Mark Heim, Dante had a slightly more charitable view: "Lust is a type of shared sin; at its best, and so long as it remains a sin of incontinence only, there is mutuality in it and exchange."6 At least Dante thought we were in it together. [End Page 3] Moving on to a history of early modern Christian views of sex, which makes sense because this is probably the set of views that informs the modern period as well, I discovered why mainstream Christians were so concerned about the proper teaching of sexual ethics when I read the following: "... as the Ranters in seventeenth-century England proclaim, 'What act soever is done by thee in light and love, is light and lovely, thought it be called adultery....No matter what Scripture, saints, or churches say, if that within thee do not condemn thee, thou shalt not be condemned.'"7If Daoists, Buddhists, and early modern Christians all agree and then disagree, then this is serious business indeed.Then I started to read about the contemporary history of sex, which I discovered was born, with a vengeance, about the same time as the new theology of dialogue, circa 1970. Even the scholarly, and hence most serious in tone, literature on sex is vast.8 I commend it to anyone who is not convinced that we have lived through and probably are still experiencing a new paradigm shift in the Christian worldview. My thesis is that the worldview transformation is the imaginative articulation of the shifting social grounds that have cried out for a new ethics of sex.9 But perhaps things are not so simple. Does the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s demand a new worldview or did... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theopompus of Chios: History and Rhetoric in the Fourth Century B.C.John BucklerMichael A. Flower. Theopompus of Chios: History and Rhetoric in the Fourth Century B.C.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. xii + 252 pp. Cloth, $49.95.Theopompos is a historian fully worthy of the attention of Michael A. Flower's new study of him. The results, unfortunately, are for the most part disappointing. F.'s most important contribution to an understanding of (...) Theopompos' method and goals is his incontrovertible conclusion that Isokrates' influence [End Page 495] on Theopompos is overrated and indeed misunderstood. F. successfully rejects the notion that Isokrates created a fourth–century genre of historical writing or that he produced from his school a cadre of historians. Despite the evidence of TT 2 and 5, the testimonia indicate only that Theopompos and Ephoros were students of Isokrates. Nothing in the evidence proves that Isokrates gave them any historical training. Isokrates was a rhetorician who educated others in oratory. He admits (Ant. 45–46; Panath. 1–2) that he himself had decided not to write history. His goal in life was to teach rhetoric that could be used for a variety of literary purposes. Although Isokrates obviously uses historical examples in his own writings, they make only a rhetorical effect. F. is surely right to say that Isokrates' influence on Theopompos was predominantly cosmetic—that he taught Theopompos the style but not the essence of his histories. The undue emphasis on Isokrates' influence on Theopompos obscures the historical genius of the latter.In chapter 4 F. examines the moral and political philosophy of Theopompos. He easily refutes (63ff.) the opinion of R. Lane Fox that Theopompos was merely a moralist without political experience and without practical criteria by which to assess people and politics. No one, however, can doubt that Theopompos was indeed a moralist. He criticizes the deleterious effects of luxury on various individuals and peoples, effects rendering them dissolute and lazy. He thinks instead that a well–ordered life of individuals and communities leads to security and prosperity. He is also a champion of ordinary and traditional religion. He is likewise opposed to democracy because he feels that it led to a dissolute life. Yet F. fails to explain the connection between personal virtue or vice and public affairs. So did Theopompos. Two examples will suffice. Although Theopompos considers Lysandros and Agesilaos good men and the Spartan constitution a good one for its moral and abstemious way of life, the efforts of both leaders led to defeat and disaster for Sparta. Conversely, Theopompos considers Philip II and the Macedonians decadent and debased because of their sexual and alcoholic excesses. Yet these degenerates won control of Greece. Without serious examination of this point, F. (117–18, 127) falls back upon Theopompos' explanation: if Philip was base, the Athenians were even more so. Perhaps Philip was just lucky, this founded in no small part upon the evidence of Demosthenes, who had himself fled from the battlefield of Chaironeia. F. never explains in historical terms why the Athenians were unable successfully to oppose Philip. In short, neither F. nor perhaps Theopompos succeed in demonstrating how good moral fibre ensures actual political success. When F. most effectively touches upon the point, he seems (114) to contradict his other conclusions.F. is surely right to endorse W. R. Connor's conclusion that Theopompos was no admirer of Philip. In chapter 5 F. examines Polybios' use of Theopompos, the latter's portrayal of Philip's private life, and the king's political and military abilities. The study of Polybios and Theopompos is needlessly speculative, and could have profited greatly by a careful reading of K. Meister, Historische Kritik [End Page 496] bei Polybios (1975), which is never cited. Theopompos and Demosthenes, neither a friend of Philip, describe Philip and his officers as hard drinkers and given to homosexual orgies. Again, no one can reasonably doubt that Philip and his Macedonians were guilty of both charges. But to repeat; neither moral defect impeded their political and military success, and in strictly historical terms the point is insignificant. The obvious truth is that Philip triumphed because he was a brilliant... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Was Isaac Newton an Arian?Thomas C. PfizenmaierHistorians of Newton's thought have been wide ranging in their assessment of his conception of the trinity. David Brewster, in his The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (1831), was fully convinced that Newton was an orthodox trinitarian, although he recognized that "a traditionary belief has long prevailed that Newton was an Arian."1 Two reasons were used to defend his conclusion that Newton was (...) orthodox. The first was a letter from John Craig, a friend of Newton, written shortly after Newton's death to John Conduitt, the husband of Newton's niece. In this letter Craig remarked that Newton's theological opinions "were sometimes different from those which are commonly received" but that he hoped Conduitt would publish Newton's theological papers, "that the world may see that Sir Isaac Newton was as good a Christian as he was a mathematician and philosopher."2 The second reason with which Brewster defended his conclusion was his acknowledgment that the doctrine of the trinity itself had variations.I had no hesitation when writing the Life of Sir Isaac Newton in 1830, in coming to the conclusion that he was a believer in the Trinity; and in giving this opinion on the creed of so great a man, and so indefatigable a student of scripture, I was well aware that there are various forms of Trinitarian truth, and various modes of expressing it, which have been received as orthodox in the purest societies of the Christian Church.3L. T. More in his biography Isaac Newton gently chided Brewster for not publishing some of the crucial manuscripts, which eventually became [End Page 57] part of the Keynes collection.4 From these additional manuscripts More reached the conclusion that Newton was not orthodox but an Arian. He proceeded to say that Newton was not only an Arian but, because of the manner in which he understood Jesus' role as prophet, a Unitarian.5More recently the famous British economist John M. Keynes, who considered it a great "impiety" that the Portsmouth family's collection of Newton's non-scientific manuscripts were dispersed at the Sotheby's auction in 1936 and who recovered about half of them creating the "Keynes" collection at Cambridge, provided yet a third interpretation of Newton's thought.Very early in life Newton abandoned orthodox belief in the Trinity. At this time the Socinians were an important Arian sect amongst intellectual circles. It may be that Newton fell under Socinian influences, but I think not. He was rather a Judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides. He arrived at this conclusion, not on so-to-speak rational or skeptical grounds, but entirely on the interpretation of ancient authority. He was persuaded that the revealed documents give no support to the Trinitarian doctrines which were due to late falsifications. The revealed God was one God.6Among contemporary scholars, the consensus is that Newton was an Arian rather than a Socinian.7 This view is clearly expressed by Richard [End Page 58] Westfall who writes, "Well before 1675, Newton had become an Arian in the original sense of the term. He recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him."8 Yet Frank Manuel, in his The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974), advises that we not try to push Newton into a theological categorization too quickly. He reminds us that Newton was, if nothing else, an original thinker.It is an error to seize upon his antitrinitrianism in order to pigeonhole him in one of the recognized categories of heresy—Arian, Socinian, Unitarian, or Deist.9So how did Isaac Newton conceive of the trinity? In exploring his writing on the subject we will be guided by two principles mentioned above. The first is Brewster's insight that the trinitarian doctrine has in fact been understood with a certain degree of variety within the sphere of orthodoxy. The second is from Manuel's reminder, that we must resist the temptation to make Newton "fit" some predetermined category or school of trinitarian thought. We will begin by looking at the resources available for studying... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:138 In 2010 the city of Colorado Springs was strapped for cash. Government officials announced that they would either have to raise revenue through increased taxation or cut public services—­ in some cases rather severely—­ including, perhaps, police and fire protection, and even more basic bits of municipal infrastructure. The city shut down one-­ third of residential streetlights and closed public restrooms. Citi­ zens were outraged, but a majority (...) of voters had recently defeated a proposed tax increase. It’s tempting to suppose that the city was trying to teach its citizens a lesson: if you want public services, you have to be willing to pay for them. Colorado Springs is, and has been for some time now, a died-­in-­the-­wool small-­government, anti-­tax-­increase, fiscally conservative town. As Colorado Springs resident Bo Sharifi put it, “As soon as I hear government [say] ‘Oh, we need more money’... I guess I kind of automatically assume there’s probably some other things you could probably cut before firemen, policemen, city lights and that sort of thing.”1 On the surface, that seems reasonable. So... what comes to mind? How about food stamps? What about WIC? Of course these are federal services, not funded by Coloradans alone. There’s government, and then there’s government. Well, how about... well... what? Doesn’t the government spend money on all sorts of things we could very easily do without? Perhaps. Isn’t it part of our job to know or to decide which things these are? If we don’t trust government, even more obviously we don’t trust it with our money, though we pretty clearly have no idea how public funds are actually allocated or spent. When asked whether he remembered the proposed tax increase that the city had voted against, Sharifi replied, “maybe.” Bo and his wife were charged $125 to have Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century By Steven Cassedy Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014 JOHN MARIANA Book Reviews 139 their streetlight turned back on. Bo’s wife Sara viewed this as extortion. “By shoveling out a hundred dollars to turn on a streetlight that we kind of felt was supposed to be on anyway, that it was giving them what they wanted,” she said. They who? One resident wrote the city of Colorado Springs a check for $300 to turn the lights on for his entire neighborhood. City Councilwoman Jan Martin pointed out to him that the total cost to the individual Colorado Springs taxpayer to keep the streetlights on—­and to fund the maintenance of public parks and medians, as well as community centers and pre-­recession-­level police and fire services—­by approving the tax increase would have been: $200. He replied that he would never vote for a tax increase. In other words, as the reporter who covered the story (Robert Smith) observed, he would rather pay more to keep the streetlights on in his own neighborhood than to pay for all city services combined. Smith remarked that “Colorado Springs was stepping away from one of the things that we take for granted in most American cities: that we’re all in it together—­ at least when it comes to basic services.”2 As near as I can tell, this is the moral of Steven Cassedy’s exceptionally timely Connected: that we’re all in it together. For much of the book Cassedy merely traces the history of the emergence in the consciousness of ordinary Americans of the concept of the social network, but he is not so much talking about the notion of a network society as such, as I understand him. Or, at any rate, the network society as such is not really his main concern. He is talking about the idea of social, political, national, and ultimately global and universal human interconnectedness that was a distinct product of the complex networked structures (both concrete and abstract) that came to constitute modern American life in the twentieth century (and of course life pretty much everywhere ), and about our understanding of ourselves as so networked.3 On this... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Preliminary remarksSince John Capistran is among the most relevant figures of the fifteenth century, not only for the Franciscan Order but more generally for political and religious life , the very substantial corpus of his correspondence has a long history as well as a long historiography. The approximately seven hundred letters he sent or received beginning in 1418 until his death in 1456, were discovered and studied one (...) at a time over the centuries, for quite different reasons and with different aims.Certainly the gradual process of discovering and studying these documents is marked by some milestones. For example, there is the celebration of his canonization process in 1623 , as well as the works of the so-called Capistran Commission. This commission was a team established in 1952 in Rome by the leadership of the Franciscan Order , which was located first in Grottaferrata, College of Quaracchi, then in the Antonianum, and was managed by friars Ottokar Bonmann and Paulis Bédrune.The research archive of Capistrano materials that is housed at the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University was brought together through the efforts of Gedeon Gál, OFM. Gedeon had been heading up work on the critical edition of the theological and philosophical writings of William of Ockham at the Institute. His interest in John Capistran came from the fact that he was a member of the Hungarian Franciscan Province of St. John Capistran. The greater part of the material came from the research files of Ottokar Bonmann who died before being able to start any actual editing work for an edition of Capistran. Knowing of Bonmann's work Gedeon asked Conrad Harkins, O.F.M., then director of the Franciscan Institute, to request that Bonmann's research be shipped to the Institute from Rome where it was being stored. Also while Conrad was on sabbatical in Italy, Gedeon asked him to photocopy the manuscript of Capistran's letters copied in the 1600s by Antonio Sessa of Palermo that resides in the library of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome. That being done the copies were sent to the Franciscan Institute and joined with the Bonmann materials to form the archive. It is a heritage that deserves to be retrieved by scholars, in order to accomplish the work according to modern criteria, where accomplish means to create a final edition.Bonmann was very familiar with the earlier research on these letters and his work reinforces the fact that the edition was an obstacle course. This is the case not only because scholars' sensibilities regarding these kinds of documents changed throughout the centuries, previously viewed as a relic of a saint or an attestation of his sainthood, and – more recently – as a precious source about European history in the first half of the fifteenth century. Despite scholarly interest in the correspondence, it remains unpublished.In fact, the first to have the intention to publish all of the correspondence was Lucas Wadding, who received some materials about these letters at St. Isidore College in Rome, but he could not complete his project although he mentions it in his Annales Minorum. After Wadding many scholars tried to work on the same project but using criteria that – in several cases – are no longer helpful because their methods are out-of-date.For example, as we will soon see, collections such as those provided by Antonio Sessa in the seventeenth or by Atanasio Masci in the eighteenth century, are inspired by hagiographical criteria or, at least, not philological criteria. All of these collections were acquired by the Capistran Commission and then by Ottokar Bonmann who wrote an article on the subject in which.. (shrink)