The dialectic of light and darkness studied in this collection of essays reveals itself as a primal factor of life as well as the essential element of the specifically human world. From its borderline position between physis and psyche, natural growth and techne, bios and ethos, it functions as the essential factor in all the sectors of life at large. We see its crucial role in all sectors of life while, prompted by man's creative imagination, it enhances and (...) spurs his vital as well as societal and spiritual life. This rare collection contains studies by Thomas Ryba, Krystina Górniak-Kocikowska, Lois Oppenheim, Sydney Feshback, Eldon van Lieve, Sitansu Ray, Theodore Litman, Peter Morgan, Colette Michael, Christopher Lalonde, L. Findlay, Christopher Eykman, Beverly Schlack Randles, Jorge García-Gómez, William Haney, Sherilyn Abdoo, David Brottman, Alan Pratt, Hans Rudnick, George Scheper, Freema Gottlieb, Marlies Kronegger. (shrink)

v. 1. Dualism in the Archaic and Early Classical periods of Greek history -- v. 2. Dualism in the political and social history of Greece in the fifth and fourth century B.C. -- v. 3. Dualism in Greek literature and philosophy in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. -- v. 4. Dualism in the ancient Middle East -- v. 5. A cultural history of Dualism -- v. 6. Dualism in the Hellenistic world -- v. 7. Dualism in the Palestinian-Syrian (...) region during the first century A.D. until. ca. 140 -- v. 8. Gnostic dualism in Asia Minor during the first centuries A.D. (2 v.) -- v. 10. Dualism in Roman history: 1. Imperialistic dualism -- v. 11. Dualism in Roman history: 2. Dualism in interior politics and social life -- v. 12. Dualism in Roman history: 3. The Christian church in conflict with the Roman Empire and with Judaism -- v. 13. Dualism in Roman history: 4. The struggle between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the early Christian church -- v. 14. Dualism in Roman history: 5. Enemies of the Roman Order -- v. 15. Imperialism in medieval history I : dualism in Byzantine history, 476-638 and dualism in Islam, 572-732 -- v. 16. Imperialism in medieval history II : dualism in German history I -- v. 17. Imperialism in medieval history III : dualism in German history II -- v. 18. The dualism of the Christian and Muslim worlds during the middle ages -- v. 20. Gnostic-dualistic tendencies in the history of medieval Europe -- v. 21. Dualism and non-dualism in medieval theology and philosophy. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in (...) which extraordinary events unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in (...) which extraordinary events unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

While there is a growing literature on “dark traits” (i.e., socially aversive traits), there has been a lack of integration with the burgeoning research literature on positive traits and fulfilling and growth-oriented outcomes in life. To help move the field toward greater integration, we contrasted the nomological network of the Dark Triad (a well-studied cluster of socially aversive traits) with the nomological network of the Light Triad, measured by the 12-item Light Triad Scale (LTS). The LTS (...) is a first draft measure of a loving and beneficent orientation toward others (“everyday saints”) that consists of three facets: Kantianism (treating people as ends unto themselves), Humanism (valuing the dignity and worth of each individual), and Faith in Humanity (believing in the fundamental goodness of humans). Across four demographically diverse samples (N = 1,518), the LTS demonstrated excellent reliability and validity, predicting life satisfaction and a wide range of growth-oriented and self-transcendent outcomes above and beyond existing measures of personality. In contrast, the Dark Triad was negatively associated with life satisfaction and growth-oriented outcomes, and showed stronger linkages to selfish, exploitative, aggressive, and socially aversive outcomes. This exploratory study of the contrasting nomological networks of the Light vs. Dark Triad provides several ways forward for more principled and data driven approaches to explore both the malevolent and benefice... (shrink)

This introduction elaborates how the relationship between religion and light can and should be addressed as a key theme for the critical study of religion. It synthesizes the principal arguments of the six articles collected in this special journal issue and locates them in a broader theoretical framework, focussing especially on the politics of knowledge production.

At the center of_ In Dark Again in Wonder_ are readings of René Char and George Oppen. Both of these poets achieved recognition at a young age, Char among the French surrealists in the 1930s, Oppen among the American objectivists in the same decade. Both were independent individuals who, having found their way to communities of inventive writers, stepped back and shaped their own idiosyncratic paths. Both responded decisively to the social upheavals of the 1930s and ‘40s. Oppen committed himself (...) to radical politics in the ‘30s, a decision that, as it turned out, led to his not writing poetry for nearly twenty-five years. Char fought in the Resistance in the '40s. Both, in their mature work, developed a kind of poetry that is at once a love poetry, a meditative poetry, and a poetry of encounter. The concluding chapter of the book places the questions raised by Char’s and Oppen’s work in a larger context, tracing the cultural history that shapes our modern experience of inhabiting a tension between an historical and a metaphysical horizon of experience, or, as this appears in a different but related light, a tension between a sociological and an existential understanding of our lives. Char and Oppen are both poets concerned with the old philosophical questions that are still with us—the nature of spiritual freedom, the gathering of the self in relation to death, the meditation on the whole, the turn to Nature as the open space of the whole under the conditions of modernity, the clarification of the ground of vision in eros and love, and the search for the good life—while at the same time they fully engage the social predicaments and promises of their world. "A brilliant, philosophical, and aesthetic approach to twentieth-century poetry that casts important light on the great poetic works of René Char and George Oppen. Revealing the ongoing role of wonder in the post-Romantic tradition, it points to two remarkable poets whose work embodies imagination in the knowledge of inevitable loss, renewal in the awareness of despair. This is a book worth reading for its insight into two poets and the larger literary and philosophical currents in which they lived and worked." _—Sandra L. Bermann, Princeton University_ "This is a brilliant, erudite, beautifully written, and compelling book, one that makes an important contribution to our understanding not only of the two poets on whom it focuses but of the period they inhabit and that we, as their inheritors, continue to inhabit. Robert Baker wears his considerable learning lightly, but he has deep knowledge both of the history of European and American poetry and of the history of philosophy. He has thought deeply and passionately about poetry, philosophy, history, and the ways in which they intertwine." —_Henry Weinfield, University of Notre Dame_ "Robert Baker has written a fine and unusual book: a study of two remarkable poets, one French and the other American, and a concluding reflection of considerable literary and intellectual reach on the gap between history and metaphysics in which both poets found themselves and in which we still subsist. Bake'rs style is synthetic, magisterial, drawing on a capacious knowledge of literature and the history of ideas." —_Kevin Hart, University of Virginia_. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe question of the possible existence of black holes is closely related to the question of the action of gravitation on the propagation of light. It has been raised recurrently from the when that Newton referred to a possible bending of light in hisOpticks. And it relies on apparently simple questions: Is light subject to gravitation? What is the effect of a gravitational field on the propagation of light? Could a particle of light emitted (...) by a star be retained by its gravitational field?From the end of the 1960s, the black hole idea has had a very important place in the relativistic literature, not to speak of the popularization of the theory. It turned out to be not only an important concept but also a tool that permitted us to understand general relativity better, indeed a tool that contributed greatly to changing the interpretation of Einstein's theory of gravitation. Here too I want to use this concept of the black hole to assist our understanding of the history of general relativity: the black hole is a fundamental milestone in the evolution of general relativity. (shrink)

Jacob Böhme (1575-1624) is one of the most important German thinkers. His writings have influenced literature, philosophy, religion and art beyond national borders from his time up to the present. One hundred years after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation - on the eve of the Thirty Years' War - Böhme wanted to give voice to the need for a deep spiritual and philosophical renewal. In a series of exhibitions - in Dresden, Coventry, Amsterdam, and Wrocław - the Dresden (...) State Art Collections recall this unconventional thinker, whose ideas about the relationship between science and belief, humanity and nature, woman and man are today more current than ever. Exhibition: Coventry Cathedral, UK (30.04. - 05.07.2019)"-- Back cover. (shrink)

Eleonore Stump’s Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering is a major contribution to the literature on the problem of evil. This reviewessay summarizes the overall argument of the book, pointing out both merits and difficulties with Stump’s approach. In particular, the essay urges objectionsto the solution she presents for the problem of suffering.

In showing how the bureaucratic space negatively influences the moral conscience of managers, Robert Jackall’s sociological writings have pointed up one of the darkest sides of organizations. In fact, in the business ethics literature there is much to support Jackall’s pessimistic contentions, suggesting that bureaucracy can rob individual managers of their sense of responsibility. How then can this space for individual freedom, so essential in re-establishing responsible management, be recreated? In order to answer this question, we propose to interpret (...) Jackall’s Moral Mazes ( 1988 ) from the standpoint of Blaise Pascal’s Jansenist ethics and conception of humankind. Our discussion here of Pascal’s “reason of effects,” his theory of “double thought” and his distinction between respect and esteem takes Jackall’s analysis forward and opens new lines of thought about managerial responsibility. The article concludes with some thoughts on further research in the field of business ethics arising from Pascalian anthropology or what we call here “skeptical humanism.”. (shrink)

Newtonian physics is based on Newtonian calculus applied to Newtonian dynamics. New paradigms such as ‘modified Newtonian dynamics’ change the dynamics, but do not alter the calculus. However, calculus is dependent on arithmetic, that is the ways we add and multiply numbers. For example, in special relativity we add and subtract velocities by means of addition β1⊕β2=tanh+tanh-1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta _1\oplus \beta _2=\tanh \big +\tanh ^{-1}\big )$$\end{document}, although multiplication β1⊙β2=tanh·tanh-1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} (...) \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta _1\odot \beta _2=\tanh \big \cdot \tanh ^{-1}\big )$$\end{document}, and division β1⊘β2=tanh/tanh-1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta _1\oslash \beta _2=\tanh \big /\tanh ^{-1}\big )$$\end{document} do not seem to appear in the literature. The map fX=tanh-1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f_{\mathbb{X}}=\tanh ^{-1}$$\end{document} defines an isomorphism of the arithmetic in X=\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{X}}=$$\end{document} with the standard one in R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}. The new arithmetic is projective and non-Diophantine in the sense of Burgin, 1977), while ultrarelativistic velocities are super-large in the sense of Kolmogorov, 1961). Velocity of light plays a role of non-Diophantine infinity. The new arithmetic allows us to define the corresponding derivative and integral, and thus a new calculus which is non-Newtonian in the sense of Grossman and Katz. Treating the above example as a paradigm, we ask what can be said about the set X\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{X}}$$\end{document} of ‘real numbers’, and the isomorphism fX:X→R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f_{{\mathbb{X}}}:{\mathbb{X}}\rightarrow {\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}, if we assume the standard form of Newtonian mechanics and general relativity but demand agreement with astrophysical observations. It turns out that the observable accelerated expansion of the Universe can be reconstructed with zero cosmological constant if fX≈0.8sinh/\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f_{\mathbb{X}}\approx 0.8\sinh /$$\end{document}. The resulting non-Newtonian model is exactly equivalent to the standard Newtonian one with ΩΛ=0.7\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Omega _\Lambda =0.7$$\end{document}, ΩM=0.3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Omega _M=0.3$$\end{document}. Asymptotically flat rotation curves are obtained if ‘zero’, the neutral element 0X\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$0_{{\mathbb{X}}}$$\end{document} of addition, is nonzero from the point of view of the standard arithmetic of R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{R}}$$\end{document}. This implies fX-1=0X>0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f^{-1}_{{\mathbb{X}}}=0_{{\mathbb{X}}}>0$$\end{document}. The opposition Diophantine versus non-Diophantine, or Newtonian versus non-Newtonian, is an arithmetic analogue of Euclidean versus non-Euclidean in geometry. We do not yet know if the proposed generalization ultimately removes any need of dark matter, but it will certainly change estimates of its parameters. Physics of the dark universe seems to be both geometry and arithmetic. (shrink)

Rarely does research in the history and philosophy of science lead to new empirical results, but that is exactly what has happened in one of the essays of this special issue: Rang and Grebe-Ellis have developed new experimental techniques to perform measurements Goethe proposed 217 years ago. These measurements fit neatly with Goethe’s idea of polarity—his complementary spectrum is not only an optical, but also a thermodynamical counterpart of Newton’s spectrum. I use the new measurements, firstly, to argue against the (...) asymmetries between light and darkness posited by Lyre and Schreiber; and, secondly, to explicate the alternative theory that Goethe had introduced to urge scientific pluralism. In my replies to exegetical criticism by Böhler, Hampe and Zemplén, I show that the main goal of Goethe’s Farbenlehre was indeed to expose symmetries between light and darkness. Furthermore, I argue that it is worthwhile to focus on the experiments, arguments and hypotheses of the Farbenlehre, and not merely on rhetorical, narrative or stylistical aspects, as Böhler and Hampe would have it. Goethe’s criticism of Newton is often dismissed, but it is in fact surprisingly relevant today. (shrink)

Bringing allegory into the light from the neglect into which it fell means focusing on the wondrous heights of the human spirit in its significance for culture. Contemporary philosophies and literary theories, which give pre-eminence to primary linguistics forms (symbol and metaphor), seem to favor just that which makes intelligible communication possible. But they fall short in accounting for the deepest subliminal founts that prompt the mind to exalt in beauty, virtue, transcending aspiration. The present, rich collection shows how (...) allegory, incorporating the soaring of the spirit, offers highlights for culture, with its fluctuations and transformation. This collective effort, rich in ideas and intuitions and covering a vast range of cultural manifestations, is a pioneering work, retrieving the vision of the exalted human spirit, bringing together literature, theatre, music and painting in a variety of revealing perspectives. The authors include: M. Kronegger, Ch. Raffini, J. Smith, J.B. Williamson, H. Ross, M.F. Wagner, F. Divorne, L. Oppenheim, D.K. Heckerl, N. Campi de Castro, P. Saurez Pascual, M. Alfaro Amieiro, H. Fletcher Thompson, R.J. Wilson III, and A. Stensaas. For specialists, students and workers in philosophy, comparative literature, aesthetic phenomenologists and historians of art. (shrink)

Niche construction denotes the alteration, destruction, or creation of environmental features through the activities of an organism, modifying the relation between organism and environment. The concept of niche construction found application in various fields of research: evolutionary biology, enculturation, ontogenetic development, and local organism-environment coordination. This is because it provides a useful tool emphasizing different aspects of the dynamic interplay between organisms and their actively constructed environment. Traditionally, niche construction is considered a positive mechanism in the complementarity of organism and (...) environment. In contrast, this paper sheds light on the dark side of niche construction, that is, the different manners in which organisms may modify environmental features that are in some way or another harmful to them. First, the paper introduces a paradigmatic distinction of four kinds of niche construction as commonly addressed in recent literature, using more or less extended spatio-temporal scales as the distinguishing feature. Second, the paper elaborates on the concept of negative niche construction, providing normative criteria of (mal)adaptation that are suitable for the evaluation of environmental alterations, given the chosen spatio-temporal scale. Of particular interest are inter-scale conflicts: those cases of environmental constructions which appear adaptive concerning one spatio-temporal scale but maladaptive concerning another. Third, the paper distinguishes the concept of niche construction as a valuable instrument to better understand central aspects of modern medicine and the entangled contribution of evolutionary, socio-cultural, personal, and situational aspects to different health issues, using chronic pain as an illustrative case study. (shrink)

Loyalty is like the Force: it has a light side and a dark side, and it surrounds and binds us all. Each of us, whether Jedi or Sith, Rebel or Imperial, is ensnared in a complex web of loyalties. On the light side, our loyalties bind us, turning mere groups of people into something more. On the dark side, those same loyalties can trap us and restrict us. This chapter argues that the value of loyalty itself is exaggerated, (...) and that its true value is derived from other valuable personality traits. The chapter talks about loyalty and betrayal found in the characters of Star Wars. Loyal people seem to be better people all around than nonloyal people. Loyalty itself may not be all that good, but it represents a combination of other factors that generally are good. Commitment, dedication, and selflessness are all valuable traits for a person to have. (shrink)

Although we begin with the words of the poet Henry Vaughan, it is the visual artists above all who know and see the mystery of the Creation of all things in light, suffering for their art in its blinding, sacrificial illumination. In modern painting this is particularly true of van Gogh and J.M.W. Turner. But God speaks the Creation into being through an unheard word, and so, too, the greatest of musicians, as most tragically in the case of Beethoven, (...) hear their sublime music only in a profound silence. The Church then needs to see and listen in order, in the words of Heidegger, to learn to "dwell poetically on earth" before God. To dwell thus lies at the heart of its life, liturgically and in its pastoral ministry, as illustrated in the poetry of the English priest and poet, David Scott. This can also be seen as a "letting go" before God and an allowing of a space in which there might be a "letting the unsayable be unsaid" and order found even over the abyss. This is what Vladimir Nabokov has called "the marvel of consciousness" which is truly a seeing in the darkness. The poet, artist and musician can bring us close to the brink of the mystery, and thus the artist is always close to the heart of the church's worship and its ministry of care where words meet silence, and light meets darkness. Such, indeed, is the true marvel of consciousness in the ultimate risk which is the final vocation of the poet and artist, as it was of Christ himself, and all his saints. The church must be ever attentive to the deeply Christocentric ministry of art and the creative power of word and image in the letting the unsayable be unsaid. With the artist we may perhaps stand on Pisgah Height with Moses with a new imaginative perception of the divine Creation. The essay concludes on a personal note, drawing upon the author's own experience in retreat in the desert, with a reminder of the thought of Thomas Merton, a solitary in the community of the Church. (shrink)

In everyday life, people grasp mainly short term events of their natural surroundings, since our perception of broad and long term behavior of natural systems has been, and still is, rather limited. Throughout our history there are numerous cases of unheeded environmental warnings. This paper provides an overview of earlier era forewarnings, to illustrate how understanding of past responses to natural predicaments may help enhance future curriculum and policy discussions.

Complex webs of loyalties—to people, to institutions, and to principles—ensnare even the most mundane lives. When played out on a stage as grand as the Star Wars universe, these various webs of loyalties—and the consequent betrayals of many of those loyalties—simply become easier to make out. For a narrative universe that is often criticized for its childlike simplicity, Star Wars depicts a wide variety of degrees and kinds of loyalty and betrayal. This chapter will examine some of them in an (...) attempt to clarify exactly what it is to be loyal and why it matters. To understand the central roles loyalty and betrayal play in the Star Wars universe, consider the path of its central character: Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. The two key moments of his life are both betrayals. First he betrays the Jedi and his mentor by joining the Sith, and then he betrays the Sith and his master by saving his son. The difference is that in betraying the Emperor, Vader fulfilled the letter of his oath as a Sith, and thus remained loyal to the Sith. It is only the motivation for his action that amounts to a betrayal of the Sith; the spirit of his action, rather than the action itself, betrayed the Sith. Had the betrayal been instead one motivated by seizing power, had Vader betrayed the Emperor in order to take his place, as he had earlier proposed to Luke, he would have remained a loyal Sith. Complications like this arise in almost every betrayal. Grand Moff Trachta and Grand Admiral Zaarin both betrayed the Emperor, but did so to preserve the Empire itself. Darth Bane betrayed the entire Sith Order, but did so in order to remain loyal to the basic tenets of the Sith. We betray one person to remain loyal to another. Given this, we have to ask, is there any inherent value in loyalty itself? If loyalties conflict, as they often do, how should we decide between them? This chapter will attempt to explore and answer these questions by considering various betrayals depicted in the Star Wars universe. (shrink)

This paper scrutinises the tenability of a strict conceptual distinction between space and matter via the lens of the debate between modified gravity and dark matter. In particular, we consider Berezhiani and Khoury's novel 'superfluid dark matter theory' as a case study. Two families of criteria for being matter and being spacetime, respectively, are extracted from the literature. Evaluation of the new scalar field postulated by SFDM according to these criteria reveals that it is as much matter as anything (...) could possibly be, but alsoꟷbelow the critical temperature for superfluidityꟷas much spacetime as anything could possibly be. A sequel paper examines possible interpretations of SFDM in light of this result, as well as the consequences for our understanding of the modified gravity/ dark matter distinction and the broader spacetime–matter distinction. (shrink)

This book is a meditation on the different aspects of colour, particularly its relationship to healing. Drawing on examples from natural science and spiritual science, Klocek focuses on the real essence of colours and how they relate to human beings in our physical body and soul. From Newton to Rudolf Steiner, and including the development of artistic pigments, this enlightening book shows how colour can be linked to healing with artistic therapies, homeopathy and flower essences.Illustrated in colour with numerous diagrams (...) and examples of art from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, this book offers surprising insights into a subject that is integral to our everyday life and development. (shrink)

M'illumino/d'immenso - I'm lit/with immensity is Geoffrey Brock's translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poem Mattina. In the poem's minimalism, Ungaretti points to the maximal: the richness of poetry's expressive possibilities and the power of thinking in literature. This book addresses the fascination of readers to transcend the boundaries of their own in fiction, and literature's capacity, according to Kant, even to evoke, with the help of the development of aesthetic ideas, representations that exceed what is empirically and conceptually graspable (...) - in case studies about myths of creativity, images of death and the beyond after the 'death of God', of the soul, of melancholy as the dark ground of genius, of metamorphoses of both evil and good, of ecstasy, of the economy of self-sacrifice, of the art of resistance, and, among others, about figurations of biography and the portrait as approaches to singularity, what is particular and cannot be fully subsumed to any universality. (shrink)

_The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness_, first published in 1944, is considered one of the most profound and relevant works by the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and certainly the fullest statement of his political philosophy. Written and first read during the prolonged, tragic world war between totalitarian and democratic forces, Niebuhr’s book took up the timely question of how democracy as a political system could best be defended. Most proponents of democracy, Niebuhr claimed, were “children of (...) light,” who had optimistic but naïve ideas about how society could be rid of evil and governed by enlightened reason. They needed, he believed, to absorb some of the wisdom and strength of the “children of darkness,” whose ruthless cynicism and corrupt, anti-democratic politics should otherwise be repudiated. He argued for a prudent, liberal understanding of human society that took the measure of every group’s self-interest and was chastened by a realistic understanding of the limits of power. It is in the foreword to this book that he wrote, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” This edition includes a new introduction by the theologian and Niebuhr scholar Gary Dorrien in which he elucidates the work’s significance and places it firmly into the arc of Niebuhr’s career. (shrink)

Written across the disciplines of art history, literature, philosophy, sociology, and theology, the ten essays comprising the collection all insist on multidimensional definitions of evil. Taking its title from a moment in Shakespeare's Tempest when Prospero acknowledges his responsibility for Caliban, this collection explores the necessarily ambivalent relationship between humanity and evil. To what extent are a given society's definitions of evil self-serving? Which figures are marginalized in the process of identifying evil? How is humanity itself implicated in the (...) production of evil? Is evil itself something fundamentally human? These questions, indicative of the kinds of issues raised in this collection, seem all the more pressing in light of recent world events. The ten essays were originally presented at the First Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2000 in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. (shrink)

A burgeoning body of research has shown that authoritarian leadership embodies the characteristics of “light” and “dark,” meaning that it does not always have a negative impact on employees’ creative activities. However, studies explaining this potential positive effect are insufficient. To extend the AL and creativity literature, we draw on self-determination theory and event system theory, and elicit discipline-focused AL and appointment event criticality to examine whether, when, and how authoritarian leaders affect employee creativity positively. With time-lagged data (...) collected from 435 employees and their direct leaders in China, we found that discipline-focused AL has an indirect positive effect on employee creativity through creative self-efficacy. Additionally, appointment event criticality strengthens the positive relationship between discipline-focused AL and creative self-efficiency, and the indirect impact of discipline-focused AL on employee creativity through creative self-efficiency. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The moral potential of works of art, for good or ill, has been recognised from philosophical antiquity: on the assumption that the moral effects of art are invariably negative, Plato advised the exclusion of artists from any rationally ordered state. Arguably, however, the problem of the moral status of art has become yet more acute in contexts of post-Romantic and other modern artistic exploration of moral ambiguity, and even of some apparent contemporary celebration of the immoral and amoral. Indeed, some (...) tension between commitment to liberal-democratic openness and freedom, on the one hand, and fear about the potential literary and artistic corruption of the young, on the other, is evident in latter-day moralistic trends in children’s literature. However, in the light of some basic exploration of conceptual relationships between the artistic, the aesthetic and the moral, this paper argues that such moralising trends in particular and arguments for artistic censorship in general are mostly wrongheaded and unsustainable. (shrink)

In this article, we will reflect on the theoretical strategy implemented by Merleau-Ponty in his reading of Schelling. The purpose is not to verify the philological accuracy of his reading, but rather to examine two different yet interconnected questions: on the one hand, to study the sense Schelling’s concept of Nature takes in Merleau-Ponty’s ontological project; on the other, to discuss the role that Schelling’s philosophy effectively plays in the way that Merleau-Ponty approaches the problem of Nature. These two questions (...) should not be equated, since the first aspect concerns the evaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s project and thus of the specific function played by his reading of Schelling in the ontology of the flesh. The second, however, concerns the problems raised by this very project, which will appear more clearly if we consider Schelling’s philosophy in its general development, over and above what is said by Merleau-Ponty. In fact, he has a tendency to privilege the early Schelling, closer to Hegel and to speculative idealism, but he only makes a few allusions to the more mature ideas, which Schelling mainly explains in the unfinished treatise on the ages of the world, from which Merleau-Ponty draws, nevertheless, the theme of the barbarous principle. The task, consequently, is to understand the extent to which Merleau-Ponty was able to incorporate the “abyssal” value of this notion, developed by Schelling especially when he sought to distance himself from his own transcendental idealist philosophy.We will thus ask whether Merleau-Ponty’s reading is partial, and if we can find, nonetheless, certain indications that show at which point he was able to take up the direction in which Schelling addressed the theme of Nature as barbarous principle. At stake is the question of the negativity, the latency, the opacity of Nature. In the first part of the essay, we briefly explain Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Schelling in his course on Nature at the Collège de France in 1956-1957. In the second part, we present an interpretation of Schelling’s notion of the barbarous principle in light of the treatise on the ages of the world, and in particular the second draft, which is more speculative and audacious. In the third part, finally, we propose an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s position which can show us, at least indirectly, how the notion of flesh can recognize Schelling’s theoretical indications in their more pessimistic and radical valence, centered on the notion of de-cision as ontological divide. While not clearly argued, in part due to the nature of the unfinished manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, this notion is given an implicit treatment in this work that helps deepen the interpretation of the ontology of the flesh in the sense of a renewed mediation on negativity. (shrink)

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, Méré, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion of (...) 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general. (shrink)

The light metaphor is a perpetual favorite for philosophers, both East and West. I seek to revaluate its opposite, darkness. I claim that there are good reasons to favor darkness over light, or at least to not see them as mutually incompatible or in hierarchical fashion. In recent Western philosophy, both Heidegger and Derrida argue that what the light metaphor represents, the promise of clarity and objectivity, is exactly what makes Western metaphysics problematic. In Chinese (...) philosophy, classical Daoism offers a thinking that does not favor the light metaphor over its opposite. Daoists have the good sense to acknowledge darkness as a positive contribution to human life, at the very least on par with light. I argue that both the Western criticism of the light metaphor, and the Daoist approach to light and darkness, can be read as challenging the metaphysics of presence and providing an alternative way of thought. (shrink)

The polarity of light and dark in the treatment of the Newtonian spectrum and the inverse spectrum is studied further and the validity of heterogeneity of light and darkness in relation to Goethe’s views is examined. In order to clarify the reality of the “darkness rays”, theexperimentum crucisis re-evaluated. It is shown that the commonly accepted analysis contains assumptions in the choice of the spectrum and background, which mask the inherent dynamic of the spectrum. The relation (...) between colour and wavelength is re-examined with respect to the immutability and specific refrangibility of colour. It is then shown that both these properties are approximations that apply under the specific conditions that have later become standardized in spectroscopy, leading to a consensus regarding the relation of wavelength to colours of one particular spectrum. This consensus has resulted in the study of colour diverging into spectroscopy and colour physiology. As an alternative, the basis of the dichotomy postulated by Müller is studied, leading to the realization that the resolution of this dichotomy was begun by Goethe with the idea of turbidity. A further study shows that turbidity resolves the apparent incompatibility of light and dark. (shrink)

Nowadays references to the afterlife-angels strumming harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God enthroned on heavenly clouds-are more often encountered in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological reflection. Speculation about death and its sequel seems to embarrass many theologians; however, as Greg Garrett shows in Entertaining Judgment, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in the search for answers to the question: What lies in store for us after we die? The lyrics of Madonna, Los (...) Lonely Boys, and Sean Combs; the plotlines of TV's Lost, South Park, and The Walking Dead; the implied theology in films such as The Dark Knight, Ghost, and Field of Dreams; the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings; the ghosts, shades, and after-life way-stations in Harry Potter; and the characters, situations, and locations in the Hunger Games saga all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. In a rich survey of literature and popular media, Garrett compares cultural accounts of death and the afterlife with those found in scripture. Denizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in purgatory, speak to what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if often somewhat nebulous-beliefs. They show us what rewards and punishments we might expect, offer us divine assistance, and even diabolically attack us. Ultimately, we are drawn to these stories of heaven, hell, and purgatory--and to stories about death and the undead--not only because they entertain us, but because they help us to create meaning and to learn about ourselves, our world, and, perhaps, the next world. Garrett's deft analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope and expect to find after death--and how they use those stories to help them understand this life. (shrink)

The article explores the way American author Cormac McCarthy uses the Gothic genre in his novel The Road as a means to address what has been called “our globalized order,” in particular the way it has turned human beings into consuming or consumed entities. Some dimensions of this globalized order indeed involve the reintroduction of slavery through human trafficking, unprecedented greed and labor capitalism, surveillance and personal data gathering. Hannah Arendt notes in The Origin of Totalitarianism that the disasters of (...) the twentieth century had proved that a globalized order might “produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages.” The artist’s task is to find the right language and images to address the breaking of the world. French philosopher J. P. Dupuy, for example, has argued that the financial world is a way to contain the violence of competition, placing it into acceptable forms away from primal physical competition. McCarthy’s graphic use of Gothic tropes—including cannibalism, the wild forest, the haunted house, the chase, the conflict between light and darkness, the blurring of boundaries between different categories—creates a shock. The article also addresses the larger question of the impact of globalization on Gothic literature, and the impact of Gothic literature on real world matters as it contributes to and reflects upon and challenges global regimes of economic, social and economic power. In other words, what is the cultural work that the Gothic does in the present? (shrink)

Despite the long history of career research in the literature (Guerrier, 1987; Siu et al., 1997), researchers have largely neglected the dark sides of the antecedents and consequences of career amb...

Early observations of the southern celestial sky were reported in many sixteenth-century books and compilations of voyages of discovery. Here we analyse these accounts in order to find out what was really seen and reported by the first navigators. Our analysis had resulted in new interpretations of the phenomena reported by Amerigo Vespucci and Andreas Corsali. Thus, a reassessment of the discovery of the Coalsack Nebula, the Magellanic Clouds, and the Southern Cross can be made. From a comparative review of (...) the observations of the latter constellation as published between 1500 and 1600, we demonstrate that only questionable records found their way to contemporary compilations of voyages of discovery, and that as a result public knowledge about this constellation at the end of the sixteenth century was entirely unreliable. Another problem we discuss is that although the stars of the Southern Cross were the first to be discovered, and were observed again and again by many navigators, it was not until 1678 that their proper positions were found in stellar atlases and star catalogues accessible to astronomers. We explain how negligence of and subsequently confidence in Ptolemy's astronomy by, respectively, the early navigators and cartographers, were at the root of this amazingly long-lasting gap in the knowledge of the southern celestial sky. (shrink)

Moral significance has been attributed to music from antiquity: for example, both Plato and Aristotle made much of the power of music to influence and shape moral character. However, it would also seem often assumed that music and musical experience have some kind of spiritual significance or value for human development. The present paper sets out to explore this possibility further by asking: first, whether it is possible to make sense of spiritual development in a non-reductive way—in a way, that (...) is, which might distinguish such growth from moral or aesthetic development; and second, what sort of qualities, capacities, or dispositions might distinctively spiritual qualities be? However, having identified a range of candidate spiritual virtues, the essay proceeds to explore the further possibility that some works or genres of music may—by much the same token—be conducive to the promotion of less spiritually desirable attitudes or values. (shrink)

In Of Other Spaces Foucault coined the term "heterotopias" to signify "all the other real sites that can be found within the culture" which "are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted." For Foucault, heterotopic spaces were first of all spaces of crisis, or transformative spaces, however these have given way to heterotopias of deviation and spaces of discipline, such as psychiatric hospitals or prisons. Foucault's essay provokes us to think through how spaces of crisis and critique function to open up disruptive, (...) subversive or minoritarian fields within philosophical, political, cultural or aesthetic discourses. This book takes this interdisciplinary and international approach to the spatial, challenging existing borders, boundaries, and horizons; from Claire Colebrook's chapter unpacking the heterotopic spaces of America and Mexico that lie beyond reductive ideological spaces of light and darkness, to a Foucauldian reading of the Zapatista resistance. With essays on politics, philosophy, literature, post-colonial studies, and aesthetics from established and emerging academics, this book answers Foucault's call to give us a better understanding of our present cultural epoch."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This study provides evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while participants listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In addition, this effect occurs both while watching a blank white board and while sitting in complete darkness. This study includes 4 experiments. The first 2 experiments measured eye movements (...) of participants looking at a blank white board. Experiment 1 monitors eye movements of participants on 2 occasions: first, when participants listened to a prerecorded spoken scene description; second, when participants were later retelling it from memory. Experiment 2 first monitored eye movements of participants as they studied a complex picture visually, and then later as they described it from memory. The second pair of experiments (Experiments 3 and 4) replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with the only difference being that they were executed in complete darkness. This method of analysis differentiated between eye movements that are categorically correct relative to the positions of the whole eye gaze pattern (global correspondence) and eye movements that are only locally correct (local correspondence). The discussion relates the findings to the current debate on mental imagery. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:American Memory in Henry James: Void and ValueMartin WarnerAmerican Memory in Henry James: Void and Value, by William Righter, edited by Rosemary Righter ; xi & 220 pp. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2004. $79.95.The perennial debate about what Arnold termed "culture and anarchy" was both enriched and rendered more subtle by the work of Henry James. The late William Righter's fine and discriminating intelligence helps us to think this (...) through. This is no standard monograph on Henry James. While well-aware of the critical traditions of Jamesian scholarship (and the knowledgeable will be able to detect in his sensitive and often enlightening readings of the texts his engagement with those traditions), Righter sits lightly to this scholarship, ploughing his own furrow, using the later work of Henry James as a lens to question "void and value" in twentieth-century and, by extension, contemporary culture. American Memory in Henry James is elegantly, and indeed sometimes elusively, written, as befits a work on a man whose own stylistic stringency is, alas, so often not emulated by academic writings on his work. The flipside of this, of course, is that a reasonably educated background, including some acquaintance with James's texts, is assumed.Righter is concerned to explore the capacity of the novel form as represented by James to apprehend, through formal arrangement, the apparent incommensurability of the forces that drive history, culture, and human psychology on the one hand, and the frameworks of intelligibility and value within which we seek to live and by means of which we seek to exercise some control over them, on the other. James is apt for this purpose since he focuses on cultural dislocations, between America and Europe, and between past and present. America, for James, represents the overcoming of a late nineteenth-century tradition of civility (primarily, in his case, transcendentalist and Unitarian) by big business and the criteria of capitalism. This precipitates a split between "wasp" culture and an alienated, urban culture, both in danger of losing touch with their roots. Europe, of course, stands for continuity, in this specifically cultural sense, rather than rupture, and the project of importing European culture into America through museums (The Golden Bowl is very much in point here) is one of the ambiguities to which the text recurs.The first part, "America Deconstructed," sets the stage, using James's The [End Page 447] American Scene to analyze his notions of historical change and progression, and their implications for a sense of stable American identity. How is a society so committed to change and progress to honor its past creatively? Part two, "The Note of Europe," engages with The Ambassadors, seeing the victory of Wollett as an indication of the insubstantiality of a certain type of expatriate community, of Americans seeking to take on European culture. The main weight of the text is taken by the engagement with The Golden Bowl, to which the next two parts are dedicated. "Amerigo in American Nowhere" explores the way in which the central characters operate in a sort of void, with social context stripped away to reveal the dynamics of their failed equilibrium. In this, "America" and "England" have become virtually typological symbols. In the light of this reading of the text, Part four, "A Dark Fable of Love and Power," explores the implications for our shaping intelligence, especially ethical intelligence. In suggestive dialogue with Putnam and Nussbaum, Righter points to the difficulty of seeing the relevance of anything like the Categorical Imperative to The Golden Bowl. Rather, in this novel "the language of morality has been examined, picked up, turned over, taken to pieces. But this very process has in the end indicated its unsuitability as an ultimate explanatory scheme." He argues that James poses the possibility that the novel "adds up to a total story which is intelligible beyond the possibilities of a conceptual sorting out" (pp. 154-55).But this raises the question of what the criteria for intelligibility could be in such a case, if beyond the conceptual lies the imaginative. The final part, "Form and Contingency," engages with this issue. James's difficulty here, it is argued with respect to the late... (shrink)