In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but (...) essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence. (shrink)

A term of relatively recent mintage, coined by German scientist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, ecology draws on ancient Greek to establish and consolidate its meaning. Although scholars all too often overlook it, the anachronistic rise of ecology in its semantic and conceptual determinations is noteworthy. Formed by analogy with economy, the word may be translated as “the articulation of a dwelling”, the logos of oikos. Here, I argue not only that a vast majority of ecosystems on the planet are (...) subject to environmental upheavals and ecological crises, but also that ecology as the crossroads of dwelling and articulation is in crisis, having come into its own and made explicit what was silently present in its historical enunciation. As a result, ecology needs to be deromanticized, decoupled from the bucolic and the picturesque, and dissociated from nativism and autochthony. Every organism, ecosystem, or place is affected by the forces of unsettlement and displacement; all dwellings and their articulations are shaken to the core and set in motion, rendering ecologies exilic. Ecologies today share the exilic condition, which also threatens to level the differences among them, without the chance of returning to a stable origin, itself nothing other than a theoretical fiction. In what follows, I propose to chalk out the outlines of exilic ecologies. (shrink)

The question of why Plato censored poetry in his Republic has bedeviled scholars for centuries. In Exiling the Poets, Ramona A. Naddaff offers a strikingly original interpretation of this ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy.

Following Levinas’ articulation that “truth is accessible only to the mind capable of experiencing an exile away from its preconceptions and prejudices,” Exile and Otherness posits that Shinran, the founder True Pure Land Buddhism, and Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar, exhibit sensitivity to the neglected and suffering others.

This book presents the remarkable correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, emigre philosophers influenced by Edmund Husserl, who fled Europe on the eve of World War II and ultimately became seminal figures in the establishment of phenomenology in the United States. Their deep and lasting friendship grew out of their mutual concern with the question of the connections between science and the life-world. Interwoven with philosophical exchange is the two scholars' encounter with the unfamiliar problems of American academic (...) life—what Gurwitsch called the "passology" of exile. Apart from its brilliant and moving portrait of two distinguished men, the correspondence holds rich significance for current issues in philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

This volume contains hitherto unknown lectures held by the Protestant philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965) during the first years of his exile at several universities. The lectures are on the Philosophy of Religion (1934), Introduction into Existential Philosophy (1934) and the Doctrine of Man (1934–35). They document the difficult attempt of a German scholar to explain his thought, which was rooted in the philosophy of German idealism, to an American academic audience.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Alcaics In Exile: W. H. Auden’s “In Memory Of Sigmund Freud”Rosanna WarrenOn September 23, 1939, Sigmund Freud died in exile in London, a refugee from Nazi Austria. Within a month, Auden, who had been living in the United States since January of that year, wrote a friend in England that he was working on an elegy for Freud. 1 The poem appeared in The Kenyon Review early in 1940. (...) A stately public ode, the poem mourns not only the death of a publicly significant individual, but the collapse of a world. Hitler had overrun Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland; assaults on Jews had intensified; England and France had just declared war on Germany. There would be, indeed, many who would have to be mourned:When there are so many we shall have to mourn, when grief has been made so public, and exposed to the critique of whole epoch the frailty of our conscience and anguish,of whom shall we speak?...Someone encountering this poem for the first time, on the page or in the ear, might be pardoned for puzzling over its form. It sounds prosy. It seems to have some recognizable English cadences, pentameters (“[inline-graphic 01]”), tetrameters (“ ”), and even trimeters (“ ”). But the pattern seems unruly, with some [End Page 111] lines stretching out beyond five traditional beats, and ignoring any iambic order: “turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he.” Groping for a more satisfactory principle of organization, a reader with some knowledge of versification may be moved to count syllables. Such a reader will discover that the poem is indeed organized syllabically in lines of 11, 11, 9, and 10 syllables. “Aha,” says the reader, alert to Auden’s intimacy with Classical civilization: “A Horatian ode. Not inappropriate for a formal elegy.” Reflecting further, and leafing through the pages of Horace, that reader will find, or remember, that two thirds of Horace’s odes are in these quatrains, the alcaic stanza. Auden, it appears, has composed his elegy in some version of the meter of Alcaeus, the 7th century b.c.e. Greek poet whose stanza became second nature to Horace. And we cannot enter the world of Auden’s poem without asking, why alcaics? And how do they work here?“In Memory of Sigmund Freud” is sometimes said to be Auden’s first syllabic poem. 2 Others demur, proposing both earlier and later examples. 3 Whatever the spats about dating Auden’s early syllabic practice, scholars conventionally agree that his turn toward syllabic composition reflects his evolving interest in a discursive poetry; in the poet as a private intelligence with a public voice; and in the work, respectively, of Horace and Marianne Moore. Having identified the poem as syllabic, many critics move on to heftier topics like psychoanalysis versus Marxism, Auden more than most poets having laid himself open to an overridingly thematic criticism of Big Ideas. But if, having acknowledged the influence of Horace and Moore in Auden’s refusal of English iambic lyricism here, we stay with the question of meter, we are led back to the older progenitor, Alcaeus, a great poet of exile, whose stanza Auden adopts and adapts. I shall ask how it affects our reading to observe that the stanza itself has a genealogy, and brings its expressive burden to bear on Auden’s poem.“In Memory of Sigmund Freud” relies on a counterpoint of two metrical systems, the largely iambic accentual/syllabic system, traditional in English since Wyatt, and a flattened version of Greek quantitative meter, which was a musical notation of syllable length. For Auden, whose great prosodic facility was almost a handicap, the problem was, “not how to write in iambics but how not to write in them from automatic habit.” 4 Throughout his poetic life, he reached for cadences to interrupt the “natural” iambics, sometimes recalling the Old English alliterative beat, and often turning to ballads and popular tunes for rhythmical variation. By the late thirties, he was not only disillusioned [End Page 112] with the Spanish Civil War and his role as quasi-Socialist bard, but was seeking new compositional principles as well. Free verse was not an alternative: his ear required an evident... (shrink)

Hans Baron, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss and Erich Auerbach were among the many German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who fled Continental Europe with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Their scholarship, though not normally considered together, is studied here to demonstrate how, despite their different disciplines and distinctive modes of working, they responded polemically in the guise of traditional scholarship to their shared trauma. For each, the political calamity of European fascism was a profound intellectual crisis, requiring an intellectual response which (...) Weinstein and Zakai now contextualize, ideologically and politically. They exemplify just how extensively, and sometimes how subtly, 1930s and 1940s scholarship was used not only to explain, but to fight the political evils that had infected modernity, victimizing so many. An original perspective on a popular area of research, this book draws upon a mass of secondary literature to provide an innovative and valuable contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history. (shrink)

In this thoughtful and literate study, Schwehn argues that Max Weber and several of his contemporaries led higher education astray by stressing research--the making and transmitting of knowledge--at the expense of shaping moral character. Schwehn sees an urgent need for a change in orientation and calls for a "spiritually grounded education in and for thoughtfulness." The reforms he endorses would replace individualistic behavior, the "doing my own work" syndrome derived from the Enlightenment, with a communitarian ethic grounded in Judeo-Christian spirituality. (...) Schwehn critiques philosophies of higher education he considers misguided, from Weber and Henry Adams to Derek Bok, Allan Bloom, and William G. Perry Jr. He draws out valid insights, always showing the theological underpinnings of the so-called secular thinkers. He emphasizes the importance of community, drawing on both the secular communitarian theory of Richard Rorty and that of the Christian theorist Parker Palmer. Finally, he outlines his own prescription for a classroom-centered spiritual community of scholars. Schwehn's study will interest all those concerned with higher education in America today: faculty, students, parents, alumni, administrators, trustees, and foundation officers. (shrink)

Tristia3.3 purports to be a ‘death-bed’ letter addressed by the sick poet to his wife in Rome, in which Ovid, banished from Rome on Augustus' orders, foresees his burial in Tomi as the ultimate form of exilic displacement. In order to avoid such a permanent form of exclusion from his homeland, Ovid issues instructions for his burial in the suburbs of Rome, dictating a four-line epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb. However, despite the careful instructions he outlines for his (...) burial and physical memorial, Ovid asserts:maiora libelli | et diuturna magis sunt monumenta mihi, expressing his belief in his continued poetic afterlife. Scholars have seen this poem's concerns as above all literary, concentrating on Ovid's exploitation and development of elegiac and Augustan models which also treat the themes of death and poetic immortality. However, although Ovid's portrayal of what purports to be personal experience draws extensively upon earlier poetry, and, as we shall see, the poem gains much of its power from its engagement with the tradition that poetry alone can memorialize, previous studies have failed to analyse how Ovid consistently plays up the element that marks him out from the predecessors who had imagined their own deaths and poetic afterlives: that is, his status as an exile. Ovid's insistence on burial in his native land – from which he had been excluded in life – and his assertion of his poetic immortality in a poem which repeatedly stresses his exilic status, thus take on a markedly political angle, which had been absent or more muted in the models he exploits. (shrink)

This article presents a critical reading of Albert O. Hirschman’s typology of exit, voice and loyalty as a heuristic for understanding the changing meanings of exile in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It is argued that Hirschman’s experiences as well as the theory he distilled from them are highly relevant for researchers of forced migration and exile. After first defending the usefulness of Hirschman’s analytical framework for exile and diaspora studies, the article then highlights the need to revise and (...) complicate his approach. Hirschman could not foresee the emerging global possibilities of cultivating ‘the art of voice’, new forms of internal and self-exile as a result of post-fascist versions of authoritarianism, and the growing difficulties faced by refugees including, refugee scholars and writers, to exit their countries and find a safe haven somewhere else. The gaps in Hirschman’s theory are addressed by drawing on insights from the writings of Judith Shklar. (shrink)

Diaspora, considered as a context for insights into Jewish identity, brings together a lively, interdisciplinary group of scholars in this innovative volume. Readers needn't expect, however, to find easy agreement on what those insights are. The concept "diaspora" itself has proved controversial; _galut, _the traditional Hebrew expression for the Jews' perennial condition, is better translated as "exile." The very distinction between diaspora and exile, although difficult to analyze, is important enough to form the basis of several essays in this (...) fine collection. "Identity" is an even more elusive concept. The contributors to _Diasporas and Exiles _explore Jewish identity—or, more accurately, Jewish identities—from the mutually illuminating perspectives of anthropology, art history, comparative literature, cultural studies, German history, philosophy, political theory, and sociology. These contributors bring exciting new emphases to Jewish and cultural studies, as well as the emerging field of diaspora studies. _Diasporas and Exiles _mirrors the richness of experience and the attendant virtual impossibility of definition that constitute the challenge of understanding Jewish identity. (shrink)

Hans Baron, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss and Erich Auerbach were among the many German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who fled continental Europe with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Their scholarship, though not normally considered together, is studied here to demonstrate how, despite their different disciplines and distinctive modes of working, they responded polemically in the guise of traditional scholarship to their shared trauma. For each, the political calamity of European fascism was a profound intellectual crisis, requiring an intellectual response which (...) Weinstein and Zakai now contextualize, ideologically and politically. They exemplify just how extensively, and sometimes how subtly, 1930s and 1940s scholarship was used not only to explain, but to fight the political evils that had infected modernity, victimizing so many. An original perspective on a popular area of research, this book draws upon a mass of secondary literature to provide an innovative and valuable contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history. (shrink)

“Ovid’s Old Age” is a sung poem written by the Polish poet and musician Jacek Kaczmarski which engages with the myth of Ovid’s exile. Kaczmarski’s works were heavily influenced both by classical culture and his experience of political emigration during the communist era. He was famed as an unofficial bard of the opposition movement, but is as yet little known to classical reception scholars. This paper presents Kaczmarski’s creative engagement with Ovid as both a deeply personal reflection on the (...) nature of exile and at the same time a universal commentary on poetry under authoritarian regimes. Our interpretation is based on a thematic analysis of the poem, including landscape, imperialism, displacement, “national” poets in exile, nostalgia, and the force of poetry. We set the reception in its social, political, and biographical context, with reference to several mediating receptions of the Ovidian exile. In Kaczmarski’s poem, the Ovidian voice helps the poet to express the trials of emigration and reveals their effect on his art. It shows how engagements with classical culture may flourish, even while the formal discipline of Classics has been undernourished. We provide a bilingual translation of “Ovid’s Old Age” to foster the understanding of migratory experiences in contemporary poetry and enrich international scholarship on the reception of Ovid with a response from communist Poland. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Exile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters,John GoodliffeExile: The Sense of Alienation in Modern Russian Letters, by David Patterson; xii & 204 pp. University Press of Kentucky, 1994, $29.95.From the title of this book one might expect its principal focus to be on geographical and/or political exile, exile as punishment, of which there have been many examples in Russian life and letters, both before and after (...) the 1917 Revolution. But David Patterson prefers to interpret the word “exile” in a wider metaphysical and existential sense, so connecting it with the problem of alienation and the question of human identity. His purpose is to demonstrate that “the fundamental problem of meaning in human life is a problem of homelessness; that the effort to emerge from exile is an effort to return meaning to the word and thus the self to the other; and that the exile of the word is an exile of human being” (p. xi). (Incidentally this quotation anticipates the rather curious style of English which the author will adopt, regrettably typical of many academics.) The neurosis engendered by this problem of homelessness is one to which Russians have always been particularly prone, perhaps because their geographical situation on a vast inhospitable plain, stretching uneasily between Europe and Asia, has always generated a feeling of insecurity. So it is not at all difficult to find abundant examples of it in Russian literature. As Patterson makes clear in his preface, there are many Russian writers other than the ones he has chosen who well demonstrate estrangement and alienation. Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that a Russian writer who does not suffer from the neurosis is the exception to the general rule. And, pursuing the idea further, it might be possible to show that any novel, any poem, any piece of writing in any language, contains elements of the problem, since it derives almost inevitably from the very occupation of a creative writer.Thus, from the outset, Patterson runs the risk of making his “exile” definition so wide that the term becomes almost meaningless. It may well be [End Page 514] that his book would have been less diffuse had he kept his definition rather narrower. And since he professes that his aim is “not only to make a point about Russian letters but to draw on these Russian texts in an effort to arrive at a deeper understanding of a much larger, more pervasive problem” (p. xi), Patterson runs the further risk of allowing the texts he uses for his demonstration simply to turn into pretexts for uncontrolled and unstructured digression. It has to be said at once that these risks he proves unable or unwilling to guard against.From the nineteenth century Patterson begins, inevitably, with the well-worn theme of the “superfluous man.” Nothing very original here, as this particular label has been applied so often and so indiscriminately to Russian literature that it has turned into a kind of critical rubber stamp. But at least Patterson does not go over the well-worn ground of the realist novel, preferring to concentrate on Dostoevsky’s non-fictional Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, as embodying its author’s post-Siberian sense of estrangement from Russia and his search for a new identity, brought into focus by his trip to Europe. However, in the case of Tolstoy, Patterson reverts to fiction, concentrating on The Death of Ivan Ilich and Resurrection. In this connection he is perhaps rather less scrupulous than he ought to have been over the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.Noting the comments on Tolstoy, the reader becomes increasingly aware that the book is in many respects a more extended sermon than scholarly analysis. This is confirmed by Patterson’s decision in Part Three to include two early twentieth-century religious thinkers, Florensky and Shestov. Here we are guided through comparatively uncharted territory, but with the uncomfortable feeling that we are plunging into an ever darkening and more oppressive jungle of ideas. The feeling of oppression is not greatly relieved by the author’s somewhat heavy-handed style.The remaining four writers covered are from the “Soviet Period... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.2 (2002) 257-273 [Access article in PDF] The Colonial Subject in Ovid's Exile Poetry P. J. Davis IN RECENT YEARS ONE FOCUS FOR THE DISCUSSION of Ovid's poetry, including of course the exile poetry, has been its relationship to the Augustan regime. Although employing essentially the same critical assumptions, scholars have divided into more and less conservative camps, arguing for a pro- or anti-Augustan (...) Ovid. 1 However, in the case of the exile poetry at least, this situation has been altered by a chapter in a recent book by Thomas N. Habinek, in which he argues for what might be termed a conservative (i.e., pro-Augustan) reading, but employing forms of argument that, in classical studies at least, are decidedly unconservative. 2 Drawing on the work of the cultural materialists, 3 Habinek draws an analogy between Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and later European colonization narratives in order to argue that "Ovid's laments from exile and dispatches from the contact zone of Pontus sentimentalize his own and his readers' involvement in the project of Roman imperialism." 4The suggestion that Ovid's representation of Tomis and the Black Sea region in the first century C.E. has affinities with later European accounts of foreign and especially colonized territories is an intriguing one that clearly merits consideration. Habinek takes the idea still further and suggests that Ovid's mental attitude in Tomis is akin to that of a colonist living in one of the European colonial empires. Indeed, he quotes D. K. Fieldhouse's explanation of the durability of these empires: "The [End Page 257] basis of imperial authority was the mental attitude of the colonist. His acceptance of subordination—whether through a positive sense of common interest with the parent state, or through inability to conceive of any alternative—made empire durable." 5 For us, who are primarily concerned with Ovid, the important issue here is: who is the colonist with whom Ovid is being compared? After all, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, across two American continents, Asia, Africa, and Australia, European colonies took many different forms, incorporated many different peoples and embodied widely varying relationships with the metropolitan power. In fact, Fieldhouse's concern here is with the startling character of the American Revolution, for he argues that "loyalty was the norm and rebellion a break with long-established tradition"(1966, 103). For Fieldhouse the colonist whose mental attitude is so important is a male inhabitant of one of Britain's North American colonies in the second half of the eighteenth century. Fieldhouse is not concerned with colonists in general. How appropriate is the situation of this colonist, say, a locally born resident of pre-Revolutionary Boston or New York, as an analogy for that of Ovid among the Tomitans? The resemblance is not immediately striking.Although citing Fieldhouse's analysis of the nascent United States, Habinek makes it clear that in fact he has a very different kind of colony in mind, a colony in which a European power has control over a numerically superior non-European population: "A comparable claim can be made with regard to the agents of Roman imperialism—soldiers, administrators, and culture workers alike—especially as the Roman system was transformed during the Augustan age from what Conrad's Marlow called 'merely a squeeze' to a colonial system of pacification backed up by an idea, namely, the superiority of Roman culture to that of its subject populations." 6 The use of the phrase "White Man's Burden" 7 as the title for this section of the chapter and the reference to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness 8 suggest that Habinek conceives of Roman Moesia as [End Page 258] analogous to one of Britain's twentieth-century Asian or African colonies. How appropriate is this analogy? No doubt there were soldiers and administrators in the province. Indeed, Ex Ponto 4.7 is addressed to Julius Vestalis, prefect of the maritime coast, 9 while 4.9 refers to L. Pomponius Flaccus, who had held... (shrink)

Ziege’s book focuses primarily on the two main empirical studies carried out by Max Horkheimer’s Institute of Social Research during its exile in the United States in the 1940s: a relatively unknown and never-published study of anti-Semitism among American workers and the much better known, five-volume Studies in Prejudice. Ziege poses and successfully answers the question of why the Institute began to focus more on empirical studies and anti-Semitism in the 1940s. Her thorough archival research illuminates as never before the (...) Institute’s relations to the main organizations that funded its ambitious empirical projects during this time: the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee. She also provides the richest existing account of how the experience of American exile affected the Institute’s theoretical premises and empirical work. By distinguishing between the Institute’s ‘esoteric’ theoretical assumptions, which maintained a large degree of continuity with its earlier work, and a willingness to work at the ‘exoteric’ level with many scholars who didn’t share these assumptions, Ziege explains how the Institute made certain concessions to mainstream American academic culture without ever abandoning the radical intentions of Critical Theory. (shrink)

This paper presents Michael Polanyi’s escape from Berlin to Manchester as part of a major wave of intellectual migration at the time of Hitler’s rise in Germany in 1933. Many émigré scientists and social scientists from Hungary experienced forced and unexpected relocation twice in the interwar era: first in 1919-20, after the fall of the Bolshevik-type Hungarian Republic of Councils, and again after the Nazi takeover. Once in exile, they formed an unusually tight support group assisting each other by cohorting, (...) networking, and bonding. Their group included a host of major refugee scientists, scholars, visual artists, musicians, men of letters, and public figures. The rich Hungarian contribution to German and, later, U.S. culture and civilization was, to a very great extent, the result of anti-Semitic policies and practices in Hungary after 1920 and in Germany after 1933. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Germany Left the Republic of LettersKasper Risbjerg EskildsenA common culture of scholarship existed across Europe from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. This culture possessed its own institutions, traditions, and rituals that connected its members across borders and religious divides. A professor from Lisbon, a librarian from Hanover, and a schoolmaster from Turku would all speak nearly the same language and wear nearly the same clothing. They would (...) share many of the same dreams, celebrate many of the same heroes, and have similar memories from their youth and adult life. They were convinced that they belonged to the same cultural group and were normally willing to make personal and economic sacrifices when called upon by members of this group. Long before the emergence of European nation-states, the community of scholars formed what Benedict Anderson has called an imagined community, united by the forces of language, culture, and writing.1From around 1500, the community of scholars went by the name respublica litteraria—the Republic of Letters. Italian humanists already used the metaphor in the early fifteenth century, and with Erasmus of Rotterdam's Antibar-barorum liber, it became commonplace within Europe.2 To Erasmus and his [End Page 421] circle the Republic of Letters signified the natural community between all students of creation, divine reason, and Greek and Roman antiquity. It gathered scholars across space and time and set them apart from the hordes of ignorant barbarians. To most early modern scholars, however, respublica litteraria signified much more than a community of reason and knowledge. They used the metaphor to describe every aspect of the culture of scholarship that connected its members and demarcated them from surrounding society. Universities, academies, and secret societies were talked about as parts of the Republic of Letters. Scholarly letters and conversations tête-à-tête, books, lectures and seminars, rituals and traditions were all included. The metaphor demarcated invisible borders between learned and lay, tacitly known to insiders but rarely strictly defined.3The Republic ChallengedDuring the last decades of the seventeenth century the metaphor of the Republic of Letters lost much of its force and elasticity. Scholars used and debated the metaphor more than ever before, but these heated and emotional discussions were not necessarily—as is assumed in much of the work on the eighteenth century4 —a sign that the metaphor and the culture it represented had gained ground. The discussions were, much rather, a symptom of crisis. The end of the great religious wars and the emergence of modern centralized states forced scholars to rethink their role in society and their relationship to the new military and administrative elites. Philosophical skepticism and philological criticism threatened established academic teachings and methods.5 Debates about the Republic of Letters reveal the scholars' efforts to answer these political and intellectual challenges. In her studies of learned Huguenots who, after 1685, were spread across Europe, Anne Goldgar has described how the alienated community of scholars at the turn of the eighteenth century came increasingly under pressure.6 The Huguenots felt marginalized in their adopted [End Page 422] homes, lost income and patronage, and suffered a decline in social prestige. According to Goldgar, these external pressures resulted in stronger internal bonds, as exiled scholars rallied around the ideal of the borderless Republic of Letters. But already before Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenot scholars defined a French version of the republic—La République des Lettres—in strong opposition to the forces suppressing the Protestant minority. In 1684 Pierre Bayle defiantly declared from his Dutch refuge,It is not a matter of religion, but of science: therefore one should put an end to all boundaries that divide men into different camps, and consider only that which unites them, namely their rank as noblemen in the Republic of Letters. In this sense all scholars should regard themselves as brothers, and consequently one another as family. They should say:We are all equal We are all relatives } as children of Apollo.7Protestant Northern Europe did not witness the same religious and political conflicts that France did.8 Scholars there were also ridden by crisis at the turn... (shrink)

Scholarly correspondence can be as insightful as scholarly work itself, as it often documents the motivating forces of its writers’ intellectual ideas while illuminating their lives more clearly. The more complex the authors’ scholarly works and the more troubled the eras in which they lived, the more substantial, and potentially fascinating, their correspondence. This is especially true of the letters between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin. The scholars lived in incredibly dramatic times and produced profound, complex works that continue (...) to confound academics. The communication between these two giants of the social sciences, as they sent their thoughts to one another, was crucial to the work of both men. _A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime: The Correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin _demonstrates that Schutz and Voegelin shared a remarkable friendship: they first met as students in Vienna in the 1920s and found themselves great partners in discussion; years later they were pushed out of Europe by Nazi pressure and went to work at separate American universities. For twenty years they wrote each other, developing their respective scientific works in that dialogue. The letters bear witness to their friendship during the years they spent in exile in the United States, and they document the men’s tentative attempts at formulating the theories of “lifeworld” and “gnosis” associated with Schutz and Voegelin today. The entire collection of 238 letters was printed in German in 2004, but this edited volume is the first to present their correspondence in English and offers a selection of the most important letters—those that contributed to the thinkers’ theoretical discussions and served as background to their most significant thoughts. Editors Gerhard Wagner and Gilbert Weiss do not analyze Schutz’s and Voegelin’s works in light of the correspondence—rather, they present the collection to create a framework for new interpretations. _A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime_ takes a unique look at two major social scientists. This volume is a valuable resource in the study of Voegelin’s political philosophy and Alfred Schutz’s contribution to American sociology and marks an important addition to the literature on these remarkable men. Showing how scholarly discourse and the dialogue of everyday life can shed light on one another, the book finally presents this correspondence for an American audience and is not to be missed by scholars of philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

This article traces Kurt H. Wolff’s involvement with Italy, from his first sojourn in the 1930s as a German Jewish intellectual in exile to the end of his life. Wolff developed profound ties with the country that hosted him, and that he was forced to abandon once racial laws were introduced there on the eve of World War II. Nonetheless, throughout his life he regarded Italy as an elective homeland of sorts. Wolff’s Italian experience is revisited through a detailed examination (...) of the places where he resided, his activities as a student, teacher, and scholar, and the many individuals with whom he associated, many of whom became his lifelong friends and collaborators. The documentary evidence collected here includes unpublished conversations with some of Wolff’s Italian connections and serves for a consideration of how his ties to Italy had an impact on the development of his sociological and esthetic theories. (shrink)

This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that (...) true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

Weber and his work functioned in two ways: both as a bridge to the new, to the world of capitalist modernity, as well as a road to an acceptable cosmopolitan ‘liberal’ historical past. It was Weber the cosmopolitan and outsider who could give legitimacy and weight to the intellectual orientations and problems thought to be significant for the community in exile. It was this Weber who could cushion the ‘negative shock’ of what was often perceived as America’s ‘intellectual and cultural (...) provincialism’ and establish for the emigre scholar and intellectual the historical task of assisting in the development of American intellectual and cultural life. At the same time, the presence of a different Weber in America, already an established interest of several scholars emerging into prominence, such as Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils, created difficulties as well as opportunities for the emigre scholars. Because of such variety the field for the transmission, reception, and influence of Weber’s work must be approached as a complicated, multilayered, and contested patchwork of disparate and sometimes partially overlapping social and professional networks. (shrink)

This paper introduces a series of lectures Ernst Kantorowicz offered to the Army Specialized Training Program in 1943 in order to reconsider the development of his intellectual biography. These “wartime lectures” constitute Kantorowicz’s only sustained discussion of modern German history and his only intellectual engagement with Nazism. Introducing these lectures thus presents an opportunity to re-examine the relationship between Kantorowicz’s early and mature works through his assessment of Nazi Germany. For Kantorowicz, Nazism was the violent result of a German commitment (...) to political prophecy. At the core of Kantorowicz’s lectures was a criticism of political theology and its role in modern history. In making this criticism, Kantorowicz simultaneously distanced himself from the prophetic register of his earlier writings. Moreover, recovering Kantorowicz’s concern with modern political theology is also important in foregrounding the intellectual genealogy of The King’s Two Bodies, a work often separated from its more telling subtitle: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Together, this paper argues that the most significant changes in Kantorowicz’s writings can be traced to the intellectual circumstances of the Second World War. (shrink)

In the summer of 1943 Edgar Zilsel resigned from his membership in the exile organization of Austrian Social Democrats, a political movement he had joined as a young man back in Vienna. Zilsel is known as an innovative scholar bridging philosophy, history and sociology of science, and belonging to the so-called left wing of the Vienna Circle of Logical Emipricism. Details of his political convictions are less recognized. A recently detected manuscript illuminates his worldview: His resignation letter had been accompanied (...) by a short exposition of his interpretation of socialism near the end of World War II. The article introduces Zilsel, his life and work and publishes for the first time Zilsel’s statement from 1943. (shrink)

Scholars of the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment, and Benedict de Spinoza will profit from the essays collected in The Dutch Legacy. Considered as a whole, the volume makes at least two significant contributions. First, it puts firmly to rest the still prevalent idea that Spinoza was a fundamentally lonely thinker whose ideas were sui generis, sprung from the mind of a solitary genius living in social, political, and spiritual exile. Despite the fact that Spinoza's correspondence testifies to a rich (...) network of friendships and associates, a romantic image of him persists as, in the words of Yirmiyahu Yovel, "alone in the deepest sense of the word". The image of a... (shrink)

According to current scholarly consensus, the pre- and post-exilic strata of Biblical Hebrew differ sufficiently to allow for the relative dating of biblical texts on linguistic grounds. Challengers to this view have objected that the received orthography of the Hebrew Bible, which is fuller than that of any pre-exilic epigraphic source, shows that no pre-exilic biblical text escaped post-exilic spelling revision. Moreover, so it is claimed, susceptibility to scribal modification on the level of orthography implies susceptibility to scribal modification on (...) the higher linguistic levels as well, which would effectively obscure a text’s original linguistic profile. In the present article it is argued that the degree of scribal modification involved in the process of orthographical revision was not so great as to distort irremediably the picture of linguistic development seen in biblical literature, so that distinctively late linguistic features can still be distinguished from their classical counterparts. Significantly, as has been argued elsewhere, diachronic development is still discernible even in the domain of orthography, a fact demonstrated on the basis of several examples, including the spelling of the qṭol-pattern qal infinitive construct. (shrink)

After his return from exile in A.D. 96 Dio of Prusa claims that even before it he had known the homes and tables of rich men, not only private individuals but satraps and kings . Following the lead of Philostratus modern scholars have seen Dio as a confidant of the Flavian dynasty: amicus to Vespasian, possibly a special envoy of Vespasian to the Grek east, amicus to Titus, and friend and adviser to a minor member of the house T. (...) Flavius Sabinus. These views are important not only for the biography of Dio, but also for the general question of relations between powerful Romans, above all emperors, and Greek philosophers and other intellectuals. (shrink)

A distinguished New Testament scholar turns his pen to the history of Israel. The result is a lucid and compact narrative, geared to the layman and student rather than the scholar. As the title suggests, the emphasis is on political rather than religious history. Much of this book's value will stem from its intentionally lopsided emphasis on the post-exilic period.--M. W.

Nineteenth–century scholars assumed that the Athenians as a community punished citizens with death, exile,atimia, and fines and used imprisonment only to hold those awaiting trial, those awaiting execution, and those unable to pay fines.1As they saw it, brief imprisonment in the stocks occasionally supplemented these penalties, but always as additional penalty–never as a penalty on its own. Barkan saw in the use of imprisonment as an additional penalty the likelihood of general penal imprisonment and used evidence from the oratorical (...) corpus to make an argument therefore.2 His argument seems to have been largely ignored–the nineteenth–century interpretation continuing dominant; and the issue, largely unexplored but for a few glancing references in recent scholarship.3 The issue remains, thus, sufficiently vexed to make worthwhile a restatement of the argument for the use of punitive imprisonment. Also, the evidence provides clues worth setting forth as to why and when punitive imprisonment developed. Indeed, these are sufficient to make an argument about the relevance of the development to Athenian political history. For the introduction of penal imprisonment in Athens proves an extremely important historical moment, marking as it does both the completion of a general will institutionalized (in a punishment of consumption of the wrong–doer within, rather than of expulsion from, the community) and a significant point in the establishment ofisonomia. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine's concept of _caritas_, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt carried her dissertation into exile in France, and years later took the same battered and stained copy to New York. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as she was completing or reworking her most influential studies of (...) political life, Arendt was simultaneously annotating and revising her dissertation on Augustine, amplifying its argument with terms and concepts she was using in her political works of the same period. The disseration became a bridge over which Arendt traveled back and forth between 1929 Heidelberg and 1960s New York, carrying with her Augustine's question about the possibility of social life in an age of rapid political and moral change. In _Love and Saint Augustine_, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark make this important early work accessible for the first time. Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents as well as the recollections of Arendt's friends and colleagues during her later years. (shrink)

How did immigrant scholars such as Rudolf Carnap, Max Horkheimer, and Alfred Schütz influence the development of American philosophy? Why was the U.S. community more receptive to logical empiricism than to critical theory or phenomenology? This volume brings together fifteen historians of philosophy to explore the impact of the intellectual migration. -/- In the 1930s, the rise of fascism forced dozens of philosophers to flee to the United States. Prominent logical empiricists acquired positions at prestigious U.S. universities. Critical theorists (...) moved their Frankfurt School to Columbia University. And a group of phenomenologists taught at the New School for Social Research. Though many refugee scholars acquired some American following, logical empiricism had the biggest impact on academic philosophy. The exiled empiricists helped the country turn into a bastion of ‘analytic philosophy’ after the war. Phenomenology and critical theory became prominent schools from the 1970s onwards and continue to be influential in American philosophy today. -/- This is the first book to investigate to the migration from an integrated perspective, bringing together historians of American philosophy, logical empiricism, phenomenology, and critical theory. (shrink)

For several decades, Antonio Gramsci has been one of the most studied and discussed political theorists; however, his originality as a political thinker has not yet been fully understood. In this incisive book, Sakari Hänninen explores Gramsci's political theory of transformation and posits that he was altogether too creative a thinker to be simply categorized as an adherent of a certain school of thought or tradition. Following Gramsci's own advice to trace the stable and permanent elements of a thinker's intellectual (...) development in statu nascendi, Hänninen argues that Gramsci's thinking was distinct and superior to the material he studied. Chapters examine the central question of his exilic writing in prison: political, historical and societal transformation - generated by struggle and strife giving birth to something qualitatively new and unforeseen - as a pluritemporal 'becoming' rather than unilinear development. The book further investigates Gramsci's modal analysis of political transformation moving from Marxian necessity to Machiavellian opportunity. Political Creativity: Antonio Gramsci on Political Transformation will be an enlightening read for students and scholars in the fields of political, social and historical science, particularly political theory, cultural studies and European politics. Its insights will also benefit political and civic activists, civil society agencies and think tanks. (shrink)

This book explores how the history of philosophy can orient us to the new reality brought on by the climate crisis. If we understand the climate crisis as a deeply existential one, it can help to examine the way past philosophers responded to similar crises in their times. This book explores five past crises, each involving a unique form of collective trauma. These events-war, occupation, exile, scientific revolution and political revolution-inspired the philosophers to remake the whole world in thought, to (...) construct a metaphysics. Williston distills a key intellectual innovation from each metaphysical system: - That political power must be constrained by knowledge of the climate system - That ethical and political reasoning must be informed by care or love of the ecological whole - That we must enhance the design of the technosphere - That we must conceive the Earth as an internally complex system - And that we must grant rights to anyone or anything-ultimately the Earth system itself-whose vital interests are threatened by the effects of climate change. Philosophy and the Climate Crisis will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental philosophy and ethics and the environmental humanities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the SelfBrian KarafinMeeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. By Anne Carolyn Klein. Boston: Beacon, 1995. 307 pp.“When the iron bird flies and carriages run on wheels, the dharma will come to the land of the red man”: this saying attributed to the semilegendary founder of Buddhism in Tibet, Padmasambhava, stands as (...) an oft-cited marker for the sense that the meeting between Tibetan Buddhism and North American culture was somehow a [End Page 227] fated one, a confluence emergent from some karmic relationship or mythical dependent-arising. Karmic connection or historical product of the near-simultaneous exile of Tibetans from their homeland in 1959 and the burgeoning of Western interest in Eastern religions and philosophies, the encounter of these two mutually and exotically other traditions is, nearing the second Christian millennium, proceeding apace. Especially since the 1989 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetans—and now international pop icon—the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the Western fascination for things Tibetan has exponentially increased, transforming what had been the preserve of scholars and eccentric spiritual seekers into a media sensation.The reception of Tibetan Buddhism in the West has proceeded in stages and phases that overlap and mutually affect each other, from pop phantasms of Tibet as a mythical Shangri-La (as in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon) and theosophical hopes in Tibet as the domain of the Wise Mahatmas overseeing the spiritual evolution of humanity to the relatively recent development of Tibetan studies as an academic discipline centered on the translation of texts, as well as the growing population of westerners practicing Tibetan Buddhist religion under the guidance of exiled lamas. With these latter two groups—scholars and practitioners who often overlap memberships—the phenomenon of Tibetan Buddhism in the West has reached a point where critical self-reflection is now possible. Donald Lopez’ recent Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West is the first full-length critical examination of the cultural confluence I’ve been noticing thus far. Lopez represents a movement in the field of Tibetan studies from philological scholarship of texts, in which the scholarly effort consists largely of translation along with commentary that closely follows the commentarial literature of the Tibetan tradition being translated, to cultural criticism of the underlying dynamics in the encounter itself.This critical self-consciousness in the field of Tibetan studies is likewise the motivating impetus behind Anne Klein’s recent work as represented by the book under review here. Klein, like Lopez, was a student of the dean of American Tibetan studies, Jeffrey Hopkins, at the University of Virginia. As such, her early work followed Hopkins in pursuing an essentially philological approach to Tibetan tradition with a focus on the philosophical scholasticism of the Gelukpa lineage. Klein’s three philological-philosophical books—Knowledge and Liberation; Knowing, Naming, and Negation; and Path to the Middle—are excellent examples of the genre of translation/commentary above mentioned, treating the Sautrantika and Madhyamika tenet systems in which the Gelukpa tradition systematized Indian Buddhist philosophy for the purposes of monastic study and debate. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen is something else entirely; in this work Klein blazes a trail out from recondite translation work toward cultural critique and psychosocial self-reflection in which the previously submerged subtext of the encounter between the Tibetan tradition and the Western psyche and society is allowed to surface and its issues probed and reflected upon.Klein frames her work in terms of a dialogue between Buddhism (by which she mainly means meditation practices and some associated philosophy) and feminism (by which she means both academic feminist theory and her own autobiographical [End Page 228] experience as a Western woman personally experiencing the confluence of Western and Tibetan exigencies). Klein is a salient example of a scholar-practitioner, someone who occupies positions both in the academic field of Tibetan studies and in the population of students of Tibetan lamas in exile. As such, she is exactly situated to embark on such a project of cultural and psychological reflection. She knows... (shrink)

This article argues that claims of divine kinship play a central role in the Bacchic gold tablets of the late classical period. While many scholars have interpreted these tablets in reference to the Orphic Zagreus myth, I contend that key details of their texts are better understood as assertions of a familial link with the gods that assured postmortem happiness. The tablets develop the Hesiodic idea of human-divine fellowship, expanding this theme to include claims of identity or kinship with (...) the gods through a variety of narrative strategies. This aspect of the tablets finds a parallel in Empedocles, who (under Orphic-Pythagorean influence) elaborates traditional human-divine fellowship into a claim that humans are exiled gods who can hope to rejoin divine society. Following this interpretive approach, I suggest that the puzzling expression “I/you fell into milk” in some tablets expresses a symbolic relation to the gods via divine breast milk. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thucydides: Narrative and ExplanationCarolyn DewaldTim Rood. Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xi + 339 pp. Cloth, £47.Any text has dislocations in its narrative surface. Since the time of Schwartz and Schadewaldt (1929), the text of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War has been scrutinized for its omissions, ellipses, and apparent contradictions. Scholars have thought that these would contain important clues regarding aspects [End Page (...) 138] of the war not emphasized explicitly by Thucydides in his narrative and that in addition they would help solve historiographical questions about Thucydides as an author: the nature and quality of the sources he had available to him, for instance, or, even more important, the evolution of his own understanding, over the long years in which he was observing and writing up the war. Thucydides himself provides grounds for such scholarly expectations by emphasizing that he had begun his project right at the war's beginning (1.1); he tells us in the second preface (5.26) that he was exiled after his command in the Thraceward region, and that thereafter he had a much better chance to talk to combatants on all sides. Clear stylistic differences distinguish different parts of the History; most strikingly, it breaks off mid-sentence in the narrative of the summer of 411. One can certainly see why, with this author in particular, attentive readers are tempted to take an analytical approach.Tim Rood, however, utterly rejects this temptation. Instead, he uses the tools of contemporary narratology to explore the text of Thucydides, just as it is, as the end product of authorial interpretation. He argues that Thucydides' narrative is not only written accurately to recount what happened but is also, in the most minute variations of its narrative details, an analysis of why and how the war happened as it did. Rood looks carefully at changes of perception (who "focalizes" the narrative at any given point), narrative disjunctions of time (analepsis, prolepsis, and variations in pacing), and Thucydides' handling of speech, thought, and the description of character. According to Rood, these are important clues that Thucydides provides to show us how the anticipations and perceptions of its various participants crucially shaped the Peloponnesian War.This is a careful, subtle book, and a very important one for historians as well as literary students of Thucydides. Rood is a student of S. Hornblower and C. Pelling, and in this revision of his Oxford thesis he cites the enormous secondary literature, both historical and historiographical, to excellent effect, usually in the context of precise observations about the import of individual passages. This is the first major study seriously to take into account Hornblower's Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 and 1996), and the result shows on almost every page. Even in the stretches where the minute attention to details of Thucydides' language make Rood's narrative itself read more like a commentary than an essay, the textual observations are aimed at a larger and more interesting interpretive point. In the thoughtfulness and integration of its readings of individual passages into a larger overall argument, it resembles Connor's Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), but where Connor uses a reader-response approach, arguing that Thucydides moves the reader in effect through the sequential experience of the war as it unfolds, Rood has Thucydides constructing his narrative to unpack for us as readers how the war's participants saw and thought about things and reacted to one another and how this in turn influenced how things unfolded.The book has twelve chapters, divided among five parts. The first part generally discusses temporal and focalizing strategies, concentrating on the Pylos story and the role speeches play in the narrative; the second emphasizes how [End Page 139] perception and gaps of knowledge between readers and characters as well as temporal displacement contribute to Thucydides' analysis of Peloponnesian and Athenian strengths and weaknesses in books 4 and 5. The third part explores how Athenian political life in general and the character of Nicias in particular become crucial in books 6 and 7 and shape the way the Sicilian Expedition unfolds, setting the stage for the grim years after... (shrink)

The subject of this issue is Zhao Fusan (b. 1926), a Shanghaiborn Christian pastor and intellectual who has lived in exile since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. As a scholar of world religions and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhao in the mid-1980s authored a sympathetic Marxian interpretation of the role of religion (translated in this issue) that has had a lasting impact in the PRC. In exile, Zhao's major projects (sampled in this issue) have (...) included Chinese editions of important works on early Christianity and the intellectual and cultural history of Europe. (shrink)

This book explores the religious experiences of two notable figures who endured severe trials under authoritarian regimes: Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877–1960) within the Islamic tradition, and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) within the Russian Orthodox Christian tradition. Against the tumultuous backdrop of the twentieth century’s spiritual, social, political, and intellectual upheavals, both Nursi and Solzhenitsyn grappled with immense hardships because of their beliefs. Despite immense tribulations, both individuals demonstrated unwavering faith and resilience in the face of adversity, continuing their scholarly and literary (...) activities. The current study centers on the dichotomy of spiritual confinement and expansiveness, illustrating how people can experience spiritual distress even without physical restraints. It explores the historical and conceptual aspects of imprisonment within Christian and Muslim perspectives, explores the reasons for Nursi and Solzhenitsyn's incarceration, examines their coping mechanisms in the face of hardship, and underscores the role of faith and spirituality. The author integrates personal experiences, particularly his own incarceration during the aftermath of the 2016 Turkish staged coup attempt, within the context of the narratives of Nursi and Solzhenitsyn. The book addresses court proceedings, release, departure from Turkey, and resettlement in Australia. Throughout, the author draws parallels between their own observations and those of Nursi and Solzhenitsyn, contributing to the broader discourse on individual spirituality and collective consciousness. The book offers insights into spiritual resilience in the face of adversity, utilizing the lives of these figures to illuminate shared human experiences. A unique collation of personal narration and scholarly reflection, it is relevant to academics and students in history, political science, sociology, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, and to social scientists researching the phenomenon of exile and prison in different countries across the world. It also speaks to the work of activists and policymakers in human rights. (shrink)

_Zero's Neighbour_ is Hélène Cixous's tribute to the minimalist genius of the artist in exile who courted nothingness in his writing like nobody else: Samuel Beckett. In this unabashedly personal odyssey through a sizeable range of his novels, plays and poems, Cixous celebrates Beckett’s linguistic flair and the poignant, powerful thrust of his stylistic terseness, and passionately declares her love for his unrivalled expression of the meaningless ‘precious little’ of life, its unfathomable banality ending in chaos and death. Poised between (...) a critical essay and a textual performance across two languages adapting Beckett's own literary vein, this book will appeal to scholars, critics and creative writers as well as students of the ‘grey self-Sam’. Its allusive intertextual insights will also prove to be of critical relevance to readers of Dante and Proust, among other literary figures, as much as to those appreciative of Cixous’s own inimitable genius for dissecting the quintessence of the life and works of a ‘neighbourly’ artist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Medieval Troubadour Mobilized in the French Resistance *Roy RosensteinIntroduction: The Place of Poetry under VichyRien ne semblait plus anachronique que d’interroger, inter arma, le silence des Muses médiévales....Frank 1In Chantons sous l’occupation André Halimi details how raucously the band played on in wartime Paris. 2 If Vercors in 1941 advocated the practice of silence and Sartre in 1945 maintained that Paris had been dead for the four years (...) of the Nazi occupation, Halimi and others have shown that Parisians [End Page 499] sang, danced, and laughed during the Occupation as never before. 3 Rarely had so many plays been staged, so many movies been produced. 4 While in other Nazi-occupied countries the theaters and restaurants remained closed, thus preserving a modicum of national dignity in defeat, in France the arts thrived and la vie mondaine accelerated its pace. Journalist Henri Amouroux rightly explains how cinema and theater provided more than entertainment and why they were periodically the target of curfews. In these wartime performances a seemingly insignificant phrase could take on a rich contemporary context. Thus a line like “toute la fleur du royaume se trouve en prison” in Montherlant’s La reine morte invariably provoked applause. Whether the text was classical or contemporary in origin, the audience “seized upon all the passages that could be linked to the current situation.” 5 In this broad sense, Resistance literature came to include any “poetry written and/or distributed in France during the Occupation, and which the reader sees as implicitly or explicitly conveying hostility to Nazism and Collaboration.” 6Between 1940 and 1944 French audiences escaped their national misfortunes more through literature than through film and drama combined. “Never, perhaps, had literature played such a momentous part in the daily life of French readers,” wrote the late Henri Peyre in 1945. 7 As is often noted, the intellectual Resistance “fut surtout poétique.” 8 Every page of poetry, past or present, seemed to remind wartime readers of their current circumstances. One young poète résistant is categorical: “Never before had poetry played such a decisive role in history.” 9 Pierre Brunel of the Sorbonne is just as emphatic in confirming [End Page 500] the judgment of contemporary scholars and Resistance fighters alike: “During the war years, French poetry found a singleness of purpose and an audience that it had never enjoyed before.” 10In anticipation of more comprehensive treatments of French Resistance poetry sens large, the present study proposes a necessarily modest and certainly partial approach to the role of poetry in the French Resistance. Following the general groundwork of Seghers, Gaucheron, Higgins, and others, it undertakes to track, if only schematically, the reaction to France’s fall as polarized across three territories—in American exile, in Vichy France, and in German camps—through a focus on one exemplary twelfth-century troubadour. Concurrently with the “nouvelle floraison poétique” hailed by André Rousseaux in 1941, 11 Jaufre Rudel was one earlier poet who enjoyed a resurgence of interest during the war. With respect to this troubadour, to date only Dietmar Rieger has mentioned in passing an oblique reference to Rudel’s trademark distant love in Aragon’s “Pour un chant (national)”: “Jaufre’s love from afar is set against a love for France.” 12 This particular troubadour’s legend and lyrics assumed new dimensions through their immediate relevance not only for Aragon but for all French nationals, both imprisoned at home and exiled abroad. Literary historian René Dumesnil observed as early as 1941 with respect to pre-war French classics: “Present circumstances give them new depth and extend their range.” 13 Regarding France’s medieval literature, a modern critic has noted how “the troubadours, just as much as Tristan, Roland, Lancelot, Perceval, or even Yseult..., emerge as agents of unity, even of unanimity, around whom it is still possible to muster the French people in 1940.” 14 [End Page 501]As has been observed for centuries, “Frenchmen abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time or other.” 15 All French patriots and expatriates, wherever they found themselves after the Armistice in June 1940, whether... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Edict of Oedipus (Oedipus Tyrannus 223–51)Edwin CarawanI utter to all Cadmeans this proclamation! Whoever among you knows at whose hands Laius, son of Labdacus, perished, him I command to tell me all! If he is afraid that if he removes upon himself, well and good, he shall suffer nothing else unwelcome, but shall leave the land unharmed. But if someone knows another of you, or a foreigner, to (...) be the killer, let him not be silent; for I can dispense rewards, and gratitude also shall be his. But if you remain silent and someone, fearing for a friend or for himself, rejects this order—what I shall do then you must hear from me! I forbid all belonging to this land, over which I rule and sit upon the throne to receive him or to speak to him, or let him share in prayers and sacrifices to the gods, or to touch holy water; but all must drive him from their homes, since we are polluted as the Pythian oracle of god has just now revealed to me. This is how I shall fight side by side with the god and with the man who died.(223–45)[And I pray that the doer of the deed, whether a single man has gone undetected or he has acted with others, may wear away a miserable life in misery, miserable as he is. And I pray further that if he is by the hearth in my own house with my own knowledge, I may suffer the fate with which I have just cursed others.](246–51)1 [End Page 187]The speech of Oedipus to the assembled Thebans contains this notorious pronouncement of his own doom. It is a troublesome text and has been treated with much ingenuity. I quote above the recent Loeb translation by Lloyd–Jones, not because it has any singular defect, but on the contrary because it is an apt and representative treatment and the translator has fully justified his changes to the text. In the first paragraph he supposes that Oedipus sentences the killer of Laius to exile or excommunication, as almost all other commentators suppose: the penalties described in lines 228–29 and 236–41 must apply to the killer himself. Unfortunately, the text that has come down to us in the manuscripts does not quite say as much. So, as many scholars do, Lloyd– Jones finds a lacuna after line 227 and makes other alterations to suit; the curse against the killer in lines 246–51 now seems superfluous, so he brackets it. These changes are not prompted by any difficulty in the text itself but by the editor's understanding of what the text must mean. One presumes that Oedipus is addressing his every remedy against the perpetrator, the killer who slew Laius by his own hand.2 This essay challenges that presumption and the editorial license that derives from it.In the first section we consider the text that is preserved in the manuscripts, along with the major editorial changes, and find that modern editors, almost without exception, have proceeded on the assumption that the order for exile and excommunication can only apply to the actual killer or "author of the crime." The second section presents the evidence for a different assumption on the part of the ancient audience: that anyone who conceals and consorts with a killer bears a measure of guilt and may be punished accordingly. In the third section I offer a new interpretation of the edict and its implications later in the play, based upon this presumption of guilt by association.§ 1 The speech of Oedipus to the Theban assembly (216–75), as found in the manuscripts, has three sections. There is first a preamble (216–22), lamenting the difficulty of the task. We are then presented with what I shall call "the edict" (223–51), including various measures to assure discovery and punishment of the guilty parties and concluding with [End Page 188] the curse that Oedipus takes upon himself (the passage that Lloyd–Jones bracketed, 246–51). The edict is followed... (shrink)

Doctor of theology, father-professor Ivan Muzychka. As for him, and many scholars, writers, artists, and clerics who liked him in exile, many of them, talented and faithful to Ukraine, have not long been "only" aware that they are in the overwhelming majority of them, like "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists ", is supposedly the worst enemies of his people. However, the first meetings and conversations with them completely disperse these versions of the communist era. There is an aversion to what was (...) written and those who wrote the desire to return our people to the spiritual treasures of these, I will say figuratively, of the cranes, the key of which has long been not returned to selflessly and passionately loved by them Ukraine. I, the author of the article, has already returned to Ukraine Orthodox Canadian Father of the Faith Stepan Yarmush, Greek Catholic theologian from the USA Volodymyr Oleksyuk, Greek Catholic historian of the Church of Australia, Ivan Shevtsev. The latter has even devoted even six hundred tens of monographs "Ivan Shevtsev - a biography of a Ukrainian-Christian." On the turn, the editors of selected works of the already fundamentalist historian Ivan Ortinsky from Germany. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“We all love with the same part of the body, don’t we?”Iuliia Voznesenskaia’s Zhenskii Dekameron, New Women’s Prose, and French Feminist TheoryYelena Furman (bio)Starting out as a poet who eventually turned to fiction, Iuliia Voznesenskaia was also one of the main figures of the Soviet feminist movement, a fact that makes her biography both unusual and courageous. In the 1970s, Voznesenskaia’s involvement with the dissident movement in Leningrad resulted (...) in several arrests, imprisonment, and time in the camps.1 Although she was not initially interested in women’s issues, her incarceration in all-women’s camps and prisons convinced her that “the situation of women in our country demands special attention” (“Zhenskoe dvizhenie v Rossii” [“The Women’s Movement in Russia”] 41). Along with several other women dissidents, she founded the Soviet feminist movement, putting out the samizdat women’s journal Zhenshchina i Rossiia (Woman and Russia), which precipitated immediate reprisals from the KGB. A women’s club, Mariia, and a journal by the same name followed, as did more KGB reprisals. For her feminist activity, Voznesenskaia was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1980, settling in West Germany.2In 1985, in West Germany, Voznesenskaia wrote her first and best-known novel, Zhenskii Dekameron (The Women’s Decameron). The novel is set in a Leningrad maternity ward containing ten new mothers from different backgrounds with different life experiences: Larisa, Emma, Natasha, Nelia, Galina, and Valentina are educated and all have careers except Galina, whose occupation, admittedly strange for a feminist novel, seems to be a dissident’s wife; Ol’ga works in a shipyard; Irishka is a secretary; Al’bina is an Aeroflot flight attendant doubling as an escort on the KGB’s payroll; Zina is homeless and has served time in the camps; Valentina is a Party worker, whereas Galina is part of the dissident community. Quarantined together for ten days because of a spreading infection and inspired by Emma’s reading of Boccaccio’s Decameron, the women begin to tell each other stories to pass the time. As its title makes clear, Voznesenskaia’s novel is heavily indebted to Boccaccio’s, borrowing its structure and many of its themes, such as an emphasis on storytelling and sexual explicitness. The humor and poignancy of the women’s stories make it a highly enjoyable read, and the focus on female sexuality and the author’s play with the narrative set this novel apart from other Soviet writers’ works.3 The novel also features what is surely a unique occurrence in Russian and Soviet literature: an openly feminist character (Larisa), referred to by the authornarrator as “zhenshchinoi vpolne emansipirovannoi, mogushchei ukrasit’ soboi liuboe zapadnoe feministicheskoe obshchestvo” [“a completely emancipated woman, capable [End Page 95] of adorning any Western feminist group”] (13), who is moreover depicted in a wholly positive light.4Yet despite enjoying a modicum of success, including being translated into several languages and staged as a play, Zhenskii Dekameron remains an under-read and underrated work.5 The reasons for its relative obscurity are closely allied with Voznesenskaia’s political activities in the 1980s. Exiled abroad for being politically undesirable to Soviet authorities, she could not have her work published in the Soviet Union; rather, the novel came out in Russian in Israel in 1987 (Curtis 186n2).6 The lack of visibility from which she suffered in her native country changed only in the (post)glasnost’ period: in 1991, the novel was published in Russian in Tallinn, and in 1992, in Moscow.7 Despite being able to be published, however, Zhenskii Dekameron seems not to have made a strong impact on either readers or critics, and there does not appear to be any discussion of it in Soviet/ Russian literary journals.The novel likewise suffers from a lack of familiarity in the West. The interest Voznesenskaia generated among Western European and American feminists in the early 1980s was for her feminist activism in the Soviet Union, which preceded her novel writing. Zhenskii Dekameron seems to have made a modest impact on readers; scholars, too, discuss it only occasionally. The most comprehensive treatment of the work to date has been Jerzy Kolodziej... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual LifeBrian KarafinThe Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life. Edited by Phil Cousineau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 314 + xxiv pp.A certain air of dialectical paradox hovers around the figure of Huston Smith, a seeming conjunction of opposites that constitute "Huston Smith," apprehended not so much as a real individual but (...) as a cultural phenomenon in the life of our time. In books, television shows, interviews, and innumerable public talks and workshops, not to speak of five decades of classroom performativity, "Huston Smith" dances before us as a friendly master, a bearer of secret lore that seems freely offered in his open palms. He is an esoteric metaphysician who has played the role of public intellectual in matters religious from virtually the beginning of his career in the 1950s into the twenty-first century. As a champion of the perennial philosophy contained in the revealed traditions of the past, his writing addresses itself not to the scholars of that past but to the spiritual seekers and general publics of the postmodern new age. He is a guardian of orthodoxy, a defender of the hierarchical worldview of the great chain of being, who nevertheless, perhaps out of an excess of geniality, seems always on the verge of heterodox admissions. In these senses Huston Smith stands before us asa kind of hermetic trickster figure, a psychopomp attempting to lead the post-traditional multitudes back into touch with their spiritual roots hidden in the occulted shadows of the cultural unconscious—an unconscious constituted by the sunlit world of modern science as its repressed Other. There are riches in that underworld, hermetic Huston asserts beckoningly; follow me down into this dark Light.The interviews collected and edited by Phil Cousineau are, short of some future biographical study, the best place for the uninitiated to enter into the world of Huston Smith. Those who already know Smith's corpus might find this book slightly irksome in the repetitiveness, which is inevitable in any such gathering of interviews [End Page 186] conducted by a wide assortment of journalists who often have similar if not identical questions. The Way Things Are is nonetheless valuable in bringing forth the public voice of Huston Smith on his signature range of themes: the world's religions as repositories of "forgotten truth," the ideology of scientism as standing in need of philosophical critique in order to recover that truth, and the continuing cultural implications of the clashing worldviews of religion and science, tradition and modernity.Huston Smith's biographical trajectory as discussed in many of these interviews, while known in its general outlines by many (especially since the Bill Moyers series of televised interviews), bears meditating on as a way of elaborating this sense of dialectical paradox in what is often, overly simply, seen as the sunlit and straightforward figure of Smith as contemporary religious philosopher. Born in China of Methodist missionary parents, religion dawned for Smith in the form of a benevolently evangelical Protestantism surrounded by a religious and cultural other: the world of "the East." Returning to the United States for college and with plans for a career in ministry and mission work, Smith fell in love with the discipline of philosophy, which he pursued in graduate school under the tutelage of Henry Nelson Wieman. The naturalistic theism of Wieman was soon displaced, however, by Smith's encounter with the writings of Gerald Heard, who gave expression to the mystical worldview that has been the foundation of Smith's philosophy ever since. A sense of the reality of monistic, neo-Vedantist mystical experience, as formulated by Heard's writings of the 1940s and 1950s, led Smith to an encounter with Heard's fellow exiled English mystical Vedantist and perennial philosopher Aldous Huxley. The combined influences of Heard and Huxley, inclusive of their interest in psychedelic experimentalism, shaped the spiritual perspective of the next decade of Smith's life in St. Louis, studying with a swami of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda order, beginning his academic career, and launching into his role as popularizer of comparative religion through a television series... (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach was a formidable figure in early-twentieth-century philosophy of science. Educated in Germany, he was influential in establishing the so-called Berlin Circle, a companion group to the Vienna Circle founded by his colleague Rudolph Carnap. The movement they founded—usually known as "logical positivism," although it is more precisely known as "scientific philosophy" or "logical empiricism"—was a form of epistemology that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths. Reichenbach, like other young philosophers of the exact sciences of his generation, was deeply impressed (...) by the far-reaching changes in physics brought about by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Reichenbach responded to scientific advances by doing fundamental work in space-time theories, in quantum mechanics, in statistical mechanics, and in the development of probability theory—making him the most important philosopher of physics in the first generation of logical empiricism. Forced from his academic position by the Nazi race laws in 1933, Reichenbach wrote _Experience and Prediction_ at the University of Istanbul, where had had fled, expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. In the two decades following World War II, during the explosion of scientific advances in North America, logical positivism was the reigning theory of the philosophy of science and Reichenbach was at the peak of his career. But, inevitably, support for logical positivism began to wane as it became obvious that the justification of scientific theories could not be entirely resolved by relying on strictly formal, technical processes. The growth of the discipline of the history of philosophy of science, which has created an audience of scholars eager for seminal classics in scientific philosophy, and the evidence supporting a historicist paradigm within logical positivism are two important reasons to make _Experience and Prediction_ available once again. "Hans Reichenbach's_ Experience and Prediction_ is one of the most important books in twentieth-century philosophy of science. Its author was, along with Rudolf Carnap, one of the two principal ambassadors to North America of the exciting new European philosophical movement known here under the names 'Logical Positivism' and 'Scientific Philosophy.' In 1938, when the book was published, Reichenbach was an exile from his native Germany, teaching in Istanbul, Turkey, and about to emigrate to the United States to take up a prestigious position at UCLA. He wrote_ Experience and Prediction_ in English as his calling card to his new American colleagues. More than any other single book,_ Experience and Prediction_ set the agenda for the new discipline of the philosophy of science that was to emerge after World War II as, perhaps, the most exciting new area in North American philosophy. Many of the problems still at the focus of discussion were given their classic formulations in this book. Long out of print,_ Experience and Prediction_ appears here in a new edition accompanied by a splendid historical introduction by the noted young philosopher and historian of the philosophy of science, Alan Richardson. A jewel of a book may once again be appreciated in its proper setting." —Don A. Howard, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)