This article turns to the neglected pedagogical concept of ingenium in order to address some shortcomings of the admiration–emulation model of Linda Zabzebski’s influential exemplarist moral theory. I will start by introducing the problem of the admiration-emulation model by way of a fictional example. I will then briefly outline the concept of ingenium such as it appears in a Renaissance context, looking particularly at the pedagogical writings of Juan Luis Vives. This will set the stage for the next (...) part, looking at how early modern philosopher Benedict Spinoza adopts a Vivesian notion of ingenium, adjusting it so as to fit into the setting of his political theory. Next, I will turn to Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium in relation to his portrayal of exemplary persons, offering a pedagogical model of moral exemplarism that can counter some of the perceived problems of the admiration–emulation model as it highlights the necessary fallibility of efficient exemplars as well as acknowledges the socio-political dimension of emotions. Finally, I will lay out some preliminary consequences for educational theory, hoping to offer a way of reconciling moral exemplarism with a more realistic pedagogical and psychological framework. (shrink)

The main point for criticizing the Cartesians for Vico is the notion of method, interpreted as exceptionally discursive procedure, devoid of spontaneity and creative force which are necessary for discovering new truths. These qualities are embodied for Vico in the Latin term ingenium, loan translation of which is found in Italian (ingegno) and is absent in French. The criticism of Cartesianisn suggested by Vico does not consider the fundamental bilingualism of this philosophy and wide use of the term (...) class='Hi'>ingenium in the corps of Descartes’ Latin works. The analysis of the latter proves that the early Descartes’ notion intuitus mentis, as well as the concept of natural light of mind are, in the end, based exactly on ingenium, but not on the discursive methodical procedures. Human soul, following Descartes, reveals its content in several hypostastes and each method of revelation corresponds to specific terminology. Soul as mens is not the same as soul as ingenium. But even the early Descartes’ study of soul is marked by peculiar nominalism, proclamation of the real existence of individual soul as a separate entity. Therefore later, stating his ego cogito, Descartes states exactly the individual substance, not thinking in general. The terminological couple ingenium/mens is not translatable already in the French texts of Descartes himself (both merge in the French esprit), however their Ukrainian translations do not consider neither this untranslatability nor obvious references of Descartes’ esprit to other Latin compliances which differ each time. The article also analyses frequency in usage of the terms ingenium and mens in early and late Descartes’ Latin works; it has been proved that the augmentation of the meaning of metaphysical problems gradually turned mens into the main subject of Descartes’ research and deactualised the problem of ingenium. (shrink)

This chapter proposes to take the first few steps toward understanding the problematics of imagination in Descartes. It aims to show that in writings preceding the Regulae, Descartes conceived imagination as the chief faculty in the work of cognition, indeed the chief faculty for unifying knowledge. In this light the Regulae appears not simply as an early formulation of the principles of method, but as the tension-filled outcome of an attempt to think through the heuristic and cognitive competencies of imagination (...) on the basis of a human psychology strongly correlated with human physiology. Although the inadequacies of this attempt ultimately led to the cognitive demotion of imagination, there are nevertheless reasons for thinking that the early framework, shaped by the primacy of imagination, was not so much rejected as transformed in Descartes' mature work. The chapter further explains that imagination is the foundation of physics and mathematics and that it is both corporeal and spiritual. In addition imagination also serves as agent of all intelligent perception and the chief faculty for rising to higher level of spiritual truths. It further explains phantasia, a crucial organ of the brain where images occur, either derived from the senses, memory or from the intellect. (shrink)

A historically-informed account of the lasting importance of embodied thought in the intellectual trajectory of René Descartes, still remembered today as the founding father of dualism.

The interview transcribed in this article was conducted with Thierry Ardouin, a great witness and actor in the history of training engineering in France. Through the evocation of his journey and his reflections, the aim here is to give an account of a singular journey, but also of the timely grasping of ingenium as a dynamic of analysis and action in the field of education and training science. “With our feet on the ground and our head in the stars” (...) is the approach he proposes to us, in order to link this history to the current and future perspectives of a reflection that is still under construction on training engineering, driven by an ethical vigilance with regard to world movements. (shrink)

Mit seiner Scienza Nuova hat Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) nicht nur einen umfassenden Entwurf einer Kulturphilosophie vorgelegt, sondern zugleich ein Exempel spätbarocker Bildphilosophie. Den Zugang zu diesem Hauptwerk Vicos stellt ein Bild dar, die sogenannte,Dipintura', welches gemäß der Intention des Autors die,,Idee des Werkes" verkörpern soll. Die Studie zu,,Vicos Denkbild" geht anhand einer detaillierten Betrachtung der Originaldrucke der spekulativen Bedeutung dieser Buchillustration nach, in deren Zentrum die Figur der Metaphysik steht. Mit Bezugnahme auf die in der Scienza Nuova entwickelte "poetische Logik" (...) erweist sich dabei die Lehre vom Ingenium als epistemologische Grundlage solchen Bilddenkens. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caught Between History and ImaginationVico's Ingenium for a Rhetorical Renovation of CitizenshipAlessandra Beasley Von BurgCitizenship is usually thought of as synonymous with nationality and the rights and duties associated with the people who live, work, and participate politically, socially, and economically within the borders of their nation-state. In this conception, the main criterion used to decide who is and who is not a citizen is nationality. As the (...) nature of nation-state governance evolves and the acceleration of citizen mobility hastens interdependence, pressures for new definitions and paradigms of citizenship build. As Joseph Weiler argues, this pressure produces cognitive dissonance because "the traditional, classical vocabulary of citizenship is the vocabulary of the State, the Nation and Peoplehood" (qtd. in La Torre 1998, 1).1 The classical association of citizenship with nationality blocks our ability to grasp new, nonstatist conceptions of citizenship, even as postnational political visions take shape in institutions like the European Union (EU).2 In 1992, EU citizenship was established in the Treaty of Maastricht, which granted some additional rights to citizens of the member states in the same way that single nation-states grant their inhabitants special status as nationals, rights that are not nullified when citizens leave their home country to live and work in other member states.3 [End Page 26]The relationship between nationality and citizenship in the EU context is complicated by the fact that although Maastricht guidelines set postnational membership criteria for EU citizens, they also limit the scope of EU citizenship. In trying to reach beyond the nation while anchoring its very essence to the nation, EU citizenship remains limited as it relies on the traditional language of national membership to found its postnational concept of equality and inclusion for noncitizens. The contradictory elements of EU citizenship are exemplified in its current definition, which includes all member states' citizens and excludes millions who are living in Europe as third-country nationals (TCNs), defined as "any person who is not a citizen of one of the member states" of the EU but permanently and legally resides in one.4 The current debate over the status of legal, long-term TCNs challenges the relationship between citizenship and nationality, as advocates from EU institutions, national governments, nongovernmental organizations and academia argue that TCNs should be granted EU citizenship rather than be naturalized in the member states and push for a new, postnational mode of citizenship based on residency. Advocates for the inclusion of TCNs as EU citizens have to work with the limited vocabulary of national citizenship yet articulate a case for a new kind of citizenship divorced from nationality. They suggest that the EU should be viewed as a deliberative community, in which all long-term residents like TCNs are given an equal opportunity to practice citizenship. The deliberative community rationale is based on an idea of citizenship as performance with residents enacting citizenship by living together and deliberating with each other about common interests and concerns.5This reordering of the concept of community arising out of political practice calls for a full philosophical and rhetorical reimagining of the meaning of citizenship. The act of reimagining citizenship creates a new practice of citizenship and grounds citizenship in a philosophical context as well as a practical one. There is no better philosophical and rhetorical tradition to turn to for this purpose than that of Giambattista Vico. Vico, and to a larger extent the entire tradition of Italian humanism, has been overlooked in modern Western philosophy. Yet Vico embodies a seamless marriage of philosophy and rhetoric. Vico's philosophically grounded rhetoric provides the means in an investigation of EU citizenship as an innovative rhetorical practice beyond nationality, for understanding how new practices become persuasive through imaginative language, until citizens separate citizenship from nationality and accept residence and deliberative practices as legitimate criteria for citizenship. Vico argues that "every study method [End Page 27] may be said to be made up of three things: instruments, complementary aids, and aim envisaged" and notes that "the instruments presuppose and include a systematic, orderly manner of proceeding" (1990, 6). This essay proceeds in this fashion to reveal how a new vocabulary of citizenship... (shrink)

Review of Garrod, R., & Marr, A. (Eds.). (2021). Descartes and the ingenium: the embodied soul in Cartesianism. Leiden: Brill.

Gennaro Chtjerchia, Dynamics of meaning: anaphora, presupposition, and the the of grammar. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.xv+ 270 pp, £59.95, £31.95 G. Pr...

Parmi les notes laissées par le jeune Descartes (1619-1621), on en trouve une qui attribue à l’imagination des poètes des pensées plus profondes et plus frappantes que celles qu’on trouve chez les philosophes. On s’interroge ici sur la portée à attribuer à cette note et sur ce que deviendra chez Descartes la « force de l’imagination ». Jusqu’en 1629, plusieurs textes évoqueront la même espèce de force, en relation avec les premiers âges de la culture. Si, dans la suite de (...) l’œuvre, l’idée d’une imagination productrice semble s’effacer, il y a lieu d’estimer que son pouvoir a été transféré à l’ingenium lui-même, dont le rôle dans la pensée en général devrait être reconsidéré. (shrink)

If the professionalization of the social professions is increasingly based on the model of professionalization engineering, what are the imaginaries underlying this movement? How can we understand that the profession of engineer, the one who, at least in the imagination, invents and designs machines with a magically predictable functioning, can be the model for designing training systems for the helping professions? This contribution proposes to explore these questions through two mythological figures often summoned when it comes to engineering and technology (...) : Prometheus and Hephaestus. These two figures will help us to move from the model of professionalization engineering to ingenium. (shrink)

Spinoza afirma na proposição 31 da Ética III que por natureza todos os sujeitos desejam que os demais vivam conforme seu ingenium. A partir dessa proposição o presente artigo procura refletir sobre os povos indígenas que vivem em contexto urbano na cidade de Blumenau/Santa Catarina. Para a análise, são utilizas as impressões de uma pesquisa ação--participante realizada com mulheres indígenas que migraram para a cidade há mais de cinco anos. No texto é observado que a legislação do Estatuto do (...) Índio é uma das formas que mantém a sobreposição do ingenium branco sobre o indígena. A partir da análise é afirmado que a sobreposição de um ingenium sobre o outro é uma forma de violência afetiva que reproduz a colonização na atualidade. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s political theory gives us a model for how he might have approached a treatise on moral education. Indeed, his account of the method and aims of politics resembles Renaissance humanist rhetorical approaches to pedagogy – particularly, the work of sixteenth century Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives – so strongly that it is hardly an exaggeration conclude that, for him, politics is education writ large. For Spinoza and for Vives, the governor-or-instructor must study the (...) prevailing character, or ingenium, of the subject and adopt means that promote the cognitive and emotional development of the subject, which can be accomplished only to the extent that subjects willingly participate in their own governance-or-instruction. Spinoza joins this rhetorical procedure to a Hobbesian scientific approach to studying ingenia, resulting in a political method that is part science, part art. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Douze études portant sur divers points cruciaux d'interprétation de la science et de la métaphysique cartésiennes et leibniziennes. « Copyright Electre » Pages de début Préface Sigles utilisés pour les références aux sources principales I - L' (...) class='Hi'>ingenium selon Descartes et le chiffre universel des Règles pour la direction de l'esprit II - La géométrisation du regard. Réflexions sur la Dioptrique de Descartes III - La « Fable du Monde » et la signification métaphysique de la science cartésienne IV - L'origine de la négation V - Leibniz et l'universel VI - De l'individuation à l'individualité universelle VII - Mécanisme et métaphysique : le rétablissement des formes substantielles (1679) VIII - De la puissance à l'action : la singularité stylistique de la dynamique IX - La notion de système dans la physique de Leibniz X - « Pour la beauté et pour l'harmonie » : le meilleur de la dynamique XI - Les axiomes de l'identité et la démonstration des formules arithmétiques : "2 + 2 = 4" XII - Leibniz et l'exigence de démonstration des axiomes : "La partie est plus petite que le Tout" XIII - Ernst Cassirer et les commencements de la science classiqueIndications bibliographiques Index nominum Pages de fin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Manhandling of Maecenas:Senecan Abstractions of MasculinityMargaret GraverGaius Maecenas was many things: a magnet for wealth, a shrewd political player, a patron of exceptionally sophisticated taste, and to some, at least, a cherished friend. It is disconcerting, then, to see what a one–sided image of him appears in the philosopher Seneca. Although reasonably complete evidence was available, Seneca's account hardly gets beyond Maecenas' mannerisms of dress and deportment, "how (...) he walked, how prissy he was, how he sought the limelight, how he refused to conceal his faults."1 And even these traits are boiled down, in the last analysis, to a matter of prose style: "isn't his prose just as loose as his tunic was unbelted?"2The motive for this reductive treatment is well worth investigating. If Seneca passes too quickly over some aspects of Maecenas' character, it may be that his real object is not Maecenas himself but an abstract principle which Maecenas serves to illustrate. My aim here is to show that Seneca's literary thought does indeed become abstract in this way, and that the principle involved—essentially a point of hermeneutics—holds considerable interest both in literary studies and in moral philosophy. Speaking as a philosopher, Seneca uses Maecenas to explore from the negative side a conception of the ideal condition for the human psyche; speaking as both philosopher and critic, he comments as well on the means by which that condition is to be recognized from without. This ideal condition he calls by the name virtus, a word which retains its culturally determined associations with the male gender and norms of masculine behavior even while it invokes centuries of philosophical and especially Stoic thought on the ethical goal.3 The complexity of virtus can be traced also in his remarks on what he calls the "virile" style, and in other related metaphors extending well beyond those passages immediately concerned with Maecenas. The sometimes peculiar results can be seen as a by–product of the interaction between cultural mores of first–century Rome and serious philosophical thought on questions of character, action, and evaluation.The notion of a "virile" style does not, of course, originate with Seneca himself. Recent work by Gleason and Richlin in particular emphasizes the frequency with which terms borrowed from the realm of gender and sexuality are employed by rhetorical writers, as early as the Ad Herennium author and prominently in the works of Seneca the Elder.4 The younger Seneca differs from his predecessors, however, in that he consistently attaches gender language not to the deportment of speakers but to the style of written works.5 Terms which Cicero had applied primarily to the pitch and modulation of the voice or the grooming, stance, and gestures of the speaker (pronuntiatio), Seneca philosophus transfers confidently to discourse received exclusively by reading: passages from Maecenas' memoirs (Ep. 114.4–8) and Arruntius' histories (114.17–19), a book by his own interlocutor Lucilius (46.1–3), philosophical works of Epicurus and others (33.1–2), his own letters, and those of Lucilius (75.1, 115.1–2).This habit of imputing "virility" (or its absence) to writers, as opposed to speakers, requires Seneca to offer some further explanation of his thinking. For it is not at all clear that features of written style can be [End Page 608] reliably linked with personal characteristics of the author; in fact, there was at Rome a strong current of opinion which regarded this assumption as a particularly egregious fallacy.6 A theorist who insists upon it nonetheless must be either very misguided or very thoughtful. Seneca shows himself to be the latter sort of theorist in two ways: first, in specific passages of the 114th Epistle which attempt to justify the derogation of Maecenas through an unusually careful description of the role of the ingenium or literary talent; second, in a broad parallel between his stated views on propriety of style and his Stoic–derived position on probity of conduct. Given their manner of articulation, even his most derisive remarks on "effeminacy" commit Seneca to a positive notion of stylistic excellence which can be linked to a recognizably Chrysippan... (shrink)

Quei apice insigne Dialaminis gesistei | mors perfec tua ut essent omnia | brevia, honos, fama, virtusque | gloria atque ingenium. Quibus sei | in longa licuiset tibe utier vita, | facile facteis superases gloriam | maiorum. Qua relubens te in gremiu, | Scipio, recipit terra, Publi, | prognatum Publio, Corneli. ILLRP 311 For you who wore the distinctive cap of a Flamen Dialis, Death cut everything short — honour, fame and virtue, glory and intellectual ability. If you had (...) been granted a long life in which to use these advantages, you would have far surpassed the glory of your ancestors by your achievements. Therefore Earth gladly takes you in her arms, Scipio — Publius Cornelius, son of Publius. (shrink)

Considerando la definición viquiana de "ingenio", se analizan las relaciones entre necesidad, ingenio, lenguaje metafórico y poesía religiosa en la retórica ingeniosa española antes de Vico. Se replantea con ello la capacidad primordial del lenguaje metafórico y el valor propio del filosofar ingenioso frente al saber racional y deductivo, interpretando el ingenio en su justa apreciación humanista de función originaria en la constitución del mundo humano y la historia, del lenguaje y el saber retórico-filosófico.Considering Vico's definition of ingenium, the (...) relationship between necessity, ingenium, metaphor, and religious poetry is analyzed in the ingenious Spanish rhetoric of before Vico. The primordial capacity of metaphor is raised again, along with the real value of the ingenious philosophizing in the face of rational and deductive knowledge, interpreting ingenium through the humanist appreciation of original function in the make-up of the human world and history, of language and rhetorical-philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

Exactly four hundred years after the birth of René Descartes, the present volume now makes available, for the first time in a bilingual, philosophical edition prepared especially for English-speaking readers, his _Regulae ad directionem ingenii / Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence_, the Cartesian treatise on method. This unique edition contains an improved version of the original Latin text, a new English translation intended to be as literal as possible and as liberal as necessary, an interpretive essay contextualizing (...) the text historically, philologically, and philosophically, a com-prehensive index of Latin terms, a key glossary of English equivalents, and an extensive bibliography covering all aspects of Descartes' methodology. Stephen Gaukroger has shown, in his authoritative _Descartes: An Intellectual Biography_, that one cannot understand Descartes without understanding the early Descartes. But one also cannot understand the early Descartes without understanding the _Regulae / Rules._ Nor can one understand the _Regulae / Rules_ without understanding a philosophical edition thereof. Therein lies the justification for this project. The edition is intended, not only for students and teachers of philosophy as well as of related disciplines such as literary and cultural criticism, but also for anyone interested in seriously reflecting on the nature, expression, and exercise of human intelligence: What is it? How does it manifest itself? How does it function? How can one make the most of what one has of it? Is it equally distributed in all human beings? What is natural about it, and what, not? In the _Regulae / Rules_ Descartes tries to provide, from a distinctively early modern perspective, answers both to these and to many other questions about what he refers to as ingenium. (shrink)

Les passages du Traité théologico-politique qui décrivent la République des Hébreux ont un enjeu politique concernant la relation entre Église et État au xviie siècle ; ils révèlent aussi une conception précise de la nature humaine. Les institutions d’un peuple affrontent et utilisent des mécanismes anthropologiques généraux (obéissance et rébellion, désir de changement, soif de reconnaissance, transfert des affects) qui ne se présentent pas dans le même ordre que dans l’Éthique. Ils les gèrent dans des circonstances particulières, marquées par l’histoire (...) propre de chaque peuple et par les conséquences de cette histoire sur son ingenium. (shrink)

In his edition of this author Buecheler translates the words of Mim. III. 72 πρός σΣ Τñς κοΤΤίδος ψυχñς by ‘per capitale tuum ingenium,’ but affords no explanation as to how he arrived at this sense. May I suggest another interpretation to which Modern Greek seems to me to lead? The equivalent of κοΤΤίς is now πουλί or πουλάκπουλί μου or πουλάκι or simply πουλάκ‘my little birdie,’ i.e. ‘my darling,’ is the most frequent endearing term of the Greeks. See (...) Vlachos's Λεξικòν ‘Eλληογλλικòν ν πουλί 'πουλί μουmon chéri, mon amour, ma poulette.’ Therefore, πρóς σε Τñς κοΤΤíδος ψυχñς I fancy, means, ‘I implore thee by thy darling soul.’ The expression seems to have come down to us intact in sense, and only altered in so far as new words have been substituted for the obsolete ones. Of such a phenomenon I have given several curious examplesin my Notes tn the Gospels. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Spinoza stipulates an ideal moral person in the propositions on the ‘free man’ in Ethics IV, this account does not seem to be intended to function as a pedagogical tool of political relevance. Hence, it does not seem to correspond to the purpose of moral exemplarism. If we look for that kind of practical guidance, Spinoza’s political works seem more relevant. Interestingly, when we approach Spinoza’s political theory with moral exemplarism in mind, we find that instead of constructing his (...) exemplar on the idea of a supremely moral person, he emphasizes the concept of ingenium to chisel out an imperfect model of human behavior. We argue that the purpose of this is to avoid a utopian and inefficient political theory and to work out a moral practice that is capable of assisting people and communities in ethical self-transformation. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes and the Cartesians are likely in agreement that logic is an ars cogitandi whose aim is to perfect the ingenium by the exercise of its operations: ideating, judging, discoursing, and ordering. We can see that these elements are the underpinning of both the Regulae and the Discourse on Method, and thus, like Adrien Baillet and others in the seventeenth century, we can understand these two works as embodying Descartes’ “logic,” despite Descartes’ notorious anti-logic Renaissance rhetoric (...) in both writings. (shrink)

The interview transcribed in this article was conducted with Thierry Ardouin, a great witness and actor in the history of training engineering in France. Through the evocation of his journey and his reflections, the aim here is to give an account of a singular journey, but also of the timely grasping of ingenium as a dynamic of analysis and action in the field of education and training science. “With our feet on the ground and our head in the stars” (...) is the approach he proposes to us, in order to link this history to the current and future perspectives of a reflection that is still under construction on training engineering, driven by an ethical vigilance with regard to world movements. (shrink)

In lines 35–8 Ovid compliments the poem's recipient Brutus on his skill as a forensic orator. The transmitted text is as follows:hostibus eueniat quam sis uiolentus in armissentire et linguae tela subire tuae,quae tibi tam tenui cura limantur ut omnesistius ingenium corporis esse negent.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:L’esthétique de StaceA. M. KeithAnne-Marie Taisne. L’esthétique de Stace. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994. 433 pp. Paper, 280 FF. (Collection d’Etudes Anciennes 122)Anne-Marie Taisne is the author of numerous articles concerning the literary history and artistic context that inform single poems in Statius’ Silvae and self-contained passages in his Thebaid and unfinished Achilleid, papers which lay the groundwork for her comprehensive new study of the literary aesthetic on (...) display in the extant poetic oeuvre of P. Papinius Statius. In this ambitious monograph, she undertakes to explore two facets of Statius’ technical artistry, his spatial and temporal imagery, within the theoretical framework provided by ancient literary criticism. She is particularly concerned to articulate the poet’s dynamic reuse of the weighty literary tradition to which he is heir, and accordingly proposes, in her introduction, to structure her discussion around such central ancient critical issues as imitatio (mimesis) along with its close relatives aemulatio and contaminatio, and doctrina with its associated critical vocabulary of ingenium, ratio, and ars (6–10). Throughout the volume, she explicates these techniques in detailed analysis of Statian imagines, which she defines generally in the sense of “imagery” following S. Viarre (“L’image et le symbole dans la poésie d’Ovide: Recherches sur l’imaginaire,” REL 62 [1974] 263–80), and particularly by reference to individual usages of the term as they are discussed in the article on imago in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (11).Part 1, “Correspondances dans l’espace,” examines the spatial imagery of Thebaid, Achilleid, and Silvae in three chapters which treat (1) echo and reflection (17–52), (2) metamorphosis, multiplication, and contagion (53–119), and (3) simile (120–76). Part 2, “Correspondances dans le temps,” investigates the poems’ use of time as a structural principle, again in three chapters which discuss (1) prophecies and portents (177–236), (2) digressive elements such as ecphrases and embedded narratives (237–303), and (3) leitmotifs, or repeated patterns of imagery, such as divine and human interventions and the role of nature in the poems. The material Taisne analyzes in part 1 coheres more convincingly with her overarching theme of spatial imagery than that which she discusses in part 2 under the rubric of temporal imagery. I did not understand, for example, why nature, well discussed in connection with Statius’ use of the simile in part 1 (137–62), reappears in part 2 (331–58) with no explanation of its relevance to temporal imagery.Taisne persuasively documents the wide range of literary models on which Statius draws in all his poetry, and shows that the Thebaid makes particular use of epic and tragic models (166–68, 170, 373–75), the Achilleid of tragic and lyric models (168–71, 374–78). Her discussion of the literary echoes and wider symbolic relevance of individual passages is often very interesting, and the sheer accumulation of literary parallels is extremely impressive. I was reminded of and newly alerted to significant literary resonances on almost every page, and noticed only one incomplete assemblage of literary parallels (in her discussion of Hylas [End Page 159] in Silvae 1.2.199 [27–28], there is no mention of Theocr. Id. 13, Ap. Rhod. Arg. 1.1207–72, or Nicander apud Ant. Lib. Met. 26). The service to which this material is put, however, is not as exciting as the length of the study might lead one to hope. Throughout, Taisne argues that Statius’ deployment of imagery is consistent with the overarching thematic framework of each poem, defined as furor and horror in the Thebaid (23 and passim), an ambiguous and deceptive calm in the Achilleid (353–54 and passim), and serenity and harmony in the Silvae (28 and passim), but she does not press her analysis beyond the accumulation of imagery in the service of these themes as evidence of Statian amplificatio. This is particularly disappointing in an author so well placed to discuss the material culture of the Flavian epoch and the interrelations between Statius’ poetry (especially the Silvae) and the culture of display in Domitian’s Rome. Nevertheless, scholars will be grateful to Taisne for the material she has collected... (shrink)

This article discusses the impact of Descartes’s substance-dualism on his account of discursive reason. Taking the presentation of deduction in the Rules as a paradigmatic case of thought’s extension and movement in time, I analyze the relation between intuitive and discursive understanding and that between intellect and imagination. I focus specifically on the mediation of corporeal impressions and of intellectual ideas by ingenium. As intellectual, ingenium is a faculty of understanding; as joining with phantasia, ingenium has access (...) to corporeal affections, images, and memory. Deduction involves both of these aspects of ingenium, and Descartes’s dualism complicates efforts to clarify the operations and nature of ingenium. Thus the dynamics of dualistic psychology account for some of the limitations of deduction in particular and discursive rationality in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rhetorical Landscapes in America: Variations on a Theme from Kenneth BurkeLawrence W. RosenfieldRhetorical Landscapes in America: Variations on a Theme from Kenneth Burke. Gregory Clark. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. 181. $34.95, hardcover.Once again we are indebted to the University of South Carolina Press for a fine contribution from its Studies in Rhetoric/Communication series. Gregory Clark sets parallel aims: to apply Kenneth Burke's critical vocabulary (...) to cultural history, and to read American tourist sites and literature in the frame of Burke's notion of "identity" (147). Clark sees the American public landscape as "constituting in individual citizens a shared sense of common identity as members of a national public" (148). He claims that such shared experiences are as rhetorical as are more typical instances of public discourse. Thus American tourism has contributed to developing us into a national community.Clark supports his theme of rhetorical influence with six case studies: New York City, Shaker villages, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, the Lincoln Highway, and the 1915 San Francisco Panama Exposition. While Burke's vocabulary offers a handy point of departure, the real news is in [End Page 172] Clark's discussion of the meaning and prominence of each of his six exemplars as cultural icons.This may be most evident (and endearing) as Clark recalls his own boyhood visits to Yellowstone, where he stood in the parking lot and was as captivated by the variety of license plates from across the country as by the hot springs and mudpots (69). This too was a celebration of nationhood. Equally fascinating is his consideration of the efforts of Stephan Mather, Mary Colter, and the Fred Harvey Company both to preserve national parklands and to develop a befitting "National Park Service Rustic" architectural style to enhance the natural landscape (this long before Disney's theme parks). Such typical excerpts almost cry out for Ken Burns or the History Channel to recreate the optimistic climate of a Romantic Post-Bellum civic culture depicted by Clark.The book becomes more tedious when its repeated invocation of Burkian terms tilts toward veneration. In his lifetime, Burke was unnerved by uncritical academic worship. He sought understanding, not deification. As he remarked, "They are an evangelical brood, bejeez. So... I [became] an observer at my own funeral."1 His wariness of academic enthusiasm is well taken. It does no disservice to Burke, for example, to recognize that his "identification" is a reworking of Vico's "ingenium" outfitted in creaky 1920s literary machinery.2 Shorn of some of the cumbersome Burkian baggage, the book's exemplars emerge as epideictic celebrations of the American tourist phenomenon and its part in shaping a national Romantic consciousness:And as rhetoric they traffic not in actions but in attitudes. People can encounter them without ever thinking of themselves as anything but spectators. Even in that role they are being educated... in matters of individual and collective identity.(148)Seen thus as reminders of our forebears' vision in pioneering the development of a national landscape trust, Clark's work edifies and opens us to the quiet excitement of meditative discovery. Clark guides us to monuments of cultural memory; his project is remarkably readable and a uniquely American enterprise.Lawrence W. RosenfieldUniversity of New HampshireNotes1. Letter to Malcolm Cowley, dated 11 August, 1955. Newberry Library Collection, Chicago.2. Cf. M. Mooney, Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985), 151. [End Page 173]Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.2 (2001) 179-200 [Access article in PDF] The Myth Of Numidian Origins In Sallust's African Excursus (Iugurtha 17.7-18.12) Robert Morstein-Marx The excursus on the ethnography and geography of North Africa in Sallust's Iugurtha (17-19) has lately attracted much attention. Until recently there seemed to be little to say but that it demarcated the structure of the narrative and relieved the reader with "Greek erudition and (...) fancies." 1 On one level, that is surely true enough, and consistent with the conventions of Roman historiography. 2 But a series of more probing studies of aspects of the digression by Carin Green, Renato Oniga, Thomas Scanlon, and Thomas Wiedemann has done much to lay bare the web of allusions and ethnographic typologies at work in the text and to demonstrate its thematic links with the larger narrative of the Iugurtha. 3 Yet while each of these studies has cast new light on the African excursus and demonstrated its considerable interest, no convincing reinterpretation of the digression's function in the monograph has emerged. 4 Another try, building on some of the best recent work, is warranted. I shall concentrate on the myth of Numidian origins that forms the core of the African excursus (Iug. 17.7-18.12). Its importance is clearly signaled by its central position in the digression; by the appearance of a "second introduction" of its own containing an eye-catching [End Page 179] claim to be contributing a heterodox, native account on the basis of original research (17.7); by its narrative form, through which it stands out from the surrounding descriptive material; and indeed by its length, far greater than the other parts of the excursus. I begin with a reexamination of the underlying structure of ideas that drives the narrative of 18.1-12 and characterizes the Numidian people against a complex background of ethnographic thought. Ultimately I wish to show that this deceptively rich narrative defines the Numidian people as an African counterpart to the Romans, yet also their polar opposite--a natural enemy with nomadic traditions and a heritage that makes them brothers to the Parthians, who at Sallust's time of writing were posing an extraordinary threat to Rome's eastern provinces and allies. The myth sets the Jugurthine conflict within a wider cultural context: this will be a war not merely between the Roman people and a particularly energetic and cunning African prince, but between Roman civilization and the mobile, treacherous, seminomadic "Other" whose dangerous intractability and capacity to erode the bases of civilized order were to be proven not for the last time in 112-105 B.C. 5The narrative begins with the aboriginal Libyes and Gaetuli, both tribes "savage and uncivilized, whose food was raw flesh and fodder on the ground, as for cattle. They were not controlled by customs, law, or anyone's power: scattered wanderers, they stayed wherever night forced them" (18.1-2). The traditional (and conventional) polarity between primitive savagery and civilization is thus implicitly invoked. 6 As far back as Odysseus' account of the Cyclopes (Od. 9.106-15), uncivilization was defined above all by the absence of agriculture and the constraint of law. 7 We may note, too, that native Africans are described by Sallust as eating like animals (uti pecoribus); they are thus explicitly living in a bestial condition. In our author's historiographical thought, certain other associations emerge from such a categorization. We may recall that in the [End Page 180] prologue of the Catilina we are told that the properly human state differs from the animal according to the degree to which men strive "not to pass their lives unnoticed, like cattle [veluti pecora] which nature has made to face the earth and obey their stomach" (Cat. 1.1). In Sallust's moral matrix, primitives such as the Gaetuli and Libyes are aligned on the side of corporis servitium rather than animi imperium, dependent on vires rather than ingenium; "warlike" they may be, but... (shrink)

Con el dossier monográfico que aquí presentamos la revista _Ingenium_ pretende ofrecer distintas perspectivas sobre ese complejísimo fenómeno histórico-cultural que llamamos Barroco. Pero hemos de matizar, antes de presentar cada una de las contribuciones aquí reunidas, que el objetivo del dossier es en cierto sentido doble: si bien por un lado, como decimos, a nivel explícito las aproximaciones al Barroco que encontrará el lector están determinadas por presupuestos y marcos teóricos diversos (aunque se den evidentes intersecciones entre algunos de ellos), (...) y, por lo tanto, puede decirse que uno de los objetivos del dossier es el de proporcionar una mirada plural _al_ Barroco; por otro lado, sin embargo, un objetivo adicional sería el de llamarnos la atención sobre la esencia radicalmente plural _del_ Barroco mismo. (shrink)

In a recent article I observed that Livy sees a dialectic at work in Roman history over the course of the reigns of the first four kings. The first king, Romulus, is associated with physical strength and is devoted to war. His successor Numa is devoted to peace and to the advance of religion, law and the civilizing virtues. The Romulean thesis, having been answered by the Numan antithesis, reasserts itself in the reign of the third king, Tullus Hostilius. This (...) time, devotion to war is even more intense: Tullus is ferocior than Romulus. Excessive devotion to war, however, entailed the neglect of other things: towards the end of his reign, during a plague to which he himself eventually fell victim, Tullus turned to religion, hoping that the gods would end the pestilence if he could balance his Romulean devotion to war with a Numan concern for sacra. But his efforts were too late and inept. It was not until the reign of the fourth king, Ancus Marcius, that a synthesis was achieved. Ancus had a medium ingenium that fused the Romulean and Numan tendencies. The adoption of the ius fetiale by the Livian Ancus symbolizes this synthesis: the ius fetiale was a martial ritual, but it also acknowledged the Numan claims of religion and right. (shrink)

This article researches the historical and systematic background of Kant’s reflecting power of judgment theory based on a historical study of the concept of wit [ingenium, Witz]. Although the Notes from Lessons on Anthropology even expound the meaning of this concept in the context of Baumgarten’s empirical psychology, this material helps us interpret the concept of wit as one of the most important precedents of the reflecting power of judgment theory presented in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. (...) The exposition of wit furthermore highlights the systematic and historic connection between the third Critique and the theory of the hypothetical use of reason found in the Appendix of the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

Spinoza’s concepts of wonder, the imitation of affects, cheerfulness, and devotion provide the basis for a Spinozist aesthetics. Those concepts from his Ethics, when combined with his account of rituals and festivals in the Theological-Political Treatise and his Political Treatise, reveal an aesthetics of social affects. The repetition of ritualised participatory aesthetic practices over time generates a unique ingenium or way of life for a social group, a singular style which distinguishes them from the general political body. Ritual and (...) the imitation of affects explain why specific styles of art are associated with consistent styles of bodily modifications, clothing, and affects. This paper claims, not that already similar people flock to the same art, but rather, that immersion in the same art is what produces their similarity. Art (especially in the immersive, festival-like experience of live performance) can generate the affect of devotion, which intensifies in-group love, temporarily blocks affects of sadness, and focusses one intently on the aesthetic experience due to devotion’s connection to wonder. Cheerfulness shows that, through variation of aesthetic objects, art can cause pleasure without risking excess. In addition, while politics’ central affect is sad fear, aesthetically-united groups are bound by joyful affects. (shrink)

In the eyes of his own contemporaries and successors, as well as many today, Giordano Bruno is something of an ‘outsider’ because of his views in metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, and theology. Concentrating on his central theses, I will show how, with an immense speculative energy, Bruno escaped the ordinary philosophical, scientific, and theological traditions. He conceived of himself, as it were, as a mirror reflecting an unending universe without a center, and through the power of language and ingenium transfers (...) the structure of this universe to the human mind. Bruno’s philosophy, which he himself referred to as ‘new’ or as a «philosophia nolana», required a semantic transformation of traditional terms, because he, no more than any other thinker, could start completely afresh. Although his views initially appear to place him outside of traditional discussions, they in fact touch, in each case, on central problems of traditional philosophical and theological discourse. (shrink)