While the role, architecture, and use of the port of Candia on Crete have been extensively studied, little is known about the island’s other ports and bays. This article considers key questions to evaluate the role of Fraschia Bay in Venetian Crete’s port system and, by extension, in Venetian shipping activities in the late fifteenth century and mainly during the sixteenth. What kind of shipping activities were carried out in Fraschia Bay - commercial (legitimate and illegitimate) or/and military? What types (...) of ships docked there? And under what circumstances was the bay used, especially compared to the port of Candia? The analysis, based on unpublished archival documents of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, aims to determine whether the activities carried out in the bay of Fraschia were part of the integrated port system of Candia, or whether Fraschia Bay served only as an occasional substitute. The analysis concludes that Fraschia served a complex purpose in Candia’s port system and as a substitute port at times when Candia was unsuitable, due to weather conditions or construction operations. Moreover, Fraschia Bay’s role went well beyond official mercantile shipping, since it also supported military activities and the movement of contraband. (shrink)

Apart from his teachings, wonders and scientific discoveries, Pythagoras was also known for his wide-ranging journeys. Ancient authors alleged that he visited many countries and nations from Egypt to India, stayed with the Phoenicians and the Ethiopians and talked to the Persian Magi and Gallic Druids. However, he never went to the North. If, nevertheless, he was eventually associated with the northern inhabitants, it is only because they themselves came into close contact with him. The first of them was Zalmoxis, (...) a deity of a Thracian tribe, the Getae, who guaranteed them immortality after death. Having described a blood ritual that the Getae practised to become immortal, Herodotus relates a story he heard from the Hellespontine and Pontic Greeks. It goes that Zalmoxis was not adaimōnbut a former slave of Pythagoras on Samos and, having adopted the doctrine of immortality from him, he returned to Thrace and converted his tribesmen to it with a cunning trick. He invited the most prominent of them to a men's hall for entertainment and told them that neither he nor they or their descendants would die, but would live eternally. Then, having constructed a secret underground chamber, he suddenly disappeared from the eyes of the Getae and hid in his shelter for three full years, being lamented as dead. Then he showed himself again to the Getae, thus persuading them of the truth of his promises. (shrink)

Philo’s work On the Life of Moses contains the story of the origin of the Septuagint (section 2.8–65). The scholars have examined this passage from two different perspectives: explaining the connection between Mosaic Law and the law of nature (2.12–14 and 2:45–53) or examining the very process of translation (2.25–44). Even though dealing with the different aspects of the story, both groups of scholars have come to the same conclusion: Philo claims that the Torah has universal significance. The starting point (...) of this paper is that the two approaches, when taken separately, are insufficient. They both raise two essential questions. First, considering that Philo was using the LXX and not the Hebrew Bible, could it be possible that his claim that the Torah is “an excellent copy” of the law of nature also refers to LXX? Second, even though the Torah is finally translated into Greek – the lingua franca of its day – why would its laws be relevant for the people outside the Jewish communities? In this paper, the analysis of Philo’s story on the LXX origin is compared with the LXX origin account in the Letter of Aristeas. The comparison will demonstrate that the changes Philo introduces into the story are indicative of his two major concerns: the universality of Mosaic law and divine intervention in the process of translation. The contribution of this paper is the acknowledgment that the two mentioned aspects – the universality of the Mosaic law and the divine intervention in the translation process are dependent on each other. The latter made the LXX not merely a translation but the same Torah that was once already given to Moses. Consequently, if the Hebrew Torah and the LXX are equal in every regard, that would mean that the LXX also perfectly reflects the natural law, which makes it relevant for all people. (shrink)

The Letter of Aristeas, a text written in Greek by a Jewish author of the Alexandrian diaspora, probably in the second century b.c., traces the circumstances under which a Greek translation of the sacred book of the Jews, the Pentateuch, was commissioned by King Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The letter situates this undertaking in the broader context of the foundation of the Library of Alexandria on the advice of Demetrius of Phalerum, who instigated the plan to gather together all the world's (...) books, both those in the possession of the Greeks and those “of other peoples.”. (shrink)

The Hebrew Bible does not present the pleasure as a problem. Nevertheless, the relationship with Greek philosophical tradition made it possible to Jewish interpreters to relate their Sacred Book to the question of the pleasure. In Philo of Alexandria the Torah is directly involved in a radical opposition to hedonism. In this article, I observe the way this opposition takes place in Philo’s writing, and I suggest that it is an opposition of discourses motivated not only by the resistance to (...) the pleasure itself or by the commitment to philosophical tradition, but also by the necessity of preservation of the pertinence of the Book itself. Before approaching the Alexandrian’s works, I refer briefly to what is found on the pleasure in the Hebrew / Greek Bible, in the Letter to Aristeas and in 4 Maccabees. These readings will proportionate the observation of a process of change in Jewish writers’ relationship to the theme of pleasure. Moreover, it will make evident the specificity and complexity present in Philo’s treatment of this subject. (shrink)

in a recent article entitled “Hume on the Passions,” Stephen Buckle opens with the claim that Hume’s theory of the passions has largely been neglected. “Apart from a couple of famous sections in the Treatise concerning the sources of action,” he writes, “the subject matter has rarely excited interest.”1 His analysis of why the subject of the passions in Hume has been uninspiring points to the fact that readers have largely misunderstood the point of Hume’s theory. They usually regard the (...) account as yet another mechanistic analysis of the passions in the vein of seventeenth-century science, alongside the offerings of Malebranche, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Buckle is right to point out that there is a.. (shrink)

The period from Kant to Hegel is one of the most intense and rigorous in modern philosophy. The central problem at the heart of it was the development of a new standard of theoretical reflection and of the principle of rationality itself. The essays in this volume, published in 2000, consider both the development of Kant's system of transcendental idealism in the three Critiques, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and the Opus Postumum, as well as the reception and transformation (...) of that idealism in the work of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. (shrink)

Health professionals do not always have the luxury of making “right” choices. This article introduces the “devil's choice” as a metaphor to describe medical choices that arise in circumstances where all the available options are both unwanted and perverse. Using the devil's choice, the paper criticizes the principle of double effect and provides a re-interpretation of the conventional legal and ethical account of symptom relief in palliative care.

A breathtaking detective story, this book charts the adventure of Whitehead's ideas in a remarkably detailed and careful reconstruction of his metaphysical views.

This book examines Augustine's description of the actually existing world, especially that aspect most important for the human pursuit of happiness: the human being and God. It begins with an overview of the characteristics of the human individual and the context in which they must live out their lives, a context dominated by two seemingly contradictory realities: the existence of God and the existence of evil.

Aktualnejshaya problema segodnyashnego dnya - vyhod iz sistemy globalnyh krizisov, s kotorymi stolknulos naselenie Zemli, i perehod k "obschestvu razumnogo potrebleniya," obschestvu znaniya. Ogromnuyu rol v etom protsesse igraet obrazovanie - sotsialnyj institut, odnoj iz zadach kotorogo yavlyaetsya sohranenie i translyatsiya znaniya v sotsialnyh sistemah. A chto takoe informatsiya? Iznachalno ee teoriya voznikla dlya nuzhd tehniki. Iz-za etogo mnogie ee aspekty ostalis ne razvitymi, potomu chto oni prosto ne byli vazhnymi dlya tehnicheskih sistem. Primenenie teorii informatsii k biologicheskim sistemam uzhe (...) zastavilo zanyatsya voprosom vozniknoveniya novoj informatsii. A rabota s sotsialnymi sistemami vydvinula takie ponyatiya, kak tsennost, effektivnost, slozhnost informatsii i t. d. Bolee polnyj podhod k teorii informatsii, v svoyu ochered, pozvolyaet najti resheniya ryada problem v teorii sotsialnyh sistem, v chastnosti v obrazovanii, i pokazat puti optimizatsii etih protsessov. (shrink)