This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

Why do Americans, and so often, American writers, profess moral sentiments and yet write so little in the traditionally "moralistic" genres of maxim and fable? What is the relation between "moral" concerns and literary theory? Can any sort of morality survive the supposed nihilism of deconstruction? Jefferson Humphries undertakes a discussion of questions like these through a comparative reading of the ways in which moral issues surface in French and American literature. Humphries takes issue with the "amoral" (...) view of deconstruction espoused by many of its detractors, arguing that the debate between the theory's advocates and opponents comes down to two opposing literary and moral traditions. While the American tradition views morality as a rigid system capable of being enforced by injunctions along the lines of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not," the French tradition conceives of morality as a function of a relentless and unsentimental pursuit of truth, and finally, an admission that "truth" is not a static thing, but rather an ongoing process of rigorous thought. (shrink)

Eric Prieto is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, and numerous essays on music-and-literature, literary spatiality, Caribbean literature, and literary theory.

THE following treatise on Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism has been prepared to supply a need much felt in the English language by students of Greek philosophy. For while other schools of Greek philosophy have been exhaustively and critically discussed by English scholars, there are few sources of information available to the student who wishes to make himself familiar with the teachings of Pyrrhonism. The aim has been, accordingly, to give a concise presentation of Pyrrhonism in relation (...) to its historical development and the Scepticism of the Academy, with critical references to the French and German works existing on the subject. The time and manner of the connection of Sextus Empiricus with the Pyrrhonean School has also been discussed. As the First Book of the "Hypotyposes," or Pyrrhonic Sketches by Sextus Empiricus, contains the substance of the teachings of Pyrrhonism, it has been hoped that a translation of it into English might prove a useful contribution to the literature on Pyrrhonism, and this translation has been added to the critical part of the work. (shrink)

Jean Pierre-Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories. Originally published in French in two volumes, this new single-volume edition includes (...) revised essays from volume one and is the first English translation of both volumes.Pierre Vidal-Naquet is Director of Studies and Professor of Sociology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. Jean Pierre-Vernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the Collège de France. Janet Lloyd is a translator and writer living in England. Distributed for Zone Books. (shrink)

This article offers an innovative perspective on the literary landscapes of the 1960s in France, Ukraine, and the USA serving as exemplars of a global literary project that views literary works as heterotopias that, while being distinct, collectively constitute a cohesive whole. Using a comparative approach, complemented with distant reading techniques, the study examines how these literary realms are interconnected, revealing shared aesthetic foundations guided by an overarching law. This law, rooted in Theodor Adorno’s concept of negativity, becomes evident (...) in in countercultural movements and consequential shifts in literary form, content, and canon. While not the primary focus of analysis, other unifying elements in this global literary panorama include dissent as defined by Jaques Rancière, and a Sartrian-infused interpretation of existentialism. The article suggests that this global phenomenon may have emerged due to the confluence of two factors: the seismic global impact of events like WWII and the evolving postmodern trajectory of the era. (shrink)

A distinguished group of authors reflects on problems currently enlivening the space shared by philosophy and literary theory in a series of chapters that range in scope from Plato to postmodernism.

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

The article deals with a hitherto largely neglected group of poetic texts that is characterized by the representation of the vicissitudes and deeds of a single hero through a third-person omniscient authorial voice, henceforth called ‘aretalogical poetry’. I want to demonstrate that in terms of form, contents, intertextual ‘self-awareness’ and long-term influence, aretalogical poetry qualifies as a fully-fledged epic genre comparable to bucolic or didactic poetry. In order not to blur my argument, I will focus on heroic aretalogies, and on (...) Heracleids and Theseids in particular, because of their prominence in the minds of ancient literary critics. In the case of Heraclean aretalogies, it is expedient to distinguish further between aretalogies of ‘epic’ and ‘lyric epic’. (shrink)

Hobbes conception of reason as computation or reckoning is significantly different in Part I of De Corpore from what I take to be the later treatment in Leviathan. In the late actual computation with words starts with making an affirmation, framing a proposition. Reckoning then has to do with the consequences of propositions, or how they connect the facts, states of affairs or actions which they refer tor account. Starting from this it can be made clear how Hobbes understood the (...) crucial application of this conception to natural law, identified as 'right reason'. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 713-734 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]India and the Identity of Europe: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel 1Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi University of HeidelbergAbstractThis paper examines Friedrich Schlegel's conception of an Oriental Renaissance through the study of ancient India. In his book Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier Schlegel compared his project of Sanskrit studies to the Humanistic Renaissance, but in practice hoped (...) the study of India would reverse the modernizing effects of the original Renaissance. His study of India was aimed at a redefinition of European and German cultural and national identities rather than broadening the horizons of Europe to a global perspective."If only Indian studies could find such cultivators and patrons as in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries suddenly kindled in Italy and Germany an ardent appreciation of Greek studies, and in so short a time achieved so much that the reawakened knowledge of antiquity changed and rejuvenated wisdom and science, indeed one could even say the world itself. Not less grand and universal, I dare to assert, would be the effect of Indian studies even now, if it were seized with similar force and introduced into the circle of European learning." 2 [End Page 713]These enthusiastic words were used by Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) to recommend the study of Indian literature to the readers of his 1808 Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. 3 In this book, Schlegel offered the fruits of his studies of Sanskrit and Indian literature, which began in Paris in 1803. Here he introduced to the educated public of Continental Europe the theory about the affinity of Sanskrit to Greek, Latin and German, twenty-two years after this theory, which is now called "the Indo-European relationship," was presented by Sir William Jones to the members of the Asiatick Society in Calcutta. The presentation of this linguistic relationship, together with a call to study languages by a historical-comparative method, comprised the first part of the book. The second part dealt with Indian philosophy, which according to Schlegel, belonged to the tradition of all Oriental philosophy. The third part suggested how the study of Indian literature might benefit the study of history in general. Central to this view was the speculation that Indian civilization had emigrated to Europe, supported by the linguistic affinity between Sanskrit and European languages.The recommendation in the quotation above was well received. The publication of Schlegel's book excited the intellectual community of continental Europe, and, by 1809, large parts of the book had appeared in French translation. 4 The most important outcome of this excitement was the arrival of Franz Bopp and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich's elder brother, in Paris to study Sanskrit. The excitement stirred by Schlegel's book reflected the growing interest in India and the East among European intellectuals. This was a very complex process that was a product of Europe's growing colonial power in Asia but was also a part of the modernization of European thought. Interest in India swelled during the last third of the eighteenth century, as the British were becoming the dominant power in the subcontinent and began collecting, analyzing, and distributing information on Indian civilization, mainly through the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, which was established by William Jones in 1783 under the patronage of the Governor-General Warren Hastings. 5 [End Page 714]What interested European intellectuals most about the ancient cultures of India and other oriental countries, was what they could learn about the ancient religions of these countries. The region from Egypt to India was thought to be the "cradle of humanity," with various thinkers believing the "Urheimat" to be in another center of oriental civilization, be it Egypt, Mesopotamia or Persia. India became popular with the publication of John Holwell's Interesting Historical Events Relating to Bengal in 1765, 6 which was the main source for Voltaire's ideas on India. 7 Statements concerning the nature of Hinduism became important... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Theory?Oscar Martín (bio) and Simone Pinet (bio)Theory is, of course, a medieval word, brought from Greek into Latin from a common root (theastai) that also gives us theater, linked through shared meanings related to speculation, contemplation, and so forth. It is used in the Bible, and its English modern use, according to the Oxford english dictionary, probably comes from a medieval Latin translation of Aristotle. The dictionary (...) does not direct us to any specific translation, but prompts us to compare with Italian and, of course, French usage. In French, however, the word théorie was not used until quite late. In fact, it appeared for the first time in French in a 1584 translation of Antonio de Guevara, the famous Spanish court preacher and man of letters whose oeuvre was translated, imitated, and plagiarized in France, Italy, Germany, and England during the sixteenth century. In Spanish, the word theoria had begun its vernacular life a few years before in the writings of Fernando de Herrera.Theoria is already documented by Antonio de Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino of 1495, listed between “speculation” and “species” and designating the contemplative and the art of speculation, from theory to the perception of its quality. It is appropriate that Spanish would give theory to the West, sharing with it a point of view or, better, a series of perspectives or miradores, as María Rosa Menocal would call them, from which to look back into or beyond cultural and literary practices [“Visions of al-Andalus”]. For Medieval Iberia was, as this collection of essays purports to be, not a space or a history but a shifting and fluid gaze on the conflicting world surrounding the different literary and cultural works dealt with in this issue.Reluctant at best, and most of the time resentful of theoretical approaches to the study of literature and culture, medievalism found in Hispanism a surprising and most loyal ally. If in most Spanish departments critical theory pushed its way into the study of later periods, to the point that today even the mourning itself (or celebration) of the agony of theory is done from a theoretical standpoint, Hispanomedievalism remained suspicious longer, and sharpened its words on statistics and “scientific” claims to authority. Its close relationship to historical research, however, also made this philology vulnerable to the practices of interpretation. And it is as a will to interpretation that theory has managed to place itself within and outside the criticism of medieval Iberian literature and culture in insightful and renewing ways—including collective projects similar to the present one. Marina Brownlee’s contribution to this volume in this sense offers a most telling guiding thread of this continued approach to the discipline, which she helped revitalize through her participation in the project the new Medievalism. More recently, Josiah Blackmore and Gregory Hutcheson, also contributing to the present volume, sparked a lively debate, as showcased in a forum published by La corónica, with their project Queer iberia: sexualities, cultures, and crossing from the Middle ages to the renaissance. But a host of monographs and single-authored books in recent years have come to inhabit and enliven medieval studies as Hispanism has grown into the most important area of foreign language studies. [End Page 3]Theories find themselves in the articles for this special issue by way of a development from within. There is no application, no rigid use of conceptual frameworks to revisit texts, but an interior process of thought on and through the texts and cultural practices analyzed that produces theoretical insights. While a variety of methodologies and theoretical positionings can be identified, both explicitly and not, from speech-act theory to deconstruction, from Žižek to Badiou, postcolonialism to politics, these seem to emerge from within, as if the obvious result of the need to think questions posed from slightly different standpoints than they have been up until now. All of the articles reflect on very well-known texts and periods, pondering about a discipline, its methodologies, even the nature of its object of study. These articles do not dismiss previous work, but they do bring it under a new light.At a... (shrink)

Starting with the hypothesis that analogical reasoning consists of a search of semantic space, we used eye-tracking to study the time course of information integration in adults in various formats of analogies. The two main questions we asked were whether adults would follow the same search strategies for different types of analogical problems and levels of complexity and how they would adapt their search to the difficulty of the task. We compared these results to predictions from the literature. Machine (...) learning techniques, in particular support vector machines (SVMs), processed the data to find out which sets of transitions best predicted the output of a trial (error or correct) or the type of analogy (simple or complex). Results revealed common search patterns, but with local adaptations to the specifics of each type of problem, both in terms of looking-time durations and the number and types of saccades. In general, participants organized their search around source-domain relations that they generalized to the target domain. However, somewhat surprisingly, over the course of the entire trial, their search included, not only semantically related distractors, but also unrelated distractors, depending on the difficulty of the trial. An SVM analysis revealed which types of transitions are able to discriminate between analogy tasks. We discuss these results in light of existing models of analogical reasoning. (shrink)

Senshu University has hosted many international conferences on medieval English literature - primarily on Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland - as well as in the related fields of Old Germanic, medieval French and Renaissance Italian literature. These international collaborations inform and contribute to the present volume, which addresses the heritage bequeathed to medieval English language and literature by the classical world.<BR> This volume explores the development of medieval English literature in light of contact with Germanic (...) and Old Norse cultures, on the one hand, and Romance languages, on the other. The book includes a comparative study of <I>Beowulf in the Germanic context, discusses aspects of <I>Piers Plowman and its tradition, and offers philological approaches to Chaucer (especially his <I>Troilus and Criseyde). The articles assembled here collectively suggest how the torches of classical learning were carried from continental Europe to illuminate the pages of medieval English literature. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ways of storytelling and inventing fictions appeared in the French-speaking areas of Europe. This new art still influences our global culture of fiction. Virginie Greene explores the relationship between fiction and the development of neo-Aristotelian logic during this period through a close examination of seminal literary and philosophical texts by major medieval authors, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Abélard, and Chrétien de Troyes. This study of Old French logical fictions encourages a (...) broader theoretical reflection about fiction as a universal human trait and a defining element of the history of Western philosophy and literature. Additional close readings of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and modern analytic philosophy including the work of Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, demonstrate peculiar traits of Western rationalism and expose its ambivalent relationship to fiction. (shrink)

Disputes about the “uniqueness” of one’s era in comparison with the achievements of previous ones have always been a “cornerstone” in the perception of past concepts regarding the values of the achievements of predecessors. However, at one time, Confucius said his world-famous phrase that if you don’t look back, there is no way forward. But many people are not interested in their past. That is why the “Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” in the form of a literary debate, centered (...) on a comparison of the value of the contributions of ancient authors and French authors of the 17th century, and which was widespread at the time, is still relevant today. The purpose and objectives of the article. The purpose of the article is to highlight the perception of the values of previous eras in the paradigms of “non-contemporary” prominent philosophers and writers. The tasks of the article are to reveal the reasons for the primordial disputes about “ancient and new”, a natural return to ancient literature and ancient philosophy. Research methodology. The leading research methods were: content-comparative - to analyze the reliability of judgments of French writers of the 17th century; retrospective, which helps to investigate the phenomenon of the value of “the ancient in the new” in the century-old controversy, the method of personalization, which ensures the study and understanding of the works of S. Perrault and his contemporaries. The results. It’s no secret that the tasks of art in the Antiquity, Middle Ages and Modern times differed greatly. For Antiquity, every craftsman was an artist, while the activity of a painter and sculptor was a more complex craft. It is typical for that time that there was almost no idea about creativity and the creative act, but despite this, the ancient Greeks were able to create immortal examples of art. The art of the Middle Ages was supposed to embody a moralistic character and remind of the eternal, the art of romanticism saw godlike creativity as its goal. The art of the 20th century presented its ideal in the denial of everything that the previous era saw as its goal, periodically declaring the death of art. Based on the fact that today there are many different ideas about the goals and tasks of modern art, we cannot say with full confidence what is the common goal of the art of our days, and it is even more difficult for us to imagine how art will live, for example, through a hundred years. Conclusions. So, we can come to the conclusion that in the era of the early Enlightenment, the attitude to the ancient heritage, in particular in France and England, was not unambiguous even among the educated aristocracy or university professors who knew Greco-Roman works well enough. This is clearly evidenced by the century-old dispute “about ancient and new”, which caused a lot of auxiliary discussions. Undoubtedly, even today arguing and debating about the art of previous eras and our own has a place in philosophy and literature, and they continue to do this with success for more than one hundred years. But to prove the rightness of one of the sides of these disputes is a sufficiently dubious matter for science. (shrink)

"Kevin Hart and Geoffrey H. Hartman bring together essays by prominent scholars from a range of disciplines to focus on Blanchot's diverse concerns: literature, art, community, politics, ethics, spirituality, and the Holocaust."--Jacket.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000Carol S. GouldJapan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000. By Jan Walsh Hokenson. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004. Pp. 520. $80.00.Jan Walsh Hokenson's masterful work, Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000, traces the migration of the Japanese aesthetic into French art, through French literature, and ultimately (...) into Western modernism and postmodernism. Despite the title, this book goes beyond French poetics, for it deals with some philosophical views about knowledge and art, and it offers an extended argument for the value of comparative studies, including comparative philosophy. The author moves easily among the areas of literature, art, and philosophy, all of which she discusses with authority.Her story begins with the birth of 'japonisme,' the term coined by critic Philippe Burty in 1876 to refer to the passion-artistic and commercial-for things Japanese. She identifies three waves of japonisme in French literature: pre-World War I, between the wars, and post-World War II. She leads the reader through each of these waves, detailing the cultural and artistic milieu in each and closely analyzing key figures.For the origins of japonisme, Hokenson takes us to the studio of Parisian engraver, printmaker, and designer Felix Bracquemond in 1856, which was just after the end of Sakoku. Bracquemond, according to the "most persistent legend," [End Page 699] opened a box of Asian ceramics and discovered that they were wrapped in extraordinary materials-layers of Hokusai woodcut prints the likes of which he had never seen. He summoned members of his circle, which included Manet, Degas, and Whistler (pp. 13-15). It is thus through an intriguing historical contingency that this relatively inexpensive, mass-produced art form would become the inspiration for some of the most personal and expensive art works today. More relevant to Hokenson's interest, however, is the fact that these woodcuts would be a seminal force in the direction of French letters.Had Bracquemond not had the vision to see the artistry of these prints or had the shipper used a different packing material, would Western painting and literature have taken a different turn? Would the West have seen impressionism, symbolism, or art nouveau? Would Proust, Claudel, Mallarmé, and others have written different works? From Hokenson's account one gleans that the French avant-garde eye was ready to see Hokusai and others, for artists felt that the mimetic view of art had led them to an impasse. Visual and literary artists were ready to abandon the Renaissance ideals of verisimilitude, perspective, the integrity of space, and the linearity of time. They were ready to accept the fragmentation of picture space, perspectivism, and suggestiveness that were all characteristic of the Japanese aesthetic.She explains how Henri Bergson, with his theories of intuition and subjective time, provided a philosophical foundation for the artistic commitments of the early japonistes. She documents the access many of the japonistes had to Bergson. Bergson, like the japoniste poets and painters themselves, emerged from a French tradition of using subjectivity as a starting point. The reader sees this respect for the subjective interact with various Japanese influences over the course of the twentieth century. The receptiveness to the haiku exemplifies this phenomenon, as it begins from a fleeting, intuitive, personal experience. She points out that "by 2000, the haiku was almost a commonplace in French poetry" (p. 407).Although she says little about what Bergson may have absorbed from the japonistes, she does tell of the little-known influence exerted by the Japanese phenomenologist Kuki Shūzō in 1928 on Jean-Paul Sartre. Both Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir either forgot this relationship or forgot to mention it in their respective narratives about the development of existentialism. Indeed, this was not discovered, Hokenson reports, until the 1980s. She rightly points out that that this changes the usual story about French philosophy in the early twentieth century, for it means that Sartre became acquainted with German phenomenology before 1932 and from someone other than Raymond Aron (pp. 333-334, 343, 474 n. 10). In a fascinating discussion of Kuki's... (shrink)

While W.E.B. Du Bois’s first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), is set squarely in the USA, his second work of fiction, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), abandons this national framework, depicting the treatment of African Americans in the USA as embedded into an international system of economic exploitation based on racial categories. Ultimately, the political visions offered in the novels differ starkly, but both employ a Western literary canon – so-called ‘classics’ from Greek, German, English, (...) class='Hi'>French, and US American literature. With this, Du Bois attempts to create a new space for African Americans in the world (literature) of the 20th century. Weary of the traditions of this ‘world literature’, the novels complicate and begin to decenter the canon that they draw on. This reading traces what I interpret as subtle signs of frustration over the limits set by the literature that underlies Dark Princess, while its predecessor had been more optimistic in its appropriation of Eurocentric fiction for its propagandist aims. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to understand from a sociological perspective how the moral question of euthanasia, framed as the “right to die”, emerges and is dealt with in society. It takes France and Germany as case studies, two countries in which euthanasia is prohibited and which have similar legislation on the issue. I presuppose that, and explore how, each society has its own specificities in terms of practical, social and political norms that affect the ways in which they (...) deal with these issues. The paper thus seeks to understand how requests for the “right to die” emerge in each society, through both the debate (analysis of daily newspapers, medical and philosophical literature, legal texts) and the practices (ethnographic work in three French and two German hospitals) that elucidate the phenomenon. It does so, however, without attempting to solve the moral question of euthanasia. In spite of the differences observed between these two countries, the central issue at stake in their respective debates is the question of the individual’s autonomy to choose the conditions in which he or she wishes to die; these conditions depend, amongst others, on the doctor-patient relationship, the organisation of end-of-life care in hospital settings, and more generally, on the way autonomy is defined and handled in the public debate. (shrink)

Though not as widely studied as the Research Article, the abstract has attracted increasing interest among researchers over last decades. A number of contrastive or comparative studies of abstracts in English and other languages have already been carried out considering mainly the hard sciences and some soft sciences such as linguistics and history, however no cross-cultural analyses have been conducted so far between RA abstracts in English and RA abstracts in French published in the legal field. This paper (...) seeks to investigate genre variation and changes in frame sequences comparatively in English and French RA abstracts from criminology journals. Using a genre analytical approach to qualitative and quantitative data, the paper reports on two comparable corpora, i.e. English and French, of electronically retrieved abstracts from Criminology Journals published in 2014. The two corpora are composed of three journals per language, namely Criminology, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology for the English corpus, and Champ Pénal, Criminologie, Revue Canadienne de Droit Pénal et Criminologie for the French corpus. The analysis will be carried out following two main steps, i.e. a macro-analysis and a micro-analysis. In the former step, the corpora are compared by the analysis and discussion of the basic IMRD rhetorical move structure for the RA often proposed in the literature and the additional five moves model postulated by Dos Santos with the aim of investigating the linguistic and rhetorical variation in the abstract genre from a cross-cultural perspective. In the latter, we look at frame sequences combining forms of self-mentions and frame markers, i.e. personal patterns, impersonal patterns and locational patterns. Provisional results show that the abstracts under investigation largely follow the international conventions based on the norms established by the English-speaking international academic community. However, variation across the two cultures emerged from the linguistic realizations of framework sequences. Cross-cultural implications are discussed at the close. (shrink)

Between Deleuze and Derrida is the first book to explore and compare the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, two leading philosophers of French post-structuralism. This is done via a number of key themes, including the philosophy of difference, language, memory, time, event, and love, as well as relating these themes to their respective approaches to Philosophy, Literature, Politics and Mathematics. Contributors: Eric Alliez, Branka Arsic, Gregg Lambert, Leonard Lawlor, Alphonso Lingis, Tamsin Lorraine, Jeff Nealon, Paul Patton, (...) Arkady Plotnitsky, John Protevi, Daniel W. Smith. (shrink)

A study of the life and works of Denis Diderot in reference to English influences in the eighteenth century. Specifically examines Diderot's life and general relationship to England, his English friends, and his professions as a moralist, philosopher, scientist, encyclopedist, dramatist, novelist, and critic.

In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new (...) research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries, and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish. (shrink)

This paper discusses Adam Smith’s intellectual relationship with the French Enlightenment, with a particular focus on his view of French culture as conveyed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Compared to England at that time, eighteenth-century Scotland is considered as having a closer affiliation with France in terms of their intellectual and cultural life during what has been dubbed the Enlightenment. While David Hume was representative of the affinity between the French and Scottish literati, Smith also held (...) an enduring interest in the French philosophy, literature, and other aspects of its civilisation, long before the historic visit to Toulouse and Paris that would shape his political economy greatly. While this paper shall examine Smith’s Francophile and Europeanist tendency within his moral argument, it also emphasises that he was abundantly aware of the moral cultural tensions between these two branches of the European Enlightenment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs a contribution to comparative East-West poetics, this essay descries a common resource of Western and classical Chinese literatures in certain “apophatic” modes of thought and discourse that are oriented to what cannot be said, to what is manifest only in and through a certain evasion and defiance of all efforts to verbalize and conceptualize it. This argument is developed in critical counterpoint with the work of interpreting Chinese classical poetry and thought by the French philosopher and sinologist (...) François Jullien. Jullien acutely apprehends and elegantly expounds the deeply apophatic bent of Chinese poetics. However, he sets Chinese thought and poetry categorically apart from Western approaches, whereas my analysis brings them together under the aegis of their common inspiration from the experience of the limits of language vis-à-vis an unspeakable origin of thinking and its source in reality. (shrink)

In absence of effective pharmaceutical treatments, the individual's compliance with a series of behavioral recommendations provided by the public health authorities play a critical role in the control and prevention of SARS-CoV2 infection. However, we still do not know much about the rate and determinants of adoption of the recommended health behaviors. This paper examines the compliance with the main behavioral recommendations, and compares sociocultural, psychosocial, and social cognitive explanations for its variation in the French population. Based on the (...) current literature, these 3 categories of factors were identified as potential determinants of individual differences in the health preventive behaviors. The data used for these analyses are drawn from 2 cross-sectional studies conducted after the lockdown and before the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in France. The participants were drawn from a larger internet consumer panel where recruitment was stratified to generate a socio-demographically representative sample of the French adult population. Overall, the results show a very high rate of compliance with the behavioral recommendations among the participants. A hierarchical regression analysis was then performed to assess the potential explanatory power of these approaches in complying with these recommendations by successively entering sociocultural factors, psychosocial factors, social cognitive factors in the model. Only the inclusion of the cognitive variables substantially increased the explained variance of the self-reported adoption of preventive behaviors, providing better support for the social cognitive than the sociocultural and psychosocial explanations. (shrink)

“The object of this book,” writes William C. Dowling in his preface, “is to make the key concepts of Paul Ricoeur’s _Time and Narrative_ available to readers who might have felt bewildered by the twists and turns of its argument.” The sources of puzzlement are, he notes, many. For some, it is Ricoeur’s famously indirect style of presentation, in which the polarities of argument and exegesis seem so often and so suddenly to have reversed themselves. For others, it is the (...) extraordinary intellectual range of Ricoeur’s argument, drawing on traditions as distant from each other as Heideggerian existentialism, French structuralism, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Yet beneath the labyrinthian surface of Ricoeur’s _Temps et récit_, Dowling reveals a single extended argument that, though developed unsystematically, is meant to be understood in systematic terms. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative_ _presents that argument in clear and concise terms, in a way that will be enlightening both to readers new to Ricoeur and those who may have felt themselves adrift in the complexities of _Temps et récit,_ Ricoeur’s last major philosophical work. Dowling divides his discussion into six chapters, all closely involved with specific arguments in _Temps et récit_: on mimesis, time, narrativity, semantics of action, poetics of history, and poetics of fiction. Additionally, Dowling provides a preface that lays out the French intellectual context of Ricoeur's philosophical method. An appendix presents his English translation of a personal interview in which Ricoeur, having completed _Time and Narrative, _looks back over his long career as an internationally renowned philosopher. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _communicates to readers the intellectual excitement of following Ricoeur’s dismantling of established theories and arguments—Aristotle and Augustine and Husserl on time, Frye and Greimas on narrative structure, Arthur Danto and Louis O. Mink on the nature of historical explanation—while coming to see how, under the pressure of Ricoeur’s analysis, these ideas are reconstituted and revealed in a new set of relations to one another. "The scholarship in William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative____ __is impeccable; Dowling knows Ricoeur inside out. He highlights Ricoeur's most important arguments, presents them in a limpid, concise language, and links them to the relevant nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical developments. Dowling's book provides us with a lucid, intelligible version of Ricoeur's major work, one that will be of considerable significance to philosophers, historians, and literary theorists." —_Thomas Pavel, Gordon J. Laing Distinguished Service Professor of French Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago_ "William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _is a subtle and remarkably well-sustained piece of work. It provides a detailed introduction to a major work of philosophy and narrative theory—already a considerable achievement, given the difficulty of Ricoeur's text. However, Dowling also shows us, sometimes explicitly, sometimes simply through the way he conducts his argument, why we should bother with Ricoeur—what we have to gain from knowing him better than we do, however well we may think we know him." —_Michael Wood, Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University _. (shrink)

The undisputed master of stylistic criticism, Leo Spitzer combined phenomenal learning in historical and comparative linguistics with brilliant and original critical insight. He was born in Vienna in 1887. He studied Romance Philology at the Universities of Vienna and Paris and then taught at Vienna, Bonn, Marburg and Cologne. After escaping from Germany in 1933, he taught briefly at Istanbul and then at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He died in 1960. He was the author of over 800 (...) books, articles, reviews and notes on the language and literatures of France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Germany, England and America from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. This translation brings together for the first time in any language all of Spitzer's work on the literature of seventeenth-century France, including 'Racine's classical piano' and 'Saint-Simon's portrait of Louis XIV'. Each of the essays demonstrates in practical rather than theoretical terms the essential unity of literary and linguistic study. David Bellos's introduction sets Spitzer's method of textual and stylistic interpretation in its historical context and sketches out the career of this supremely knowledgeable reader for whom knowledge was less important than understanding. (shrink)

In the Western media, stories about China seem to fall into one of two categories: China’s astounding economic development or its human rights abuses. As human rights discourses follow increasingly hegemonic conventions, especially with regard to China, many of their key assumptions remain unexamined. This special issue—the second in a two-part series beginning with “Cosmologies of the Human”—critically investigates the relationship between China and the human as it plays out in law, politics, biopolitics, political economy, labor, medicine, and culture. The (...) contributors interrogate the evolving meanings of “China” and “the human,” both inside China and internationally. The issue tracks the ways in which global discourses treat China—still officially socialist—as similar to, different from, and alternative to Western capitalist modernities. Several essays probe the modern theoretical underpinnings of human rights abuses in China, including a crucial distinction between “the human” and “the people.” Others review the impact of Maoism on Marxist debates in China and in the West, as well as the specific influences of Mao’s writings on French politics and theory in the 1960s. A visual dossier compares eight contemporary Chinese artists, directors, and public image-makers in order to discuss the figure of the human from Tiananmen Square to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While many contributors discuss China and the West comparatively, the issue interrogates the universalizing claims of both Western and Chinese norms of the human by privileging the local, particular, and eccentric. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Michael Dutton, David L. Eng, Doug Howland, Petrus Liu, Camille Robcis, Teemu Ruskola, Shuang Shen, Shu-mei Shih, Wang Xiaoming David L. Eng is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of _The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy_ and _Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America_, both also published by Duke University Press. Teemu Ruskola is Professor of Law at Emory University and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Shuang Shen is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese at Pennsylvania State University. (shrink)

Background Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), which can screen for aneuploidies such as trisomy 21, is being implemented in several public healthcare systems across Europe. Comprehensive communication and information have been highlighted in the literature as important elements in supporting women’s reproductive decision-making and addressing relevant ethical concerns such as routinisation. Countries such as England and France are adopting broadly similar implementation models, offering NIPT for pregnancies with high aneuploidy probability. However, we do not have a deeper understanding of how (...) professionals’ counselling values and practices may differ between these contexts. Methods In this paper, we explore how professionals in England and France support patient decision-making in the provision of NIPT and critically compare professional practices and values. We draw on data from semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals. Results Both English and French professionals emphasised values relating to patient choice and consent. However, understandings and application of these values into the practice of NIPT provision differed. English interviewees placed a stronger emphasis on interpreting and describing the process of counselling patients and clinical care through a “principle” lens. Their focus was on non-directiveness, standardisation, and the healthcare professional as “decision-facilitator” for patients. French interviewees described their approach through a “procedural” lens. Their focus was on formal consent, information, and the healthcare professional as “information-giver”. Both English and French professionals indicated that insufficient resources were a key barrier in effectively translating their values into practice. Conclusion Our findings illustrate that supporting patient choice in the provision of NIPT may be held as an important value in common on a surface level, but can be understood and translated into practice in different ways. Our findings can guide further research and beneficially inform practice and policy around NIPT provision. (shrink)

The author has made a detailed study, more detailed, he rightly claims, than hitherto attempted, of the concept of mimesis in aesthetic thought and has devoted equal space to Greek and Sanskrit writers... Wilamowitz, the doyen of modern classical scholars, describes mimesis as a 'fatal word' 'rapped out' by Plato. But the present author has demonstrated with great cogency that the word was not 'rapped out' by Plato at all, and that the concept and the word are both as (...) old as Greek thought. He shows too, once again with considerable scholarship and perceptiveness, how Greek art was bound to be sensuous, unmystical and also 'formal' in the best sense of the term. In the four long chapters of the first part of his thesis the author gives at every step evidence of deep study and illuminating insight, and can claim originality both in approach and argument... The chapter on Aristotle contains one of the best discussions of mimesis I have read... the most striking portion of his thesis is his elucidation of poetic truth according to Aristotle. -/- -- Prof. S. C. Sengupta, Jadavpur University -/- The author provides a faithful rendering of both Greek and Indian ideas. The work is valuable for its expositions especially of the Indian theories of art. -/- -- V. K. Chari, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (JAAC), USA, Spring 1979 -/- ... A fairly exhaustive comparative study of the concept of mimesis in Greek and Indian aesthetics... wide ranging and at the same time well controlled acquaintance with this proliferating literature is revealed throughout... the co-relation of the Aristotelian linking-up of 'imitation' and 'completion' with Abhinavagupta's integration of imitation with completion is very suggestive and is a help towards the formulation of a universal aesthetic comprising body and soul, the immediate impact of Appearance and the slow revelation of Reality... (the author) has mastered the material and achieved a steady progression in argument so as to sustain the central thesis. -/- -- K. R. S. Iyengar, Professor of English and Vice-Chancellor, Andhra University -/- The book is a significant contribution towards understanding the essentials of Indian aesthetics apropos the Greek (and, through the Greek, the Western)... The author has surveyed the entire field in a masterly manner. His erudition and judgement are both commendable. -/- -- S. K. Ramachandra Rao, Deccan Herald (03.09.1978) -/- ...The author's views hold good even among modern critics including the ones known as 'the Chicago school' and experimental psychologists. -/- -- Indian and Foreign Review (August 1978) -/- The work is a valuable addition to the literature on aesthetics. -/- -- The Indian Express (12.03.1978) -/- The comparison is too smooth and sharply compartmentalized... The book is of great value to those who are interested in the comparative and historical evolution of a very important concept in aesthetics. -/- -- The Hindustan Times (31.12.1978) -/- The work is in two parts. The first part in four chapters examines the concept of imitation in Greek thought, and the second in three chapters explores the meaning of the term in Indian thought... the author offers a brilliant interpretation of Aristotle's theory in the fourth chapter (Pt. 1) which is the best one in the book... The work is a pioneering one and it repays a careful examination. It is probably the first of its kind and every student of aesthetics must read it. -/- -- Prof. P. S. Sastri, Nagpur Times . (shrink)

This volume explores the relationship between rationality and happiness from ancient Greek philosophy to early Latin medieval philosophy. What connection is there between human rationality and happiness? This issue was uppermost in the minds of the Ancient Greek philosophers and continued to be of importance during the entire early medieval period. Starting with theSocrates of Plato's early dialogues, who is regarded as having initiated the eudaimonistic ethical tradition, the present volume looks at Plato, Aristotle, the Skeptics, Seneca [Stoicism], (...) Epicurus, Plotinus [neo-Platonism], Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and ends with Abelard, the final major figure in early medieval philosophy. Special efforts are made to reveal and trace the continuity and development of the views on rationality and happiness among these major thinkers within this period. The book's approach is historical, but the topics it treats are relevant to many discussions pursued in contemporary philosophical circles. Specifically, the book aims to make two major contributions to the ongoing development of virtue ethics. First, contemporary virtue ethics often draws distinctions between ancient Greek ethics and modern moral philosophy [mainly utilitarianism and Kantianism], and seeks to model ethics on ancient ethics. In doing so, however, contemporary virtue ethics often ignores the transition from Greek ethics to the early Latin medieval tradition. Second, contemporary virtue-based ethics, in its efforts to seek insights from ancient ethics, centers on virtue. In contrast, in ancient and medieval ethics, virtue is pursued for the sake of happiness [eudaimonia], and virtue is conceived as excellence of rationality. Hence, the relationship between rationality and happiness provides the framework for ethical inquiry within which the discussion of virtue takes place. Contributors: JULIA ANNAS, RICHARD BETT, JORGE J.E. GRACIA, BRAD INWOOD, WILLIAM MANN, JOHN MARENBON, GARETH B. MATTHEWS, MARK L. McPHERRAN, DONALD MORRISON, C.C.W. TAYLOR, JONATHAN SANFORD, JIYUAN YU. Jiyuan Yu is Assistant Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Jorge J. E. Gracia is Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguised Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 373-376 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Why Literature Matters: Permanence and the Politics of Reputation Why Literature Matters: Permanence and the Politics of Reputation, by Glenn C. Arbery; 255 pp. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2001, $24.95. Over the last decade or so, there has appeared an increasing number of books critical of the profession of literary studies. Such criticism has (...) typically been directed at literary theory and its preoccupation with the politics of race, class, and gender. To a limited extent, Glenn Arbery's Why Literature Matters: Permanence and the Politics of Reputation can be classified as belonging to such a "genre." Early in the book, for example, Arbery argues in favor of the "old-fashioned" idea, as he calls it, that literature is a "mode of knowledge" with the potential to open up transcendent modes of experience. Yet Why Literature Matters is so short on polemics and so long on incisive, sometimes brilliant readings of works ranging from the poetry and fiction of Seamus Heaney, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, and Emily Dickinson to Shakespeare's Othello and Homer's Iliad, that such a characterization is insufficient at best and distorting at worst. Notwithstanding its title, this book is devoted less to advancing a polemic about "why literature matters" than to dramatizing, with performative power and grace, why most of us, politically oriented or not, are already quite sure that it does.Such performative power can be felt throughout Why Literature Matters, but [End Page 373] its presence is especially strong in the final, lengthy chapter on the Iliad, "The Sacrifice of Achilles." Bringing to bear his training as a classical scholar, Arbery contends that the Iliad is "about" a single event: the death or "sacrifice" of Achilles. Achilles, Arbery notes, was not just the greatest hero of the Iliad. He was also the greatest hero of the entire classical world: "Achilles has no rival in glory, either in the generation of heroes before him (not even Herakles), or in the ages after him. According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar wept because he had not accomplished as much as Alexander at the same age, but Alexander the Great envied Achilles."Why, then, does Arbery refer to Achilles' death as "sacrificial"? Drawing on a version of the Greek myth whose source is Pindar rather than the more commonly cited Hesiod, Arbery observes that Achilles' sacrificial death, which is not in fact narrated in the Iliad but is everywhere taken for granted, was necessitated by Zeus' successful plan to forestall a prophecy. That prophecy said that a son would be born to Zeus and the goddess Thetis, who would overthrow the Olympian god as Zeus had overthrown the Titans. Such a son, prophesized to be not the greatest of mortals but, much more, the greatest of gods, would have been--should have been, from Achilles's justly embittered standpoint--Achilles. But in fact Zeus foiled the prophecy by marrying Thetis off to a mere mortal, Peleus, thereby ensuring his own continued reign and Achilles' eventual death.It is the burden of Arbery's discussion to show not just that Achilles comes to accept and even "will" his own death, but that the meaning of such sacrificial death is embodied and given "presence" in the poetic form and language of the Iliad, including especially the descriptions of Patrocles and Hector, each of whom "inhabits the meaning of Achilles" by dying, successively, in Achilles' armor. Arbery goes so far as to compare Achilles' sacrifice with Christ's, asserting that reading the Iliad "in ignorance of the central importance of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis [is comparable] to reading [Dante's] Inferno (where references to holy things are scarce) in ignorance of the existence of Christ."Arbery makes clear, however, that it is the differences, rather than the similarities, that are most important in such a comparison. Those differences revolve around three issues. First, whereas Christ is a deity who sacrifices himself for humanity, Achilles is a mortal who sacrifices himself for the gods. Second, whereas humanity gains ultimate... (shrink)

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

Albert Camus, novelist, essayist, dramatist, and recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, is esteemed as one of the finest philosophical writers of modern France. The French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about him as "the latest example of that long line of moralistes whose works constitute perhaps the most original element in French letters." Camus' literary legacy includes three novels, namely L'Etranger of 1942, La Peste of 1947, and La Chute of 1957, and a fourth (...) unfinished one that was posthumously published as The First Man in 1995. Camus' works both intensively and extensively explored the theme that was prevalent in the intellectual climate of the post-World War II Europe, the absurdity of human existence together with the notions of alienation and disillusionment, and speculated beyond the crushing pessimism a glimmering faith on human dignity and brotherhood. These concerns, no matter how well ingrained they may be in the European history of ideas, would prove to be too cognitively remote for a contemporary Filipino reader. Thus, there is a need to mediate Camus' literary discourses with a more familiar Filipino text. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Object of French Studies GebrauchkunstRichard Klein (bio)If I may say something about the title—it points to the possibility that we are discussing the nature and future of French studies at the precise moment that France is about to disappear. There are those who believe that on January 1, 1999, when the euro becomes the common currency of the European Union, France will become a province of (...) Germany. Effectively real sovereignty will pass from Paris to Frankfurt.Already there are those at Cornell, for example, who think that we, in the French section, should seek to merge with the German department. I support the move (which isn’t going to happen), if only as a permanent reminder to avoid the fetishism of French. In today’s world, French is a question more than an answer to any question. French studies should be open even to the possibility that, these days, to speak French, it is becoming more and more necessary to speak German. The opposite has been true for a long time, as the French smugly know all too well—having for centuries lent their language of refinement and savoir-vivre to the Huns. The imminence of the conjuncture should remind us, too, that French studies is itself situated within the history of French—is transformed in its possibilities and embodiments by that history and by what is happening now, as we say, historically. Finally, the point here is to recall that the question of French studies has a history, that it is not merely being invented at this moment, but also reactivated as an object of discussion and debate.In fact, the current debate has been going on for some time. In 1993–94 the issue was addressed at two national conferences: a two-part symposium was organized by the Committee for the Future of French Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin; another was held at New York University organized by the Association for French Cultural Studies and the Institute of French Studies. Summer institutes at Dartmouth and Northwestern have dealt with the issue. There is a large and growing bibliography. I cite some of the most prominent recent articles—to judge by how frequently they are cited in others I have read:—Emily Apter, “Comparative Exile: Competing Margins in the History of Comparative Literature.”—Lawrence Kritzman, “Identity Crises: France, Culture, and the Idea of the Nation.—Marie-Pierre Le Hir, “French Cultural Studies in the United States.”—Sandy Petrey, “French Studies/Cultural Studies: Reciprocal Invigoration or Mutual Destruction?”—Kristen Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (often cited as the best example we have of what French studies might be).—Kristen Ross, “World Literature and Cultural Studies.”—Thomas Pavel, “Les études culturelles: Une nouvelle discipline?” Many questions have been raised in these articles about the possibility and necessity of doing French studies. There are those here who take it for granted that one can identify something French, can locate whatever it is that may be said to participate in a specifically French identity. Some, like Pavel, see French studies (and a fortiori so-called cultural [End Page 5] studies) as an excuse for doing n’importe quoi; it defies definition and merely authorizes more confusion and incoherence. Others, like Kritzman, have a more optimistic notion of how one could define French studies without abandoning some notion of the specificity and uniqueness, the irreducible identity of what is called French.Some critics, like Ross and Le Hir, tend to see French studies as inevitably serving to dissolve any particularism associated with French. What is called French culture has been irretrievably pluralized by the effects of decolonization, by the multiplication of francophonies and by their insertion into an Americanized system of globalization. Kids in suburbs of Paris and Cairo wear American baseball hats turned around and grow up eating McDonald’s. Where is the French in that? The object of French studies may be nothing but France’s assimilationist tendency to colonize others, to claim a universal mission, even as it is transformed by its own failed colonial history and by the very diversity it aims to... (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

This book explores the philosophical and theological thought of Nikos Kazantzakis. Kazantzakis is a well-known and highly influential Greek writer, having authored such works as Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, among many others. This volume focuses on the over-arching themes of Kazantzakis’ work, namely the importance of the natural world, the nature of humanity, and the nature of God, by means of an analysis of his major novels and other writings. Along the way attention (...) is given to the views of the important scholars who have interacted with Kazantzakis’s works, including Peter Bien, Darren Middleton, and Daniel Dombrowski. (shrink)