This innovative aid to the study of Italian was published in 1867 by Maria Francesca Rossetti, the older sister of Dante Gabriel, William Michael and Christina. A scholar and teacher of Italian, she was later to publish A Shadow of Dante, a guide to the Divine Comedy, also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. Her purpose here, as she explains in her preface, is to demonstrate idiomatic Italian usage by providing short passages translated very literally into English, (...) so that the 'unnatural' English phraseology demonstrates the correct Italian construction. The passages are to be translated back into Italian, with the help of some supplied vocabulary and an opening chapter which elucidates some of the more difficult aspects of Italian grammar, often by comparing Italian with French usage. The technique had long been used for Latin and Greek prose composition, but was innovatory for modern languages. (shrink)

In order to fully render the “ideal of female beauty”, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was planning a picture which he never executed as an individual canvass. Its aim was to show Venus as seen from various perspectives. It was to be achieved through the use of a number of mirrors surrounding Venus in a complete circle. This project implies that the idea standing behind Rossetti’s art was to reveal the woman as the creator both of herself, being a (...) reflection of a concept created beforehand in her mind, as well as a creator of her own image, being a reflection of this “enhanced” her, in the mirrors. At the same time an infinite number of reflections, raises the power of feminine creation to a universal level and becomes a metaphor of her being the patron goddess of art as well. Thus a “universal” space where all different ladies “meet” is created. In his early paintings, Rossetti employs a combination of different “moments of perspective” that make pictorial space “universal”. His late works become separate “mirror perspectives” of Venus. As a collection, they constitute this set of images unattainable in one picture and extend this “universal space” onto the physical space surrounding them. Also, the manner in which these paintings are executed creates an impression of a “reflection” of the eyesight of each heroine outside of the canvass, returning back into the picture. Thus a new quality is given to the connection of the pictorial space within the frames and that surrounding it. (shrink)

In Victorian Modernism: Pragmatism and the Varieties of Aesthetic Experience Jessica Feldman sheds a pragmatist light on the relation between the Victorian age and Modernism by dislodging truistic notions of Modernism as an art of crisis, rupture, elitism and loss. She examines aesthetic sites of Victorian Modernism - including workrooms, parlours, friendships, and family relations as well as printed texts and paintings - as they develop through interminglings and continuities as well as gaps and breaks. Examining the works of John (...) Ruskin (art critic and social thinker), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (poet and painter), Augusta Evans (best-selling domestic novelist,) and William James (philosopher and psychologist), Feldman relates them to selected twentieth-century creations. She reveals these sentimental, domestic and sublime works to be pragmatist explorations of aesthetic realms. This study, which leads Modernism back into the Victorian age, will be of interest to scholars of literature, art history, and philosophy. (shrink)

Dante's Convivio, composed in exile between 1304 and 1307, is a series of self-commentaries on three of Dante's long poems. These allegorical love poems and philosophical verse become the basis for philosophical, literary, moral, and political exposition. The prose is written in Italian so that those who were not educated in Latin could take part in what Dante called his 'banquet of knowledge'. In this edition, eminent Dante translator-scholar Andrew Frisardi offers the first fully annotated translation (...) of the work into English, with an extensive introduction, making Dante's often complex writings accessible to scholars and students. The parallel Italian text is also included for the first time in an English translation of the Convivio. Readers of this work can gain a strong understanding of the philosophical themes across Dante's work, including the Divine Comedy, as well as the logic, politics and science of his time. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Beyond Dissociations Reassembling the mind-brain after all? Yves Rossetti Antti Revonsuo "Comme des banes de poissons de meme espece, ...

This article reviews experimental evidence for a specific sensorimotor function which can be dissociated from higher level representations of space. It attempts to delineate this function on the basis of results obtained by psychophysical experiments performed with brain damaged and healthy subjects. Eye and hand movement control exhibit automatic features, such that they are incompatible with conscious control. In addition, they rely on a reference frame different from the one used by conscious perception. Neuropsychological cases provide a strong support for (...) this specific motor representation of space, which can be spared in patients with lesions of primary sensory systems who have lost conscious perception of visual, tactile or proprioceptive stimuli. Observation of these patients also showed that their motor behavior can be ''attracted'' by a goal only under specific conditions, that is, when the response is immediate and when no cognitive representation of this goal is elaborated at the same time. Beyond the issue of the dissociation between an implicit motor representation and more cognitive processing of spatial information, the issue of the interaction between these two systems is thus a matter of interest. It is suggested that the conscious, cognitive representation of a stimulus can contaminate or override the short-lived motor representation, but no reciprocal influence seem to occur. The interaction observed in patients can also be investigated in normals. The literature provides examples of interaction between sensorimotor and cognitive framing of space, which confirm that immediate action is not mediated by the same system as delayed action, and that elaborating a categorial representation of the action goal prevents the expression of the short-lived sensorimotor representation. It is concluded that action can be controlled by a sensory system which is specialized for on-line processing of relevant goal characteristics. The temporal constraints of this system are such that it can affect the action before a full sensory analysis of this goal has been completed. The performance obtained on the basis of this spatial sensory processing suggests that short-lived motor representations may rather be considered as real ''presentation'' of the action world, which share its metric properties. (shrink)

Socrate, on le sait, est une épine dans le pied de l’exégète, qui court toujours le risque de le banaliser ou – pire encore – de le remodeler à sa guise, jusqu’à en faire un Socrate « de complaisance ». Il est devenu difficile de produire un dis­cours sérieux sur le compte d’un personnage aussi insaisissable. En effet, bien que les recherches se poursuivent à son sujet, nous nous trouvons depuis des décennies dans une situation persistante (et par là même (...) fastidieuse) de stase vis-à-vis de no... (shrink)

Philosophy is often taken to be something that is always possible, so that everyone is fully entitled sketching a ‘philosophy’ of his/her own. Nevertheless, it is widely assumed that philosophy began in Miletus with Thales. But it is equally well known that the Presocratics remained unaware of being philosophers, and therefore could not even have wanted to be identified that way. These three points are not mutually compatible. So, what lies behind them? What is escaping our attention when we state (...) them? Probably an event in Plato’s life that has too often gone unnoticed: the key role he played in giving form and substance to philosophy, and in getting it to take root once and for all. Failure to acknowledge how, when, and on whose initiative philosophy came to occupy a very important place in Western culture and education for two and a half millennia; not including a note on this process in biographies of Plato; and overlooking another key event that probably occurred about 350-45 BC - these are just some of the unwelcome effects linked to the usual silence about the period in which philosophy took form. (shrink)

Walter Kohan has recently observed that Socrates does not seem partic­ularly interested in the opinions of his interlocutors. Consequently, the philosopher is not really involved in a peer to peer relation with them, but rather embarks upon the task of annihilating their ideas. With the situation being as it is, the image of Socrates as a champion of dialogue begins to wobble. While the present paper aims to discuss these claims, a number of issues needs to be accounted for. First (...) of all, the Socratic dialogue does begin in a characteristically symmetrical way, but it becomes more and more asymmetric as the elenchos begins to appear. This is due to the fact the elenchos makes the interlocutors defensive, whereas Socrates can attack freely. Given that, Kohan’s claims seem justified and enlightening, but they should not be regarded as conclusive, since one must neither forget nor undervalue how innovative it was to replace monologue speeches with one-to-one dialogues which offered the opportunity of being involved in unforeseeable conversations. (shrink)

Durante il V secolo AC Parmenide ebbe molti e qualificati lettori, tra cui Zenone, Empedocle, Anassagora, Leucippo, Melisso, Protagora, Gorgia, Ippia. Tre di loro hanno cercato di fare molto di più di quello che è stato in grado di fare lui con l' ‘esercizio deduttivo’ che incontriamo in 28B8.1-33, e ci sono riusciti. In effetti, che si siano sforzati di superare l'elevato standard già raggiunto da Parmenide nell'invenzione dei passaggi strettamente deduttivi è sostanzialmente fuori discussione. Il mio articolo è dedicato (...) a rendere conto degli ambiziosi obiettivi che Zenone, Melisso e Gorgia raggiunsero, ciascuno in modi molto differenti. (shrink)

There was probably a large number of logoi sokratikoi at the beginning of the IVth century B. C. The discovery of this phenomenon raises the problem of which factors rendered possible the birth, development and success of this literature. In this paper, these factors are sought in certain practices that were developed within the Socratic circle when Socrates himself was still alive.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In Plato’s Laws several passages have been clearly conceived of as preambles. The most extended, and prominent, is the one we find at the beginnings of Book five. It amounts to a complicate tour de force, not easy to be accounted for.What surfaced during the present investigation is a meandrical line of thought which ends with the unexpected adoption of a proto-utilitarianist point of view. This turn is not only interesting per se, since it implies that the author fully acknowledges (...) the role of subjective evaluations that may well ignore the ontological hierarchy between gods-souls-bodies as well as the force of persuasion a wise legislator avails of. (shrink)

Was Parmenides a distinguished ‘astronomer’ and ‘biologist’ other than the great ‘philosopher’ he has been unanimously considered from the times of Plato onwards? Many admirers of the ‘philosopher’ are not just refractory to consider this possibility: they simply ignore what Parmenides was able to discover in the additional domains I have just mentioned. But he was great as an ‘astronomer’ and a ‘biologist’ too, probably not less great than as a ‘philosopher’.The aim of this paper is to supply the basic (...) information about Parmenides' achievements in these domains, that were of the highest order, I presume.Presocratic Philosophy and ‟Natural Theology”. (shrink)

Psychopathy is typically seen as a trait that is undesirable in any context, including the workplace. But several authors have suggested that people high in psychopathy might possess resources that preserve their ability to perform well in stressful contexts. We consider the possibility that primary psychopathy is adaptive—for the employee, if not for the organization—under conditions of abusive supervision. In particular, we draw from the multimotive model of interpersonal threat and the theory of purposeful work behavior to argue that high (...) primary psychopathy individuals possess characteristics that enable them to experience higher levels of well-being and lower levels of anger than their peers under abusive supervisors. Based on a scenario study and a time-lagged field study, we found support for a model in which abusive supervision moderates the relationships between primary psychopathy and positive work-related outcomes, such that these relationships are positive under conditions of abusive supervision and either diminished or negative under conditions of low abusive supervision. Abusive supervision also affected the relationship between primary psychopathy and anger in the field study such that high primary psychopathy individuals were less angry under more abusive supervisors. Thus, there appears to be some credence to the notion of a “psychopathic advantage” in that primary psychopaths do have access to greater psychological resources than their peers under abusive supervision. However, these findings also suggest that abusive supervisors may empower employees with characteristics that hold strong potential to damage the organization and its stakeholders. (shrink)

The present paper makes the following points. The summary given in Sextus Emp. Math. VII is of much greater value than usually acknowledged, since it preserves several key elements of Gorgias’ communicational strategy. A sketchy trilemma is available in the opening sentence of Philolaos as well as in a passage of Plato’s Parmenides. This is evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the very first known trilemma was devised by Gorgias and not by Sextus himself or Aenesidemus. Not unlike Zeno, (...) Gorgias enjoyed to be neither serious nor joking, but remained somewhat halfway. This point is seldom acknowledged, though it is crucial in order to understand that he pretends to claim, but his claims do not amount to any points of doctrine. That he remains halfway should not prevent us from appreciating some of his ideas, but, at the same time, we should not expect full intellectual adhesion to what he tells us. Besides, something similar occurs in most of Plato’s dialogues.. Gorgias owes a lot to Melissus. (shrink)

The present paper argues that the teachings of Anaximander are much better knowable than they actually appear, since a number of his teachings have the privilege of being almost transparent in their predicative content as well as in their logic. As a matter of fact, one can quite easily come to understand the train of thought which lies behind Anaximander’s most momentous conjectures. Thus, a largely unexpected Anaximander comes to light despite the availability of the majority of the relevant sources (...) since 1903. Two main areas appear to be particularly prominent: on the one hand, the complex body of various conjectures and doctrines that helps to understand the system of spatial relationships from Miletus to the stars and, on the other hand, the equally complex body of conjectures and doctrines whose primarily concern is the macro-story of the Earth from its most remote past to its predictable future. The merits of Anaximander as an earth-researcher are much greater than one could actually imagine. It is suggested here that what philosophy owes to him in particular lies in his quest for knowledge, his method, his cognitive hybris, and his intellectual discipline, rather than individual doctrines. A comparison with Thales follows in the last paragraph. (shrink)

Presume-se que pensadores tenham começado a ser considerados como filósofos nos últimos decênios do séc. V a.C. Se for assim, nenhum dos intelectuais das épocas posteriores, de Tales a Empédocles, que fomos educados a honrar como filósofos, o foram considerados em vida. Teriam recebido o nome de “filósofos” como honra a posteriori, a partir de 330 e 345 a.C. No presente artigo, o autor analisa o modo como Tales era honrado como um dos sophoi em Atenas.

Thales the Measurer offers a comprehensive and iconoclastic account of Thales of Miletus, considering the full extent of our evidence to build a new picture of his intellectual interests and activity. Thales is most commonly associated with the claim that 'everything is water', but closer examination of the evidence that we have suggests that he could not have said anything of the sort. His real interests, and his real innovations, lay in challenges of quantitative measurement, especially measurements related to the (...) movement of the sun. In this he had no predecessors - and, for centuries to follow, no real successors either. This book is of interest for scholars in the history of philosophy, science, and life sciences. It is aimed especially at researchers in the field, but is also accessible to students and a more general readership. (shrink)

Vita Nuova is the first of Dante's major writings. It is a supreme work of love; thirty-one poems are linked by a lyrical prose narrative poem celebrating and debating the subject of love. In the opening chapter Dante sets himself the task of giving meaning to the poetry which he composed and the events which took place after his meeting with Beatrice and the `Lord of Love'. The `new life' which this meeting inspired is the subject of (...) class='Hi'>Dante's most profound creation, which has been read variously as biography, religious allegory, and a meditation on poetry itself. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)