When discussing one of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novels, Mikhail Bakhtin ruminates on the poietic power of dialogue: in dialogue a person not only shows himself outwardly, but he becomes for the first time that which he is—and […] not only for others but for himself as well. To be means to communicate dialogically. When dialogue ends, everything ends. […] At the level of his religious-utopian worldview Dostoyevsky carries dialogue into eternity, conceiving of it as eternal co-rejoicing, co-admiration, concord. […] Two voices (...) is the minimum for life.1 Notably, Bakhtin's commendation of dialogue as a sine qua non ontological condition communicates both necessity and hope, implying the indispensability of an encounter... (shrink)

Ce livre réunit les actes du colloque qui s’est tenu le 30 octobre 2013 à Nérac dans le cadre des agoras nationales de l’Association des Professeurs d’Histoire & de Géographie, auxquelles ont participé Éric Bonhomme, Yohann Chanoir, Franck Collard, Maurice Daumas, Didier Foucault, Thierry Issartel, Thierry Labarthe, Céline Piot et Yann Prouillet. Pour paraphraser l’humour de sa préface, ce colloque pourrait s’intituler « Et si Lysistrata était un homme…. » Car du masculin et du viril, il en e...

RESUMO:Na Carta a d’Alembert, Rousseau se coloca contra a ideia de um teatro enquanto instrumento de educação moral, porém, o posicionamento do filósofo não está em colocar essa atividade lúdica de ordem moral na categoria de atividade imoral, mas na de atividade artificial, e, talvez, isso gerasse efeitos imorais. Todavia, é preciso observar os verdadeiros efeitos do teatro, a partir de alguns argumentos que Rousseau resolve construir e analisá-los, contudo, apenas se trouxesse à tona a crítica de Rousseau ao romance, (...) na Carta a d’Alembert, que tem como contexto “a ideia negativa de privatização da cena”, pois o teatro destina uma excessiva importância à descrição do amor, obviamente, exagerando na representação, naquilo que é romanesco. Porém, se, na Carta a d’Alembert, o filósofo não expressa de forma direta que a teorização sobre o teatro também equivale ao romance, na Nova Heloísa, ou seja, no próprio romance, o autor faz essa ratificação, ao importar um longo comentário sobre o teatro que estava na Carta, afirmando que considera o mesmo da própria cena quanto à maioria dos novos escritos. O cidadão genebrino ataca os romances indiretamente e viceversa, porque é observado que tudo aquilo que diz sobre uma arte se aplica quase que integralmente a outra arte. E, como um povo galante deseja amor e polidez, Rousseau resolve fixar alguns termos, na tentativa de explicar suas críticas e argumentar a coerência de seu posicionamento, já que, se, em geral, a cena é um quadro das paixões humanas, cujo original está nos corações, se o pintor, porém, não tiver cuidado de acariciar suas paixões, os espectadores logo ficarão desgostosos e não desejarão mais se ver sob um aspecto que fizesse com que desprezassem a si mesmos. E pontua que essa linguagem não tem mais sentido, em seu século, pois é preciso falar as paixões, esforçando-nos para usar uma que melhor se compreenda, talvez o romance. ABSTRACT:In theLetter to d’Alembert, Rousseau argues against the idea of theater as a moral instrument of education. However, the position of the philosopher is not one of putting this playful activity in the category of immoral activity, but in the category of an artificial activity that perhaps generates immoral purposes. It is necessary to observe the true effect of the theater on the basis of some arguments that Rousseau decides to construct. These are analyzed here, bringing to the fore Rousseau’s critique of the novel in theLetter to d’Alembert. The letter has as its context “the negative idea of privatization of the scene”, as the theater gives an excessive importance to the description of love, obviously exaggerating the representation of romance. If, in theLetter to d’Alembert, the philosopher does not directly express that theorizing about the theater is equivalent to the novel, in theNouvelle Héloïse, that is, in the novel itself, the author does this. He adds to the novel a long commentary on the theater that was in theLetter, stating that he considers the theatrical scene itself to be the same as most new writing. He attacks novels indirectly, as well as the theatre, observing that everything said about one art applies almost entirely to another art. As a gallant people want love and politeness, Rousseau decides to fix certain terms in an attempt to explain his criticism and argue the consistency of his position. In general, the scene is a picture of human passions whose original is in the heart; if the painter is not careful in stroking these passions, spectators will soon become disgusted, not wanting to see themselves in such a way that they despise themselves. Rousseau points out that this language has no more meaning in his century, as it is necessary to speak the passions, striving to use language that best understands the passions, such as, perhaps, that of the novel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 335 Rachel Lumsden “The Music Between Us”: Ethel Smyth, Emmeline Pankhurst, and “Possession” But limelight is bad for me: the light in which I work best is twilight. —Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth1 There are few composers who seemed to seek the glow of public limelight more than Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944). Smyth fearlessly forged a career for (...) herself as a professional composer in Britain during a time when female musicians were largely regarded as inferior to male musicians and lacked equal educational and professional opportunities. Smyth’s brazen personality was evident from her early years; as a teenager, she battled for two years to gain her father’s approval to travel to Leipzig to further her musical studies. Smyth’s struggle for acceptance as a composer continued throughout her career; she composed large-scale works—including six operas—at a time when women were expected to write “feminine,” small-scale compositions (such as solo piano pieces and songs), and she fought unrelentingly to have her music performed. Throughout her career Smyth faced a barrage of sexist criticism, in which she was consistently referred to as a “lady composer” and alternatively praised and derided for writing “masculine” music: if a 1. Virginia Woolf, letter to Ethel Smyth (August 21, 1932), in The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 5: 97. 336 Rachel Lumsden critic liked her work, it would be lauded for its “masculine strength,” and if a critic didn’t like her work, it would be admonished for exceeding the bounds of female propriety.2 Yet Smyth rarely flinched from battles. A defiant and prolific writer, Smyth also published an exhaustive array of books and memoirs: Impressions that Remained (1919), Streaks of Life (1921), A Three-Legged Tour in Greece (1927), A Final Burning of Boats (1928), Female Pipings in Eden (1933), Beecham and Pharaoh (1935), As Time Went On (1936), Inordinate (?) Affection (1936), Maurice Baring (1938), and What Happened Next (1940), using her literary works as a means of bringing her own experiences into the limelight. By chronicling the oppression and discrimination she consistently faced, she sought not only to draw attention to herself as a composer—whose works, in her mind, had been consistently and unjustly neglected by the public—but also to highlight the plight of female musicians in general. Smyth’s literary works are wide-ranging and cover a host of different subjects, including recollections about her own life, biographical portraits of close friends, excerpts from letters, reviews of her musical compositions, and her forthright opinions about women’s rights. A number of scholars have explored these different aspects of Ethel Smyth’s fascinating artistic career; however, most research on Smyth has focused either on her literary endeavors or her compositions. What is missing is a thoroughgoing analysis of the connections between the two. One exception is Elizabeth Wood, who has brilliantly discussed Smyth’s writings and music; however, many details of Smyth’s vast array of musical works still remain largely unexplored.3 This article examines 2. Smyth’s operas include Fantasio (1892–1894), Der Wald (1899–1901), The Wreckers (1902–1904), The Boatswain’s Mate (1913–1914), Fête Galante (1921– 1922), and Entente Cordiale (1923–1924). For more information about Smyth and the status of female musicians in Britain during this era, see Jane A. Bernstein, “‘Shout, Shout, Up with Your Song!’ Dame Ethel Smyth and the Changing Role of the British Woman Composer,” in Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 304–24; and Eugene Gates, “Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t: Sexual Aesthetics and the Music of Dame Ethel Smyth,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 31, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 63–71. 3. See Elizabeth Wood, “Performing Rights: A Sonography of Women’s Suffrage,” The Musical Quarterly 79, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 606–43; and Elizabeth Rachel Lumsden 337 a small, specific slice of Smyth’s oeuvre: her 1913 song “Possession,” dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst (“E.P”), her friend and leader of... (shrink)

The paper considers the recently published British Medical Association Guidance on ethical issues arising in relation to rationing of treatment during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It considers whether it...

The Anthropocene is heralded as a new epoch distinguishing itself from all foregoing eons in the history of the Earth. It is characterized by the overarching importance of the human species in a number of respects, but also by the recognition of human dependence and precariousness. A critical human turn affecting the human condition is still in the process of arriving in the wake of an initial Copernican Revolution and Kant's ensuing second Copernican Counter-revolution. Within this landscape, issues concerning the (...) human - its finitude, responsiveness, responsibility, maturity, auto-affection and relationship to itself - appear rephrased and re-accentuated as decisive probing questions. In this book Sverre Raffnsøe explores how the change has ramifications for the kinds of knowledge that can be acquired concerning human beings and for the human sciences as a study of human existential beings in the world. (shrink)

Scholarly papers by Gėlėgzhamt︠s︡yn Luvsant︠s︡ėrėn on Mādhyamika, Buddhist philosophy, Mongolian philosophy and Buddhist studies in Mongolia.

Memoirs and papers presented at a conference held on the occasion of the 90th birthday of the Mongolian philosopher Ts. Balkhaajav.

Selected articles of Ēṭukūru Balarāmamūrti on Marxist philosophy; includes contributed on his life and work.

Context: The idea for this article sprang from a desire to revive a conversation with the late Ernst von Glasersfeld on the heuristic function - and epistemological status - of forms of ideations that resist linguistic or empirical scrutiny. A close look into the uses of humor seemed a thread worth pursuing, albeit tenuous, to further explore some of the controversies surrounding the evocative power of the imaginal and other oblique forms of knowing characteristic of creative individuals. Problem: People generally (...) respond to humor, i.e., they are inclined to smile at things they find funny. People like to crack jokes, make puns, and, starting at age two, human infants engage in pretense or fantasy play. Research on creativity, on the other hand, has mostly scorned the trickster within. Cognitivists in particular are quick to relegate wit, whimsy, and even playfulness to the ranks of artful or poetic frivolities. Method: We use the emblems of the craftsman, the trickster, and the poet to highlight some of the oblique ways of knowing by which creative thinkers bring forth new insights. Each epitomizes dimensions intrinsic to the art of “possibilizing.” Taken together, they help us better understand what it means to be playful beyond curious, rigorous beyond reasonable, and why this should matter, even to constructivists! Results: The musings characteristic of creative individuals speak to intelligent beings’ ability to use glitches intentionally or serendipitously as a means to open up possibilities; to hold on to a thought before spelling it out; and to resist treating words or images as conventional and arbitrary signs regardless of their evocative power. To fall into nominalism, Bachelard insisted, is a poet’s nightmare! Implications: Psyche is image, said Jung, and when we feel alive we rely on the imaginal to guide our reason. Note that image is not here to be understood as a picture in the head or a photographic snapshot of the world. The imaginal does not represent, it brings forth what we understand beyond words. It does not lock us into a single mode. Instead, it is a call to be mindful, in Ellen Langer’s sense: in the present, mentally alert, and on the outlook for our psyche’s own surprising wisdom (sagacity. Constructivist content: Debates on the heuristic function and epistemological status of oblique ways of knowing have long occupied constructivist scholars. I can only guess whether my uses of Jung’s imaginal or Bachelard’s anti-nominalism would have amused or exasperated Ernst! I do know that, on occasion, Ernst the connoisseur, bricoleur, and translator allowed the rationalist-within to include the poet’s power to evoke as a legitimate form of rationality. He himself has written about oblique knowing as legit! (shrink)

E. Rae Harcum argues that Christians do not have to give up their religious faith to keep the contributions of science. He confronts the relation between the human body and its non-material parts—the mind and spirit—and provides a way of looking at these metaphysical issues.

ABSTRACT Notwithstanding recent controversies involving echo chambers and social media, “post-truth” has always been central to philosophical investigations of what is knowable and good. The internal tension of the term offers a choice: to gasp in feigned astonishment at the hell-in-a-handbasket state of public discourse, or to reflect critically on what is beyond, after, or other than the truth. In this essay, we approach post-truth via elements of narrative, biography, and myth, portraying Friedrich Nietzsche's polytropic figure, Zarathustra, as he might (...) have spoken to the contemporary moment. We demonstrate how Zarathustra affords access to the idea that truth and life are inextricable in the human condition. To temper this tension, we depict a character whose disposition toward post-truth spans from certainty and doubt to exuberance and despair. Our hope is to indicate how, for the humans of Motley Cow, post-truth is ubiquitous, institutional, and infrastructural. (shrink)