Editors and writers on the prosody of Plautus and Terence disagree about the prosody of the final -a in the nominative and vocative of proper names taken from the Greek First Declension. The fact that they are often quoted as examples of syllaba anceps either at the diaeresis of longer iambic lines or at loci Iacobsohniani would seem to imply that they normally scan as Latin First Declension nouns with short -a in the nominative and vocative singular. (...) So R. Kauer in the commentary of his edition of Terence's Andria on line 301 writes ‘die griechischen Eigennamen auf -a —Sosia, Byrria, Chaerea, Phaedria usw.—haben bei Terenz stets kurzes -a’. (shrink)

Professor Skutsch has convicted me of one error—the inclusion of Eun. 465 in my list on p. 208. I do not feel, however, that he has proved that Phaedria is a dactyl in Terence. The essence of his argument, as I see it, depends on the figures in the last two rows of the first two columns on p. 90, and may be stated as follows: ‘Forms undeniably dactylic, such as Pamphile, are always followed by a disyllabic thesis. The thesis (...) after all critical examples of Phaedria is disyllabic. Therefore “Phaedria is proved to be a dactyl”.’ My objection to this argument is not that it is not a logical syllogism, but that it seeks to establish the prosody of Phaedria without considering the prosody of the other Phaedria-typt1 names in Terence. These are listed on p. 208 of my article . The following cases, I suggest, merit consideration. (shrink)

MR. MARTIN seems to have misread my table. He professes to summarize its last two rows, but he has got the last but one all wrong, and the last he omits altogether. My last row but one signifies: In the matter of a following disyllabic thesis Phaedria, Pamphilĕ, and Parmenō behave exactly alike: no argument here either for or against Phaedriā. The last row speaks plainly: If Phaedria were a cretic, we should expect to find it used as a cretic (...) at least six times. Mr. Martin had found it so used once, and I noted that this one example was in fact an ablative–a strange coincidence. But this was not, as Mr. Martin says, the only ‘error’ of which I ‘convicted’ him. I also, and primarily, pointed out that what he called ‘the significant thing’, viz. that the scansion Phaedriâ was never inevitable, held no significance whatever, since all dactylic words were in the same case. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to describe the prosodic systems of the Greek and Latin languages and to find out the versification systems which have been realized in the poetical practice. The Greek language belongs typologically among the mora-counting languages and thus provides possibilities for the emergence of purely quantitative verse, purely syllabic verse, quantitative-syllabic verse and syllabic-quantitative verse. There is no purely quantitative or purely syllabic verse in actual Greek poetry; however, the syllabic-quantitative versification (...) systems (the Aeolian tradition) and quantitative-syllabic versification systems (the Aeolian tradition) were in use. The Latin language, on the other hand, has a number of features, which characterize it as a stress-counting language. Since at the same time there exists also the opposition of short and long syllables, there are preconditions for the syllabic, accentual and quantitative principle, as well as for the combinations of these. The Roman literary heritage shows examples of purely accentual, syllabic-quantitative, quantitative-syllabic, as well as of several other combinatory versification systems. (shrink)

Nous présentons dans cet article une expérimentation touchant à l’enseignement/apprentissage de la phonétique dans laquelle étaient engagés des étudiants chypriotes hellénophones de niveau B2-C1, inscrits dans un Master en didactique du français langue étrangère. Cette expérimentation était centrée sur un texte littéraire, le poème de Guillaume Apollinaire « Le Pont Mirabeau », et avait pour but de sensibiliser les participants à l’importance d’enseigner la phonétique dans leurs futures classes de FLE et à l’attrait que peut avoir l’apprentissage de ce domaine (...) du langage. La procédure de ce projet de recherche a comporté cinq étapes : 1) Lecture préliminaire du poème par les participants ; 2) Cours de phonétique et retour sur la lecture préliminaire ; 3) Seconde lecture du poème par les participants ; 4) Analyse phonétique des deux lectures ; 5) Entretiens semi-dirigés entre chercheurs et participants. Nous concluons par une évaluation générale de l’expérimentation. (shrink)

A combination of uncritical interpretations of Greek art maintained since antiquity, together with Heidegger’s failed attempt to connect Being with Dasein through the Greeks, has misled the feminist agenda into dismissing both Heidegger and the Greeks. The bad blood left by Irigaray has revitalized scholarship which wants to know why the world-disclosive nullity of Being cannot be primordially transgenderous in essence prior to its worldly dispersal into the two sexes. It takes a radical, phenomenological reduction which applies suprasegmental theory (...) to re-chisel and strip the Greek statue from multiple layers of calcified presumptions deposited by millennia of realism, historicism, naturalism, and psychologism, until the inherently absent primordiality which Heidegger searched in vain in order to ground Dasein, the same which feminism would dismiss as phallocracy if it was not transgender, becomes literally visible. Two fifth century monumental works, the female Euthydikos Kore and the male Blonde Youth, are re-discovered in the reduction, and the prosody that is their faces lets the two genders reunite into something like a dark song. (shrink)

This paper aims to collect and discuss the evidence for muta cum liquida in the fragments of Epicharmus. Such an analysis is important on multiple levels. For a start, it shows that in Epicharmean comedy, unlike in Attic comedy, the heterosyllabic and the tautosyllabic treatments alternate on the basis of metrical convenience. Further, by comparing the treatment of muta cum liquida with a number of other linguistic features of Epicharmus’ fragments, it can be demonstrated that Epicharmus’ language is indeed a (...) Kunstsprache, despite recent attempts at arguing the opposite. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England STEPHEN ORGEL Roger ascham, writing in the 1560s, in the course of a treatise on education, urged the reform of English poetry on classical models: “Our English tongue, in avoiding barbarous rhyming, may as well receive right quantity of syllables, and true order of versifying... as either Greek or Latin....”1 He cites as an example of right quantity of (...) syllables and true order of versifying this translation by the scholar and poet William Watson of a verse from the Odyssey: All travelers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses. For that he knew many men’s manners, and saw many cities. This does not sound much like English poetry, but if we count it out we can see that it does, more or less, follow the quantitative rules. The trouble is that the rules have little to do with English pronunciation. Vowels are long by position (followed by two consonants) regardless of how they are pronounced ; moreover, Watson makes vowels long if they are stressed (such as the a in “travelers” and “manners” and the i in “cities”), again regardless of how they are pronounced. For the Elizabethans, this was a problem not with the rules, but with English, both in its dissimilarity from the classical tongues and in the variety of spelling and pronunciation at the time—proponents of quantitative verse in English observe that a necessary first step would be to stabilize the language, as Gabriel Harvey wrote to Edmund Spenser, “there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly, or generally to bring our language into art and to arion 27.2 fall 2019 frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof, than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same orthography.”2 But even with a stable orthography, the application of quantitative rules to English is problematic. To begin with, it is not clear in what sense an English vowel can be said to be long or short—to consider the vowels in stressed syllables invariably long, as Watson does, is entirely arbitrary. There is obviously a difference between the a sound in “rat” and in “rate”; such vowels are now described as short and long, but in pronunciation, they may or may not be of equal extension : thus, the a in “rate” is not, in speaking, longer than the a in “rat,” it is simply pronounced differently; whereas the i in “rise” is certainly longer than the i in “rid.” If quantity means length, English vowels are too erratic to serve—Harvey observed to Spenser that in some quantitative hexameters Spenser had sent him, “the,” “ye” and “he” were treated as short, but “me” was long.3 The issue is especially vexed in the case of vowels that are long by position. The most common examples in English are the -ing endings of participles, which are invariably unaccented and stubbornly short when spoken. In fact, Thomas Campion confronted precisely this problem; and his way of dealing with it gives a clear sense of how willed the whole quantitative system in English necessarily was: For though we accent the second [syllable] of Trumpington short, yet is it naturally long, and so of necessity must be held of every composer.4 What can “naturally” mean here? Are the rules of Latin prosody laws of nature? Harvey had a clear sense of the practical problems, writing to Spenser, “in short, this is the very short and long: position neither maketh short nor long in our tongue,” and concludes that some other rule must be found for English “that should as universally and canonically hold amongst us as position doth with the Latins and Greeks.”5 The larger assumption behind Ascham’s and Harvey’s proposals for a new poetry was that the “barbarous” England 44 english classical of the time could be rectified by the application of classical rules. A return to the classics held out the promise of culture and civility—not only in poetry, of course, but poetry seemed a particularly clear example. Nobody thought the transformation would be easy; a hectoring... (shrink)

This essay offers a new perspective on Darwin’s evolutionary theorizing on the human arts of music, poetry and rhetoric. It argues that Darwin’s theory of the human arts is primarily a theory of their effects on our emotions. Contrary to the topical understanding Darwin nowhere claimed that the music of homo sapiens sapiens used to be performed, let alone still is performed in the service of sexual success. He exclusively stipulated that some such evolutionary attractor might have shaped the vocal (...) arts of our «half-human ancestors». In the human music proper, by contrast, he sees this archaic function only persist as a cognitively vague, yet intensely felt «mental reversion to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age», as widely unconscious and barely decodable memory traces. Read in Gouldian terms the evolved proto-human «musical arts» have thus been «exapted», i.e. lost their presumable biologically adaptive function of evolutionary origin, yet have survived this exaptation and ever since serve new communicative functions while retaining some of their archaic affective power. Moreover, the arts of rhetoric and poetry, by using the hypothetically older neural and vocal architecture of singing (with regards to linguistic prosody, meter, and cadences), coopt this «exapted» emotional power of music into the novel field of symbolic language. Darwin’s understanding of rhetoric and poetry is shown to entail not only explicit references, but also many implicit similarities both with Greek and Latin rhetoric and poetics and, more specifically, with Romanticist assumptions regarding the origin and function of poetry. (shrink)

When we read the Latin Grammarians' Rules of Prosody, we are puzzled now and then. One thing that puzzles us is their silence about the features of difference between Latin Prosody and Greek. They often seem to take it for granted that Virgil's Prosody is identical with Homer's. This point of view is perhaps not surprising, since these Grammatici often speak of Latin as a mere dialect of Greek . But it has its disadvantages. Every (...) scholboy knows that moeniă Troiae is as natural in Virgil as TєίεΧεă Τροίηs would be unnatural in Homer; and every school-manual of Latin Prosody confines its examples of a Mute and Liquid lengthening, not lengthening a preceding syllable to examples of a Mute and Liquid in the middle of a word. If it mentions Catullus' impotenti̅ freta, it calls this a Greek, not a Latin type. Not so the Grammatici. Diomede's examples of a short syllable before FR, FL are :ore fremebant talia flammato. (shrink)

Until now, the short cult hymns to Liber, Mars and Juno in the Appendix Claudianea have mostly been seen as rhetorical school exercises. Yet a philological-historical analysis shows that they could be remains of occasional poetry from everyday life. The hymns are structured according to the Roman festival calendar and, on the basis of language and content, should probably be dated to the final phase of public non-Christian cult practice in the fourth century. The anonymous poet was familiar with classical (...) Greek and Latin poetry, but reveals weaknesses in Latin prosody and metre. It can therefore be supposed that he should be identified as one of the many Graeco-Egyptian ‘wandering poets’, but probably not as Claudian himself. (shrink)

In his lengthy survey of the cosmic devastation wrought by Phaethon's disastrous chariot ride, Ovid includes two catalogues detailing the scorching of the world's mountains and rivers. Ovid enlivens these lists through his usual play with sound patterns and revels in the opportunity to adapt so many Greek names to Latin prosody; for instance the opening line of the catalogue of mountains masterfully illustrates both of these features. The lists are also brimming with playful erudition. To take but (...) a few examples: a dried-up Ida belies its standard epithet πολυπῖδαξ, ‘many-fountained’ ; the sun's heat doubles the flames of volcanic Etna ; burning Xanthus is destined to burn again ; and the famous gold-bearing sands of the Tagus are melting. These features not only ‘relieve monotony’; they warrant the catalogues’ inclusion in the category of Ovid's most entertaining. (shrink)

Nietzsche's discovery of the "breath" or spirit of music in the words of Greek tragedy was his testament to oral culture in antiquity and it is significant that his theoretical account of the prosody of ancient Greek endures to this day. Drawing little emaphatic resonance from his readers , Nietzsche reprised yet another tradition of poetic song composition, namely the art of the troubadours in order to rearticulate his argument in The Gay Science. I here explore the (...) passion of the 'knightly art', of poetic song and explore in addition Nietzsche's conception of Wissenschaft . The art of poetry was less an antiquarian rhetorical concept than a practical guide for those of us who seek to be "the poets of our lives".Mit der Enteckung des Geistes oder 'Artems' der Musik in den Worten der grichischen Tragödie deutete Nietzsche die orale Kultur in der Antike auf eine neue Weise. Bisher wurden diese Entdeckung und ihre Konsequenzen für Verständnis der modernen Kultur aber kaum beachtet. Die Abhandlung untersuchtd Nietzsches Auffassung der 'gaya scienza' am Beispiel des Troubadours und der mit ihm verbundenen, jedoch verlorengegangenen mündlichen Tradition von poetischer oder liedhafter Komposition. Nietzsches Deutung der Leidenschaft der ritterlichen Gesangskunst wird en einen Zusammenhang mit seiner Auffassung von Wissenschaft gebracht, und diese wird mit der provençalischen scienza sowie der englischen und französischen science verglichten. (shrink)

This paper reviews a series of experimental studies that address what we call ‘interface judgement’, which is the complex judgment involving integration from multiple levels of grammatical representation such as the syntax-semantics and prosody-semantics interface. We first discuss the results from the ERP literature connected to NPI licensing in different languages, paying particular attention to the N400 and the P600 as neural correlates of this specific phenomenon and focusing on the study by Xiang et al. (2016). The results of (...) this study show evidence that there are two distinct NPI licensing mechanisms, i.e., licensing and rescuing, in line with Giannakidou (1998, 2006). Then we discuss an acceptability judgement task on Greek NPIs which supports the negativity as a scale hypothesis (Zwarts 1995, 1996, Giannakidou 1998). For the semantics-prosody interface judgment, we discuss two types of findings on two different phenomena and languages: (i) the study by Giannakidou & Yoon (2016) on scalar and non-scalar NPIs in Greek and Korean, which serves as the foundation for Chatzikontantinou (2016)’s study of production data showing distinct prosodic properties in emphatic (scalar) and non-emphatic (non-scalar) Greek NPIs; (ii) a (production and perception) study by Etxeberria & Irurtzun (2015) on the prosodic disambiguation of the scalar/non-scalar readings of sentences containing the focus particle ‘ere’ in Basque. The main conclusion of the paper is that experimental methods of the kind discussed in the paper are useful in establishing physical, quantitative correlates of interface judgement. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

If there is one pivotal epistemological issue the Eastern and the Western Christian churches have agreed upon, this must be the understanding that God’s essence is inherently and conclusively unavailable to humans. This settlement is based on the shared assumption that there is no possible mode of accessing this or any essence, other than either from objective or subjective knowl­edge. Neo-Orthodoxy has preserved the heritage of Pateric apophaticism and has built upon the shared assumption its own, ecclesial accessibility instead to (...) God’s existence. In this exclusivist orientation Neo-Orthodoxy has further proclaimed itself the only true heir to ancient Greece, cutting off the West and criticizing it as a bastion of rational alienation. A phenomenological investigation of Greek statuary art, however, addresses prosody as a third, hitherto unexplored mode of epistemological intelligibility for an access to the essence of “God.” Through the implementation of suprasegmental theory in the phenomenological reduction of a certain statue, we revisit certain key concepts in the discussion between Christos Yannaras, whose works comprise the Neo-Orthodox manifesto, and Martin Heidegger, who claimed that the Greek statue “is the god himself.” Amongst the conclusions emerging from this comparative hermeneutics is the idea that in fact the West may have remained all along more ready than the East to move into the next historical step of man’s self-elucidation in the light of what is Holy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of AllusionMichael C. J. PutnamJeffrey Wills. Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xvi 1 506 pp. Cloth, $90.Wills offers the first fully systematic codification of repetition in Latin poetry. The introduction deals with the various means, such as morphological or lexical markings, word order, position and the like, that can help the reader distinguish allusion in an act (...) of repetition, and there follow several detailed examples of practice built on theory. But the main body of the book consists of a “grammar” of repetition.The first major segment is devoted to gemination, the repetition of identical forms within the same sense unit. This in turn is divided between a cataloguing of simple gemination, either in nominal form or of verbs and adverbs, and of expanded gemination, where one of the elements repeated is qualified with further detail. Four chapters are devoted to the next rubric, polyptoton and its elaborations, the repetitions of different forms within a simple clause. Then follow detailed discussions of the same phenomena but located across units, entitled “parallelism” where, as in the case of gemination, the forms are the same; and “modification,” akin to polyptoton in that the forms are different. The book concludes with three more general chapters devoted to a detailed analysis of the positional patterns repetition most regularly takes, of compounds as part of repetition, and to prosody and semantic variations in repetition.Such a bald summary does scant justice not only to the sheer quantity of material Wills gathers—a monumental accomplishment in itself—but also to the learning, intelligence and critical sophistication that characterize the undertaking. At the start Wills lays claim only to illustrating the process whereby allusion is generated through repetition, but throughout the whole enterprise, whether in theoretical discussions or in the practical criticism that emanates from his compendia, the results are equally valuable, for the investigation of individual poems and authors as well as for a deeper understanding of the development of Latin modes of imaginative expression, often as analyzed against their Greek intellectual background. If I were to focus on one single accomplishment beyond the mere careful, discrete amassing of material, it would be the stress not only on diction, that is, on the iteration of words, but on such categories [End Page 295] as form, syntax, and word placement in the creation of allusion through repetition. But the main value of this rich work will be as much in the detailed analyses of countless specific instances as in the manifold possibilities for referencing, and cross-referencing, across the history of classical poetry that now become readily available to its scholars.A good example of Wills’s methodology is his initial illustration (26–28), tracing how Virgil adopts and adapts Catullus’ repetitions of perfide, at the opening of Ariadne’s lament (64.132–33) and later (174), through the central reaches of Aeneid 4, from 305 to 421. But there are a myriad others of which I may single out only a few brief samples: on the connection of Cat. 62.20–24 and Vir. Ecl. 8.47–50 where chiasmus and parallel stanzaic structure reinforce repetition’s allusiveness (p. 181); on the repetition of acies at Aen. 10.360 in what Wills calls “battle polyptoton” (194); on the assumed communality of clashing horses (Aen. 11.614–15) and wrestling humans (Ov. Met. 6.243) that allusion from one text to another brings (199); on the connection between Aen. 3.156 and 10.670–72 and the resulting linkage of Aeneas and Turnus at moments of loss (267); on Virgil’s melding of Homeric syntax with Lucretian diction in the impressive phrase gravis graviterque (Aen. 5.447) (239); on the resulting combination of form as well as diction as Propertius borrows from both Ecl. 7.44 and Ecl. 6.55–58 to describe the cattle of Hercules (4.9.16–19) (101–2).From time to time Wills seems swept along by the fact of repetition to the neglect of counterevidence which would be useful to the reader in weighing the value of an exemplum. A case in point is the... (shrink)

Metrisch gebundene Texte sind aus dem altsprachlichen Unterricht nicht wegzudenken: Vergil, Ovid, Horaz, Catull und Martial sind nur einige typische Autoren für die Dichtungslektüre im Lateinunterricht; Homer, Sophokles und Euripides sind typische Beispiele für den Griechischunterricht. Die Curricula schlagen eine Vielzahl poetischer Texte als mögliche Lektüren vor. Allein diese unvollständige Autorenauswahl zeigt schon, dass man allein mit der Behandlung von daktylischem Hexameter und elegischem Distichon nicht besonders weit kommt, will man nicht die Textauswahl nach solchen rein formalen Kriterien unnötig und (...) unzulässig einschränken oder bei allen anderen Metra so tun, als läse man Prosa. Denn ein solches Vorgehen ermöglicht zwar eine Übersetzung, ein wirkliches Verständnis der Texte bleibt den Schülern aber verwehrt, da ihnen die Wirkung des Metrums, der Einschnitte, der Betonung bestimmter Positionen im Vers und nicht zuletzt ästhetische Aspekte verborgen bleiben oder allenfalls indirekt durch den metrischen Vortrag des Lehrers oder eine stilistische Analyse erschlossen werden. -/- Der vorliegende Band widmet sich daher grundlegenden Fragen zum Thema lateinischer und griechischer Prosodie und Metrik im Unterricht unter Einbeziehung der Lehrpläne und einer Befragung von Lehrkräften. Daneben finden sich Praxisbeispiele zu Catull, Ovid, Terenz und Homer, Überlegungen zur Beziehung von Musik und Metrik sowie eine Anregung zum Dichten in lateinischer Sprache. -/- Mit Beiträgen von: Gregor Bitto, John Bulwer, Fabiola Dengler, Boris Dunsch, Magnus Frisch, Hans-Joachim Glücklich, Christoph Kugelmeier, Immanuel Musäus, Jens Pickenhan, Anna Elissa Radke, Wolfgang Schoedel, Katharina Waack-Erdmann und Heike Wolf. (shrink)

The requirement that animals be used in research and testing in order to protect humans was formalized in the Nuremberg Code and subsequent national and international laws, codes, and declarations. We review the history of these requirements and contrast what was known via science about animal models then with what is known now. We further analyze the predictive value of animal models when used as test subjects for human response to drugs and disease. We explore the use of animals for (...) models in toxicity testing as an example of the problem with using animal models. We conclude that the requirements for animal testing found in the Nuremberg Code were based on scientifically outdated principles, compromised by people with a vested interest in animal experimentation, serve no useful function, increase the cost of drug development, and prevent otherwise safe and efficacious drugs and therapies from being implemented. (shrink)

Animals can be used in many ways in science and scientific research. Given that society values sentient animals and that basic research is not goal oriented, the question is raised.

The current use of animals to test for potential teratogenic effects of drugs and other chemicals dates back to the thalidomide disaster of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Controversy surrounds the following questions: 1. What was known about placental transfer of drugs when thalidomide was developed? 2. Was thalidomide tested on animals for teratogenicity prior to its release? 3. Would more animal testing have prevented the thalidomide disaster? 4. What lessons should be learned from the thalidomide disaster regarding animal (...) testing for teratogenicity? We review the literature in order to address these questions. (shrink)

It is one of the central aims of the philosophy of science to elucidate the meanings of scientific terms and also to think critically about their application. The focus of this essay is the scientific term predict and whether there is credible evidence that animal models, especially in toxicology and pathophysiology, can be used to predict human outcomes. Whether animals can be used to predict human response to drugs and other chemicals is apparently a contentious issue. However, when one empirically (...) analyzes animal models using scientific tools they fall far short of being able to predict human responses. This is not surprising considering what we have learned from fields such evolutionary and developmental biology, gene regulation and expression, epigenetics, complexity theory, and comparative genomics. (shrink)

Dear Editor,The April 2014 issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics [1] presented eight essays regarding the use of nonhuman animals in biomedical research. While I appreciate the essays concerning contemporary research—which were well written and offered new thinking from the fields of ethics and ethology—I believe the journal, via the topics and the authors chosen, failed to communicate the most important fact regarding the current science pertinent to the use of nonhuman animals in research.The foundational reason for using chimpanzees and (...) other animals in research is their predictive value for human response to drugs and disease. This was alluded to by several of the authors when they discussed the necessity of using nonhuman animals. For example, Smith writes: “A common assumption in the selection of nonhuman animal subjects for research and the approval of research is that, if the risks of a procedure are too great for humans, and if there is a so-called scientific necessity, .. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical firms seek to fulfill their responsibilities to stakeholders by developing drugs that treat diseases. We evaluate the social and financial costs of developing new drugs relative to the realized benefits and find the industry falls short of its potential. This is primarily due to legislation-mandated reliance on animal test results in early stages of the drug development process, leading to a mere 10 percent success rate for new drugs entering human clinical trials. We cite hundreds of biomedical studies from (...) journals including Nature, Science, and the Journal of the American Medical Association to show animal modeling is ineffective, misleading to scientists, unable to prevent the development of dangerous drugs, and prone to prevent the development of useful drugs. Legislation still requires animal testing prior to human testing even though the pharmaceutical sector has better options that were unavailable when animal modeling was first mandated. We propose that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Congress should work together to abolish regulations and policies that require animal use. Doing so will benefit pharmaceutical industry stakeholders, including patients whose health depends on drugs and the many people who rely on the financial well-being of pharmaceutical firms. (shrink)

The Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy that remain of philosophical interest today. In this volume Professor Wolfsdorf undertakes the first exploration of ancient Greek philosophical conceptions of pleasure in relation to contemporary conceptions. He provides broad coverage of the ancient material, from pre-Platonic to Old Stoic treatments; and, in the contemporary period, from World War II to the present. Examination of the (...) nature of pleasure in ancient philosophy largely occurred within ethical contexts but in the contemporary period has, to a greater extent, been pursued within philosophy of mind and psychology. This divergence reflects the dominant philosophical preoccupations of the times. But Professor Wolfsdorf argues that the various treatments are complementary. Indeed, the Greeks' examinations of pleasure were incisive and their debates vigorous, and their results have enduring value for contemporary discussion. (shrink)

Concepts are basic features of rationality. Debates surrounding them have been central to the study of philosophy in the medieval and modern periods, as well as in the analytical and Continental traditions. This book studies ancient Greek approaches to the various notions of concept, exploring the early history of conceptual theory and its associated philosophical debates from the end of the archaic age to the end of antiquity. When and how did the notion of concept emerge and evolve, what (...) questions were raised by ancient philosophers in the Greco-Roman tradition about concepts, and what were the theoretical presuppositions that made the emergence of a notion of concept possible? The volume furthers our own contemporary understanding of the nature of concepts, concept formation, and concept use. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details. (shrink)

The ancient background -- Weiss and the pursuit of bodily excellence -- Huizinga and the homo ludens hypothesis -- Feezell, moderation, and irony -- The process of becoming virtuous.

The article explores Santayana's views on Greek philosophy and his evaluation of the Greek thinkers that best represent the classical mind: Heraclitus, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. His early views on Greek philosophy, traceable in the 1889 Dissertation on Lotze, were revised and formalized in "The Life of Reason", and finalized in his "Apologia pro mente sua" (1951). The principles that figure dominantly in Santayana's philosophy, materialism, scepticism, and the theory of essences, also pervade his interpretation and critical (...) treatment of Greek philosophy. For all his admiration and love of Greek philosophy, Santayana's naturalistic approach remained close to James' pragmatism. (shrink)

All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.