In this essay, I discuss how Jean-Luc Nancy understands the nature or logic of philosophy in relation to literature by drawing on his early readings of Plato. Through an analysis of the notions of interpretation and dialogue, Nancy comes to understand this relationship in terms of shared difference, or partage. I argue that philosophy therefore operates according to a poetic logic that allows it to move between being and nonbeing. This movement, which Derrida calls play and Nancy understands as the (...) act of being, is the object of philosophy. Its task is then the staging of play: showing how logos, meaning or being, displaces itself in establishing itself. Insofar as Nancy articulates this through readings of Plato, he is part of a larger trend within contemporary French thought that performs an overturning of Platonism by means of Plato. For Nancy, this first and foremost means welcoming back the poets after Socrates banished them. (shrink)

Cook et al. overstate the evidence supporting their associative account of mirror neurons in humans: most studies do not address a key property, action-specificity that generalizes across the visual and motor domains. Multivariate pattern analysis of neuroimaging data can address this concern, and we illustrate how MVPA can be used to test key predictions of their account.

Seit 1923 erscheinen in der Sammlung Tusculum ma gebende Editionen griechischer und lateinischer Werke mit deutscher bersetzung. Die Originaltexte werden zudem eingeleitet und umfassend kommentiert; nach der neuen Konzeption bieten schlie lich thematische Essays tiefere Einblicke in das Werk, seinen historischen Kontext und sein Nachleben. Die hohe wissenschaftliche Qualit t der Ausgaben, gepaart mit dem leserfreundlichen Sprachstil der Einf hrungs- und Kommentarteile, macht jeden Tusculum-Band zu einer fundamentalen Lekt re nicht nur f r Studierende, die sich zum ersten Mal einem (...) antiken Autor n hern, und f r Wissenschaftler, die spezifische Aspekte eines Werkes vertiefen m chten, sondern f r alle, die sich durch vertrauensw rdige bersetzungen einen Zugang zur Antiken Welt verschaffen wollen. In der Reihe wurden bisher ber 270 Titel publiziert, alle erh ltlich als Buch und eBook. Dadruch werden bislang vergriffene Titel und Rarit ten wieder vollst ndig verf gbar gemacht. Zus tzlich zu der Buchreihe erscheint bei De Gruyter zum 90-j hrigen Jubil um das eBook-PaketTusculum Online, eine digitale Sammlung aller von 1923 bis 2013 erschienenen Titel -eine geb hrende W rdigung eines wichtigen St cks deutscher Verlagsgeschichte. Mehr Informationen rund um Tusculum erhalten Sie unter: www.degruyter.com/tusculum. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s shared understanding of faith by providing a phenomenology of faith. This is accomplished by applying Nancy’s conception of experience to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, of which this paper thus offers a phenomenological reading in order to analyse the experience of faith its pseudonymous author relates. In doing so, however, we will discover that faith belongs to a realm of experience that is more fundamental than, and thus takes priority over, the (...) lived-experience of classical phenomenology: it is an experience of life as a whole that as such forms the basis on which things are subsequently lived in experience. Faith is therefore held up as the prime example of the phenomenologically primary sense of “experience”: namely, the experience in which a life lived consists, the experience of undergoing life itself; the experience that, as Nancy puts it enigmatically, is existence. Since classical phenomenology fails to think this experience that makes its lived-experiences possible, the paper suggests that phenomenology should turn itself into poetics: namely, a discourse on the creative forms of life that constitute all lived-experiences. To that end, the paper proceeds in four steps: the first step consists in an exposition of the phenomenological framework used ; the second and third steps consist in applications of said framework to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith; the fourth and final step draws on Nancy to spell out the consequences of the preceding analysis. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s shared understanding of faith by providing a phenomenology of faith. This is accomplished by applying Nancy’s conception of experience to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, of which this paper thus offers a phenomenological reading in order to analyse the experience of faith its pseudonymous author relates. In doing so, however, we will discover that faith belongs to a realm of experience that is more fundamental than, and thus takes priority over, the (...) lived-experience of classical phenomenology: it is an experience of life as a whole that as such forms the basis on which things are subsequently lived in experience. Faith is therefore held up as the prime example of the phenomenologically primary sense of “experience”: namely, the experience in which a life lived consists, the experience of undergoing life itself; the experience that, as Nancy puts it enigmatically, is existence. Since classical phenomenology fails to think this experience that makes its lived-experiences possible, the paper suggests that phenomenology should turn itself into poetics: namely, a discourse on the creative forms of life that constitute all lived-experiences. To that end, the paper proceeds in four steps: the first step consists in an exposition of the phenomenological framework used ; the second and third steps consist in applications of said framework to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith; the fourth and final step draws on Nancy to spell out the consequences of the preceding analysis. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s shared understanding of faith by providing a phenomenology of faith. This is accomplished by applying Nancy’s conception of experience to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, of which this paper thus offers a phenomenological reading in order to analyse the experience of faith its pseudonymous author relates. In doing so, however, we will discover that faith belongs to a realm of experience that is more fundamental than, and thus takes priority over, the (...) lived-experience of classical phenomenology: it is an experience of life as a whole that as such forms the basis on which things are subsequently lived in experience. Faith is therefore held up as the prime example of the phenomenologically primary sense of “experience”: namely, the experience in which a life lived consists, the experience of undergoing life itself; the experience that, as Nancy puts it enigmatically, is existence. Since classical phenomenology fails to think this experience that makes its lived-experiences possible, the paper suggests that phenomenology should turn itself into poetics: namely, a discourse on the creative forms of life that constitute all lived-experiences. To that end, the paper proceeds in four steps: the first step consists in an exposition of the phenomenological framework used ; the second and third steps consist in applications of said framework to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith; the fourth and final step draws on Nancy to spell out the consequences of the preceding analysis. (shrink)

The question of the body spans across the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, from Noli me tangere, to Corpus and Jacques Derrida’s dialogue with Nancy in On Touching. In constant conversation with Christianity (“This is my body” or Dis-Enclosure), corporeality in Nancy can be summarised using the figure of the “exposed body (corps ex-peausé)”: a demonstration of the surface of the skin (peau) and an exposition of the self to the other in the sense of a “staging” (Corpus). In my work, (...) the concept of the “spread body,” situated between Descartes’ “extended body” and Husserl’s “lived body,” is also one of a confrontation with the “This is my body” of Christianity (The Wedding Feast of the Lamb). In confronting one with the other, it is a matter of seeing how my expansion of the body, says something different than, or articulates differently, Jean-Luc Nancy’s exposition of the body, this time drawn from the biological side though nevertheless without ceasing to be intentional. It is certainly a matter of philosophy, but also of ethics, in the possibility of describing such a body, especially in the suffering situation of palliative care (Ethics of the Spread Body). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Jean-Luc Nancy’s so-called ‘deconstruction of Christianity’ is usually understood as both a philosophy of culture and a critique of metaphysics. This article, however, argues that its primary concern is neither the Christian religion as a cultural formation, nor the exhaustion of the metaphysical enterprise. Instead, by looking at some of the philosophical sources on which Nancy’s project is built – namely, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, and Martin Heidegger –, the article suggests that its true aim is to develop a (...) new understanding of reason, or to renew the experience of reason. Though these authors have largely been neglected by the growing discussion of Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity, the article shows how it is only by developing his occasional references to them that we can come to appreciate an important but neglected dimension of this project: namely, the fact that it is an exercise in philosophical anthropology, i.e. an inquiry into the exact nature of the reason that supposedly characterises the rational animal. (shrink)

The question of the body spans across the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, from Noli me tangere, to Corpus and Jacques Derrida’s dialogue with Nancy in On Touching. In constant conversation with Christianit...

Some ancient philosophers compared the world to a big animal. This was vigorously opposed by modernity – the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century –, which compared it to a machine. Today, nobo...

Arrian's account of Alexander's brief time at Ephesus (Anab. 1.17.10–12) is shot through with political and factional violence, but he nevertheless concludes that Alexander received acclaim for what he did in the city. But what did Alexander actually do at Ephesus? Arrian offers a list of events that historians have traditionally interpreted as connected to Macedonian intervention in Asia Minor before indicating that Alexander put an end to the violence. This article offers a new reading of this passage (...) by situating these events in the context of fourth-century Ephesus to show how Alexander's actions responded to the local conditions that he encountered. (shrink)

We know of several Greek translators of works originally written in Latin. Of non-Christian, purely literary material, we know of six. First, there is Claudius' powerful freedman, Polybius, who turned Homer into Latin prose and Vergil into Greek prose. Then, under Hadrian we have Zenobius ‘the sophist’, who translates Sallust'sHistoriesand “so-called Wars’. The translation into Greek of Hyginus' Fabulae can be dated precisely, for its unknown author tells us that he copied it up on 11th September 207. Similarly, the extant (...) translation of Eutropius'Breviariumby Paianios, probably a pupil of Libanius, can be dated securely to about 380. The translation of the same by Capito, which survives in excerpts, is placed with some confidence at the beginning of the sixth century. The date and identity of the last of our translators, ‘Arrian the epic poet’, who rendered theGeorgicsof Vergil, is unclear. (shrink)

There is relative agreement among modern scholars that the bulk of Arrian's literary activity came late in his life. What has become the standard theory was evolved by Eduard Schwartz, who maintained that it was only after the end of his public career that Arrian turned to writing. According to this hypothesis the Пєρίπλους of 131/ A.D. was a tentative preliminary monograph, which was followed in 136/7 by a work of similar genre, the.

Close reading of the argumentative and logical structure of Diatribe 1.4 and the means of protreptic persuasion used in it. The paper argues that Arrian represents Epictetus as using deliberately bad arguments to showcase and exemplify the audience's muddled thinking.

Arrian is regarded as the most authoritative of the extant sources for the reign of Alexander the Great. It is his work that is usually chosen to provide the narrative core of modern histories, and very often a mere reference to ‘the reliable Arrian’ is considered sufficient to guarantee the veracity of the information derived from him. What gives Arrian his prestige is his reliance on contemporary sources, Ptolemy and Aristobulus. It is recognized that Arrian's narrative (...) is based primarily upon Ptolemy, and, as long as Ptolemy is regarded as an impeccable mine of facts for Alexander's reign and Arrian's work is accepted as a faithful reproduction of Ptolemy, the Anabasis Alexandri stands out as a uniquely authoritative record of Alexander's reign. (shrink)

The evaluation of speeches in ancient histories by modern scholars is very varied. Tarn opened his discussion of ‘The speeches in Arrian’ with the following words:Speaking generally, one expects a speech in any ancient historian to be a fabrication, either composed by the historian himself or by a predecessor, or else some exercise from one of the schools or rhetoric which he had adopted.On the other hand, according to Fornara, ‘the fact does not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated (...) that the ancients unfailingly endorsed the convention that speeches must be reported accurately’. When Fornara made a generalization, he wrote as follows:The ancients had unanimously adopted the Thucydidean principle of honest reporting of the things that were said as well as the things that were done. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Vol. II. Commentary on Books IV–VPhilip A. StadterBosworth, A. B. A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Vol. II. Commentary on Books IV–V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.In books 1–3, Arrian’s Alexander rushed from the Hellespont to Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis. In books IV and V the story changes: Alexander finds himself on the frontier, and beyond. (...) No longer is he confronting the enormous armies of the Persian king in set battles, but pushing beyond the frontiers of empire, seizing impregnable heights, and most important, struggling with his own Macedonians while defining himself.Bosworth, continuing his commentary after a fifteen-year interval, brings an exceptional background of historical, source critical, and literary studies. B. notes that his evaluation is “perhaps more sympathetic” than in his first volume, in part because the quality of the work “improves as it progresses” (v). The thoroughness [End Page 140] of the discussion (360 pages on the two books) is justified by the importance and complexity of the material. The reader is well served by an excellent subject index, a Greek index, ten maps, and four figures. An appendix on Nearchus suggests that that author may have reported much more than the journey from the Indus to the Persian Gulf found in the Indike, and may be a significant source for Arrian in the last four books of the Alexander history. Like the first volume, the commentary has Greek lemmata, translated only when there is a specific difficulty, but even Greekless readers can use it with the help of Brunt’s new Loeb text.Although the commentary deals frequently with textual questions, it focuses on elucidating the historical, geographical, stylistic, and interpretative problems of the text. B. ably notes the constant verbal reminiscences of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, especially in the more elaborate passages, e.g., the speeches at the Hyphasis. Still more are undoubtedly to be found, such as the echo of Thucydides (1.110.1, 3.112.8, 87.87.6) in 5.27.6, ¹l¼goi ¨k poll©n. His elucidation of Arrian’s use of Megasthenes, Nearchus, and Eratosthenes in the digressions at the beginning of book 5 is a model of clarity and precision. Here as elsewhere he stresses Arrian’s purposeful blending of his sources: e.g., on 5.6.3–8: “It is an elaborately contrived passage, and the source material is carefully selected to fit the scheme of the argument. Arrian is not merely rewriting a passage of Eratosthenes.” Throughout, his comments on sources are precise and thoughtful.B.’s notes follow wherever the text leads, but he devotes special attention to the major focuses of Arrian’s attention: the great digression on Alexander’s orientalism, the murder of Cleitus, proskunesis, and the page’s conspiracy (4.7.4–14.4 5 45–101), the march to the Indus, with the siege of Massaga and the capture of Aornus (4.22.3–30.9 5 141–96), the series of digressions which begin book 5, (5.1.1–8.1 5 197–259), the battle on the Hydaspes against Porus (5.8.4–19.4 5 262–311), and the mutiny on the Hyphasis (5.24.8–29.5 5 337–60).Bosworth’s commentary on book 5 encompasses the multiple levels of the narrative: the reworking of Eratosthenes, Megasthenes, and Nearchus in the preliminary section; the topographical and tactical problems of the battle with Porus, and the rhetorical and stylistic subtleties of the debate at the Hyphasis. Throughout the book, Arrian shows Alexander going beyond his predecessors. By crossing the Indus he passes the limits of the Persian Empire. At Nysa he surpasses the mythical conquests of Dionysus (5.2.1). The digression on the Indus bridges recalls the bridges (and defeats) of Xerxes and Darius, as well as Roman imperial engineering (5.7.1–2). The crossing of the Hydaspes and great battle contrast with Cyrus’ disastrous battle with the Massagetae in Herodotus 1.204–14 (cf. 5.4.5). The description of the river systems of the Punjab (5.4.1–2) evokes Herodotus’ account... (shrink)

In a recent article Professor Brunt has made an eloquent plea for greater rigour in handling the remains of non-extant authors. When the original is lost and we depend I upon quotation, paraphrase or mere citation by later authorities, we must first establish the reliability of the source which supplies the fragment. There is obviously a world of difference between the long verbal quotations in Athenaeus and the disjointed epitomes provided by the periochae of Livy. As a general rule, the (...) fuller and more explicit the reproduction in the secondary source, the more confident we can be that it approximates to the original. Our doubts should increase as the references become less precise and resort to paraphrase rather than direct quotation. The wider context is also important. One always needs to know why the secondary author is making his citation and what interest he has in a strictly literal reproduction. These principles are unexceptionable, but they are difficult to maintain in practice. One rarely has the opportunity to make a sustained experiment, checking an author's techniques' of quotation and digest against sources which are now extant. As a result the historian all too often feels constrained to squeeze the last drop of meaning out of testimonia which are by their very nature imprecise. The standard work, Jacoby's Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, is a pitfall for the unwary. It presents all citations, whether full quotations or the vaguest of references, on the same status as ‘fragments’; and the context is necessarily reduced to the barest minimum, so that the reader's attention is focussed directly upon the lost original and diverted from the machinery of transmission. (shrink)

Arrian was better qualified to understand the nature and significance of ‘the pursuit’ in Macedonian warfare than any modern scholar. He had himself fought and commanded in a very similar kind of warfare, and he was keenly interested in the study of military tactics. He was also better informed about the pursuits which Alexander had conducted, because he was able to use the accounts of Alexander's contemporaries, Ptolemy and Aristobulus. Anyone today who wishes to question the veracity of (...) class='Hi'>Arrian's reports of these pursuits cannot do so of his own experience. He should therefore turn to comparable pursuits of recent times which have been reported accurately beyond any shadow of doubt. (shrink)

Alexander’s announcement that he was discharging those soldiers whom he considered no longer fit for service led to the “mutiny at Opis” (324 b.c.e.). According to the manuscripts of Arrian’s Anabasis, Alexander also said that he would richly reward those soldiers who were to remain in Asia (μένουσιν, 7.8.1). However, scholars have questioned this reading, and many editions emend the text here. The issue raises significant questions about the actions of Alexander and his Macedonian troops. I aim to show (...) that there is no need for emendation, and that the manuscript reading (“those who stay”) is most likely correct. In addition, it reveals both a sophisticated intertextual allusion and a nuanced reading of the historical situation on Arrian’s part. (shrink)