This paper analyses Agamben’s notion of homo sacer, showing how it should not be confined to the field of a negative critique of biopolitics. In his work, Agamben cautiously delineates a positive figure of homo sacer, whom, according to him, we all virtually are. Such figure would be able to subvert the form in which the relation between bare life and political existence has so far been both thought and lived in the West. How and when is this passage from (...) negative to positive sacredness historically accomplished for Agamben? Is such transit after all thinkable? These are the two basic questions he both unintentionally formulates and leaves undecided in his book Homo Sacer . Agamben further elaborates his investigation of biopolitics in the book he dedicates to Saint Paul, The Time That Remains . Chiesa suggests that, in this volume, the figure of homo sacer as earthly hero is transposed onto that of the messianic man. This can only be achieved by means of a detailed Christian—and more specifically Franciscan—development of the ontological notion of ‘form of life’. Problematically enough, Agamben is able to carry out a transvaluation of biopolitics only in the guise of a bio-theo-politics. (shrink)

Topology of fear : psychoanalysis, urban theory, and the space of phobia -- Pasolini and the ugliness of bodies -- Wounds of testimony and martyrs of the unconscious : Lacan and Pasolini contra the discourse of freedom -- A theater of subtractive extinction : Bene without Deleuze -- Giorgio Agamben's Franciscan ontology -- Christianity or communism? Zizek's Marxian Hegelianism and Hegelian Marxism -- The body of structural dialectic :Badiou, Lacan, and the "human animal".

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) has often been described as a ‘gothic’, if not straightforwardly ‘horror’ movie. While this claim could easily be challenged with regard to strict genre definitions, it is doubtless the case that the film deals very explicitly with fear, first and foremost the female protagonist’s fear of herself, which is placed at the top of the so-called ‘pyramid of fear’ drawn by her therapist/wanna-be-Saviour partner. My opinion is that Antichrist perfectly displays the horrific effects of the (...) direct embodiment, following a true love encounter, of the symbolic positions which Lacan associated with male and female sexuation. If human sexuality relies on the logic for which there is only one mythical man who is truly whole while every real woman is not wholly whole, what happens when He and She (the nameless protagonists of the movie) fully identify with such irreducible asymmetry between the sexes, its fundamental derailment from nature? They short-circuit the material singularity of a specific human animal with the abstract universality of gender. With the same move, they cannot overcome (or sublimate) the realisation that, in the female protagonist’s own words, woman is ‘evil’ – as long as she feels guilty of what man accuses her – and man is a ‘bastard’ – haunted by the phantasm of unifying purity which woman disrupts. Gynocide as male totalizing extermination of universal difference and genital self-mutilation as female reflexive hatred for the supposedly exceptional man mark the sadomasochistic extremes of the scene of the not-two, the frightening ob-scenity ( o-skené ), or off-representation, of human sexuality. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 163-180, September 2011.

For Badiou, Lacan is not a philosopher. He is instead a sui generis anti-philosopher. Anti-philosophy is, in a complex manner but eventually by definition, against philosophy. I intend to dispute this reading of Lacan while also profoundly sympathising with Badiou’s understanding of philosophy and acknowledging his extensive engagement with Lacan.

Poznanski's Mabo' 'al 'ofen ketibat ha-Qara'im 'et dibrey yemehem remains, despite its flaws, the only essay expressly devoted to Karaite historiography. al-Qirqisani's Kitab al-an war wal-maraqib is an historical piece of work viewed, by personal choice or owing to his own cultural development or under the historical circumstances, through theological glasses. al-Qirqisani was writing for the benefit of his own co-religionists in order to strengthen their faith. However limited his historical perspective may appear, it resolves into a public appreciation of (...) the author's party, which is founded on a recovery of the past, and which aimed to strengthen the Selbstverstandnis of a Jewish minority. It would be difficult to describe such an approach otherwise than as an attempt to historicize the past. The Kitab al-anwar appears not only as a document of the literary history of Karaism, but as an original reading of the history of Judaism, the differentiation between secular and religious being only ours. (shrink)

I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say that that [ ] which we concluded [ ] had thus far been neglected by all the commentators of the Symposium and that, for this reason, our commentary is a date in the continuation of the history of the development of the virtualities which are concealed by this dialogue. Lacan, Seminar VIII, lesson of 1 March 1961.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The World Of Desire:Lacan Between Evolutionary Biology and Psychoanalytic TheoryLorenzo Chiesa (bio)The primary aim of this paper is to analyse the biological foundations of Lacan's notion of desire as expounded in his first two Seminars (1953-1955). These works provide us with his most detailed discussion of the species-specific preconditions that allow Homo sapiens to speak and establish symbolic pacts among individuals. Despite its irreducibility to the domain of (...) animal instincts, human desire can only be adequately understood against the background of an evolutionary enquiry on the emergence of language, one that problematises both the implicit teleological assumptions of a certain Darwinism and the logical consistency of an investigation of origins. Drawing on organic and anatomical evidence endorsed by natural scientists as different as Stephen Jay Gould and Adolf Portmann, Lacan postulates a primordial biological discord between man and his environment, centred on premature birth and a subsequent disorder of the imagination, from which language and the Symbolic immanently arise.1 Desire is seen in this context as coextensive with what, especially in Seminar I, Lacan repeatedly refers to as "the world of the symbol," or "the symbolic world"—a crucial phrase, rich with philosophical implications, to which critics have not yet [End Page 200] paid sufficient attention.2 The most important point to be grasped here is that the symbolic order is a world in the sense that, in always presenting itself to man as a totality, a uni-verse, it compensates for the failure of a strictly 'natural' relationship between man as animal and his environment. Yet, in performing this function, the Symbolic also amounts to nothing other than 'human nature' tout-court.3 In other words, the Symbolic is an exceptional and to a certain extent autonomous pseudo-environment that must nevertheless be interpreted by means of biological concepts.4 For this reason, the very opposition between nature and culture is as such put into question and re-proposed at a different level.5Lacan's seminars and articles of the early to mid-1950s are usually read from the standpoint of the notions of 'empty' and 'full' speech in their relation to the Kojèvian dialectic of the recognition of desire. While not underestimating the importance of this first formulation of desire as desire of the other, I intend to dwell especially on its biological presuppositions, since Lacan will maintain them—often to the point of taking them for granted—even after abandoning the notions of 'empty' and 'full' speech. This will also enable me to show that the supposedly Hegelian Lacan of this period is already preoccupied with a materialist explanation of language and of human desire as desire for recognition, both of which are framed within the context of a virulent anti-teleological, anti-humanist, and anti-vitalist polemics.It is, however, paramount to pre-emptively specify that my new approach to Seminars I and II does not intend to deny the impasses of Lacan's early notion of desire as a desire for recognition, which I have thoroughly discussed in Subjectivity and Otherness.6 In brief, the problem with Lacan's appropriation of Kojève is that, at this stage, the mutual recognition of one's desire is identified with the subject's fully successful integration into the symbolic order. What is not sufficiently stressed in this way—yet not entirely overlooked—is the incompleteness of the latter, the fact that man's pseudo-environment presents itself as a totality only insofar as it is structurally not-all. The [End Page 201] elaboration of a meticulous theoretical distinction between need, demand, and desire carried out in Seminars IV and V, as well as a direct confrontation with the Real as the not-all of the Symbolic in Seminar VII, will later oblige Lacan to reconsider this harmonic view. By the early 1960s, full integration in the Symbolic will be explicitly regarded as impossible and the dialectic of desire will consequently be focused on the level of the subject's mapping of himself as falling onto the object of the repressed fantasy.IIAccording to Lacan, man is born prematurely, that is, with "foetalised traits,"7 which are especially... (shrink)

A philosophical examination of the treatment of logic and God in Lacan's later psychoanalytic theory. In The Not-Two, Lorenzo Chiesa examines the treatment of logic and God in Lacan's later work. Chiesa draws for the most part from Lacan's Seminars of the early 1970s, as they revolve around the axiom “There is no sexual relationship.” Chiesa provides both a close reading of Lacan's effort to formalize sexual difference as incompleteness and an assessment of its broader implications for (...) philosophical realism and materialism. Chiesa argues that “There is no sexual relationship” is for Lacan empirically and historically circumscribed by psychoanalysis, yet self-evident in our everyday lives. Lacan believed that we have sex because we love, and that love is a desire to be One in face of the absence of the sexual relationship. Love presupposes a real “not-two.” The not-two condenses the idea that our love and sex lives are dictated by the impossibility of fusing man's contradictory being with the heteros of woman as a fundamentally uncountable Other. Sexual liaisons are sustained by a transcendental logic, the so-called phallic function that attempts to overcome this impossibility. Chiesa also focuses on Lacan's critical dialogue with modern science and formal logic, as well as his dismantling of sexuality as considered by mainstream biological discourse. Developing a new logic of sexuation based on incompleteness requires the relinquishing of any alleged logos of life and any teleological evolution. For Lacan, the truth of incompleteness as approached psychoanalytically through sexuality would allow us to go further in debunking traditional onto-theology and replace it with a “para-ontology” yet to be developed. Given the truth of incompleteness, Chiesa asks, can we think such a truth in itself without turning incompleteness into another truth about truth, that is, into yet another figure of God as absolute being? (shrink)

This article tries to establish a possible dialogue between the way in which two influential contemporary theories, Roberto Esposito's biopolitical theory and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, approach racism and the constitution of Otherness. After summing up key concepts in Esposito's theory, the article lays out the very deadlock in his work, represented by his assumption of racial difference or Otherness as inscribed in the bio-logical content of human life. However, by interpreting Jewishness under Nazism in terms of ‘undead’ ‘flesh without body’, (...) Esposito himself crosses paths with the psychoanalytic approach, in so far as Lacan defined the Freudian death drive using the same term. The second part of the article is thus dedicated to the articulation of the relations between primal repression, trauma and jouissance, out of which can be derived an alternative conception of biopolitics, based on the discursive constitution of Otherness, rather than on the assumption that it is a biological fact. (shrink)

This collection provides English readers with a critical update on current debates on biopolitics in and around Italian thought. More than a decade after the publication of seminal books such as Agamben’s _Homo Sacer_ and Hardt and Negri’s _Empire_, the names of, among others, Roberto Esposito, Paolo Virno, Christian Marazzi, and Andrea Fumagalli have recently been brought to the attention of Anglophone scholars and political activists. Several authors have rightly emphasised the evanescent character of biopolitics, and the difficulty in providing (...) a definition of it that could embrace all the conflicting theories of its most celebrated critics and supporters. The present collection is structured around the basic contention that bio-economy, human nature, and Christianity are the three visible contemporary manifestations of the theoretical object/problem of biopolitics in, respectively, Italian post-workerist economics, post-Marxist philosophical anthropology, and post-structuralist ontology. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Angelaki_. (shrink)

This chapter examines the relevance of Gilles Deleuze's work for the works of Italian director Carmelo Bene. It argues that Deleuze's One Less Manifesto conceived the theatre of continuous variation, particularly Bene's theatre, as one that is initiated and sustained by subtraction. It also questions the compatibility of Deleuze's vitalist concept of subtraction with Bene's own concept of the subtractive.

La conclusione di Rosenzweig sul diverso modo dell’ebreo e del cristiano di lavorare alla «stessa opera» è una delle pagine più citate della Stella. Dio non può fare a meno di nessuno dei due. Ha dato al primo la vita eterna, accendendo nel suo cuore il fuoco della verità. Ha posto il secondo sulla via eterna, cosicché egli seguirà «fino alla fine» i raggi della sua luce. L’ebreo vede la stella, ma non i raggi. Il cristiano è destinato a vedere (...) sempre ciò che è illuminato, ma non la luce. Diverso sarà dunque il rischio, a partire dalla preghiera per quella «verità intera» che non appartiene in quanto tale né all’uno né all’altro e per questo ha bisogno di entrambi. Il cristiano che cammina «seguendo la corrente del tempo» è esposto alla triplice tentazione della spiritualizzazione del concetto di Dio, della apoteosi del concetto di uomo e della panteizzazione del concetto di mondo . L’ebreo contempla appunto nel suo cuore – ma nel suo cuore soltanto – la fedele immagine della verità. Egli si distoglie così «dalla vita nel tempo», come «la vita del tempo» si distoglie da lui. È significativo che per sottolineare il senso profondo di questo radicamento Rosenzweig ricorra ad un termine così hegeliano come la Erinnerung, che nella conclusione della Fenomenologia è la notte dell’autocoscienza nella quale lo spirito scende, ma per potersi distendere nel tempo facendone il suo tempo e dunque «la verità e la certezza del suo trono». (shrink)

A growing international movement, called educational neuroscience, aims to inform educational research, policy, and practice with neuroscience and cognitive science research. The research brings a powerful capability to directly intervene in children's biological makeup, stirring ethical questions about the very nature of child rearing, and the role of education in this process. This study argues that designing children is ethically unacceptable and presents a few case studies to highlight important ethical issues. This article focuses on a central issue—the distinction between (...) two general types of educational interventions informed by neuroscience, designing children versus raising children. These scenarios envision educational reforms that might follow in the wake of advances in understanding the biological bases of ethical behaviors. It hopes to provoke others to consider emerging ethical issues in mind, brain, and education, and to take preemptive action to protect children's right to participate in their own development. (shrink)

This article aims to provide an insight into the ecumenical work of a Hungarian Benedictine monk, Gellért Békés. First, I offer a short overview of Békés's life, who was forced into exile by the socialist regime and who spent almost half a century as Professor at the University of Saint Anselm in Rome. Next, I review Békés's publications and the main thrust of his thinking in the field of ecumenical theology. The central part of my article is devoted to the (...) presentation of his Italian monograph (Eucaristia e chiesa, 1985), which can be considered to be his most important work and in which he gives a comprehensive account of his ecumenical theology of the Eucharist, especially in the light of the Lima Document of 1982. His major contribution lies in the fact that he took into account the interrelation between the various ecumenical documents and he integrated the newly retrieved dimensions of the Eucharist. He also commented on the idea of Real Presence developed by the Lima Document in the light of Catholic doctrine. Last but not least, this article wants to contribute to the reception of Békés's thought, which has hardly begun even in his own country. (shrink)

At the time of the crisis of Christendom, we can be left with two apparently opposite attitudes: either «delusional» or «absolutist». But both seem to have in common the impossibility of thinking of Christianity beyond the limits of Christendom. Between these extremes the wise person draws another possibility in the rereading of the conciliar category of the Church's sacramentality in terms of its responsibility to all of humanity. A liturgical confirmation has been given of that through an analysis of the (...) Eucharistic Prayer; and an existential confirmation through the blending of the event of Etty Hillesum and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (shrink)

The question of the role of women in the Church, in other words, of women’s ministries, is still conditioned today, especially in the Catholic Church, by theological a priori and by anachronism. This essay aims to discuss and to point out the difficulties arising from both of these factors.

The comments in this Note are not exhaustive, but intentionally offer a path ; 4. The sacramental bond) wherein theological interpretation has a privileged place, deeply inscribed in the present commentary in regard to women’s problems and expectations in today’s Church. Although nothing certain and irrefutable emerges from the documentary evidence, in regard to women’s ministry, the situation of the Church has changed, as has the situation of women. The true sacramental bond concerns the theological understanding of ordained ministry. If (...) this bond is reconnected to its original and constitutive character of service, perhaps some of the reasons for excluding women will crumble. For there are women in the Church who continue to live and work within and for the Church. (shrink)

Sacred Landscape and Visual Culture. The Paintings of the Lower Church of the Sacro Speco at Subiaco - The purpose of this article is to investigate the emergence of landscape in visual discourses. The subject of this research is the territory of Subiaco and - more specifically - the monastery of the Sacro Speco, built on the site of St Benedict’s hermitage. It is here, in the vast decorative cycle directed by Magister Conxolus at the end of the thirteenth century, (...) that the “sacred landscape” of Subiaco is bent by the monastic community to claim its possession. Benedict is always portrayed inside his Grotto - which becomes a veritable “attribute” of the saint - and the same discourse also includes the portrayal of Chelidonia, a Benedictine hermit nun who lived between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Through the experiences of the two saints, the landscape becomes sacralised and acquires an identity value for the Benedictine community which lives there. In this context, the figures of Benedict and Chelidonia create a visual bridge to Francis and Clare, and the frescoes becomes a Benedictine response to the “Franciscan challenge”. (shrink)

The article deals with the views of the Fathers of the Church on relations between husband and wife between the end of the first century and the end of the third century, an age that is less studied in this respect, even though it offers good documentation concerning the subject. Four themes are considered: 1. adultery and separation; 2. the conjugal debt; 3. the division of tasks between husband and wife; 4. the faith life of the couple. Different opinions and (...) often original points of view are presented in regard to the lawfulness of the second marriage, the culpability of adultery, the value of sexuality in the marriage and the wife’s subordination to her husband. (shrink)

The article takes into account the recent magisterium of the Church on capital punishment and dwells on the teachings of John Paul II which the Pope expanded in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae it was the latter document that called for , changes in the typical edition of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church . The author develops his reading of the Encyclical in four sections. He first dwells on human dignity and the primary right to being - understood in the (...) light of the biblical concept of humanity in Genesis and in the New Testament - as the basis for human co-existence. The key concept is the human person as created in the image and likeness of God. That image, though wounded by sin, has been redeemed by Christ and restored to communion with God and with others. It is Christ himself who enables the individual to live according to humanity's ratio essendi, to respect the dignity of others and to foster their inalienable right to be. The author then shows how the Christian understanding of justice is broader than that of'retributive' or 'vindictive' justice; believers can comprehend justice in close union with the commandment of love. The article draws the conclusion that, since the death penalty challenges God's sovereignty on the being of human individuals, it must be contrary to natural law. If capital punishment cannot be a case for vindictive justice, it cannot even be interpreted as legitimate self-defence. (shrink)

Il saggio discute la lettura proposta da Francesco Novati della figura di san Francesco d’Assisi, a partire dalla interpretazione di quelle di Dante e Giotto. Alla luce dei rapporti con Gabriele d’Annunzio, la lettura novatiana di Francesco rivela una prospettiva che tende a offrire una visione estetizzante, dannunziana e decadente, immagine della modernità e non sempre aderente al messaggio originario. In questo modo Francesco diviene sostenitore di un progetto di riforma interno alla Chiesa che, con spirito dannunziano, supera il (...) dualismo tra materia e spirito per arrivare quasi a un elogio dell’immanenza. Attraverso una sorta di mitizzazione della figura di Francesco, Novati parla del proprio tempo più che di un personaggio vissuto nel passato. The essay discusses Francesco Novati’s reading of the figure of St. Francis of Assisi, starting from the interpretation of those of Dante and Giotto. In the light of the relationship with Gabriele d’Annunzio, the Novati’s reading of St. Francis reveals a perspective that tends to offer an aestheticising view, which is “dannuntian” and decadent, image of modernity that not always adheres to the original message. In this way, St. Francis purposes an inside reform project of the Church, which, with a “dannuntian” spirit, goes beyond the matter-spirit dualism in order to arrive almost to a praise of the immanence. Through such a mythologisation of the figure of St. Francis, Novati talks about his own time more than about a man who lived in the past. (shrink)

La Cappella Carafa di Santa Severina, nella chiesa di San Domenico Maggiore a Napoli, era uno dei luoghi preferiti della giovinezza di Giordano Bruno. La sua struttura, che ricorda il teatro di Giulio Camillo, e la presenza di trenta simboli astrologici scolpiti sugli archi, la rendono la “stanza della memoria” ideale per l’applicazione dell’innovativa arte della memoria sviluppata dal filosofo Nolano. -/- The ‘memory place’ of Giordano Bruno. The Carafa of Santa Severina Chapel in the church of San Domenico (...) Maggiore, Naples, was one of the favourite places of Giordano Bruno’s youth. Its structure, similar to that of Giulio Camillo’s theatre, and the presence of thirty astrological symbols carved on the arches, make it the ideal ‘memory place’ for the application of the innovative ‘art of memory’ developed by the philosopher. (shrink)

This groundbreaking volume highlights the contemporary relevance of Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), whose linguistic reworking of Freudian analysis radicalized both psychoanalysis and its approach to theology. Part I: Lacan, Religion, and Others explores the application of Lacan's thought to the phenomena of religion. Part II: Theology and the Other Lacan explores and develops theology in light of Lacan. In both cases, a central place is given to Lacan's exposition of the real, thereby reflecting the impact of his later work. Contributors include (...) some of the most renowned readers and influential academics in their respective fields: Tina Beattie, Lorenzo Chiesa, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, Adrian Johnston, Katerina Kolozova, Thomas Lynch, Marcus Pound, Carl Raschke, Kenneth Reinhard, Mario D'Amato, Noelle Vahanian, and Slavoj Žižek. Topics traverse culture, art, philosophy, and politics, as well as providing critical exegesis of Lacan's most gnomic utterances on theology, including "The Triumph of Religion."--Back cover. (shrink)

Any author should be happy when commentators on a long book discuss it thoroughly, raise important issues, and show their sensitivity to its main themes. So I want to begin with thanks to Isaac Levi, Peter Machamer, Richard Miller and Dudley Shapere. This is not, of course, to register agreement with all their criticisms. Indeed, that would be impossible, for their perspectives are so varied as to resist integration into a consistent synthesis. Nevertheless, each of them poses problems that my (...) approach to the growth of scientific knowledge must address, and I believe that the combination of their essays greatly advances the discussion. (shrink)

In verse twelve of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu makes a curious claim about the five flavors; namely that they cause people not to taste or that they jade the palate. The five flavors are: sweet, sour, salt, bitter and spicy or hot as in 'heat'. To the Western mind, the claim, 'The five flavors cause them [persons] to not taste,' is counterintuitive; on the contrary, the presence of the five flavors in a dish or in a meal would (...) expand or enhance the senses and the palate, i.e., taste would be augmented by the five flavors. So what is the plausible meaning of the Taoistic claim? To answer this question, I look very briefly at the history of the doctrine of the five flavors and the history of Chinese cuisine. Lao Tzu probably has Confucian feasts in mind in making such a claim, but other interpretations are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Galileo: For Copemicanism and for the Church. By ANNIBALE FANTOLI. Translated by George V. Coyne, S.J. Studi Galileiani Vol. 3. Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1994. Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. Pp. xix+ 540. $21.95 (paper). This exhaustive treatment of Galileo and his relationship to the Church was first published in Italian by the Vatican Observatory in 1993 as Vol. 2 (...) of its Studi Galileiani series, bearing the title Galileo: Per il Copemicanesimo e per la Chiesa. So excellent was the study that Father George Coyne, the director of the Vatican Observatory, took it on himself personally to translate the volume into English. Although not a member of the Galileo Commission set up by Pope John Paul II to review the Galileo case, as were Coyne and myself, Fantoli has admirably complemented the work of the Commission and his book surely belongs in the Studi Galileiani collection. A former Jesuit with degrees in mathematics and physics, Fantoli began the book more than twenty-five years ago when he was preparing a course on Galileo at Sophia University in Tokyo. His intention was to show that for Galileo it was never a question of choosing between Copernicanism and the Church, and that the saddest drama of his life was being faced with an injunction that forced him to befor the Church and against Copemicanism. The subtitle of his book proclaims Galileo's true intentions, despite his failure to convince others that this was what his life was all about. A great strength of Fantoli's treatment is its documentation, which abounds in excerpts from Galileo's writings and his correspondence as found in the National Edition of his works and also in citations from new materials that have been uncovered by the Galileo Commission. Thanks to Coyne, all of these texts, many of which were hitherto available only in Latin or Italian, can now be easily accessed in English translation. Another strength of Fantoli's work is that he has kept abreast of Galileo literature over the years and thus is able to offer scholarly critiques of authors whose works exhibit a bias against the Church. Especially welcome are his careful discussions of the positions of earlier writers such as Giorgio de Santillana, Ludovico Geymonat, and Stillman Drake, as well as those of more recent authors, Mario Biagioli, Maurice Finocchiaro, Pietro Redondi, William R. Shea, and Richard S. Westfall. The book is a tour de force and there is little to criticize in it. Unfortunately, however, a typesetting error at its very beginning might create 317 318 BOOK REVIEWS the wrong impression and throw off prospective readers. About six lines of text were omitted at the bottom of page 9. To remedy this the following words should be inserted between the end of page 9 and the beginning of page 10: confused with the Sun) which had heen worked out by Philolaus (about 475 B.C.) within the context of the Pythagorean school.9 In a further modification of this theory the central fire as well as the hypothesis of an anti-earth were done away with, which left the earth at the center of the universe. To offset this addition, the last six lines on the bottom of page 10 should be deleted, for these lines are repeated at the top of page 11. Otherwise, with this change, the exposition reads correctly. The remaining typographical errors are few and in no case do they affect the sense. After a brief introduction in which he presents the astronomical concepts necessary for understanding the details of the Copernican debate, Fantoli divides his treatment into seven chapters. The first two of these are devoted to Galileo's early life and teaching at the Universities of Pisa and Padua, his perfection of the telescope, and the beginnings of the controversies about the earth's motion that were provoked by his telescopic discoveries, The next three chapters then take up the scriptural arguments in detail, Galileo's battle with the Jesuits over the comets of 1618 and his The Assayer of 1623, and his resumption of the Copernican program with the publication of his Dialogue... (shrink)