With Shakespeare's Physic, John Crawford Adams joins that group of physicians so fascinated by the medical aspects of Shakespeare that they cannot resist a foray into medical and literary history. Adams follows men like R. R. Simpson, whose Shakespeare and Medicine was until recently the best book available on the subject. Like Simpson, Adams is not a historian, nor is he a literary critic, and like Simpson's book, Shakespeare's Physic has consequent strengths and deficiencies.To be sure, Adams's book has a (...) charming energy. He quotes widely and admiringly from Shakespeare's work and demonstrates considerable reading in medical history. His training in medicine, moreover, allows him to provide an interesting modern perspective on the illnesses that would have afflicted Shakespeare's contemporaries. Additionally, Adams, as neither a historian nor a literary critic, does not get bogged down in theory or minutiae, and so the book is accessible to nonspecialists.Often, however, one wishes Adams had been a historian so that he might have been more scrupulous in his work, for the lack of historical rigor here seriously detracts from the book's usefulness. Aside from quotations from Shakespeare, and notwithstanding the brief bibliography that is included, Adams fails to cite any of his sources. We have no way of directly checking his facts, and there is no way to build on his work.Moreover, if Adams had been more attentive to citing evidence for his claims, he might have more easily noticed when those claims were questionable. The bacterium that causes the plague, for example, is now properly called Yersinia pestis, not Pasteurella pestis, as Adams has it . More significantly, Adams's suggestion that madness was understood almost exclusively as a result of demonic possession and that it was treated only by exorcism is clearly incorrect . Richard Napier's early modern practice frequently employed physical treatments for madness since some forms of madness, including melancholy, were thought to proceed from the same sorts of humoral imbalances that were held to produce other maladies . Moreover, Winfried Schleiner has discussed the therapeutic uses of illusion in the period and links that mode of treatment to several Shakespeare plays . David Hoeniger has shown how Shakespeare demonstrates knowledge of the early modern use of music as treatment for mental illness .Also troubling is Adams's unscholarly tendency to assume that the medical aspects of Shakespeare's theater “must generally have been an accurate reflection of the world as it existed outside” . Similarly, Adams repeatedly assumes that characters speaking on medical and spiritual matters must be voicing Shakespeare's own particular philosophy. Literary scholars now acknowledge that such claims are unreliable, if not naive. Malvolio in Twelfth Night, for example, firmly rejects the Pythagorean notion of metempsychosis or reincarnation; Feste, in the same play, insists that it is true; Graziano in The Merchant of Venice has thought it false but is tempted by Shylock's wolfish temperament to believe it. Which is the view of the general public? Which is Shakespeare's? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sick with PassionAlfred LouchOpera: Desire, Disease, Death, by Linda and Michael Hutcheon; xvi & 294 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996, $40.00.IDriving east from the Auvergne you may chance upon La Chaise-Dieu, a charming village where a very acceptable cafe confronts the fortress-like Abbatiale de St Robert across the village square. The church itself is an imposing monument to the ephemeral glory of the Avignon Pope Clement VI, (...) but its most extraordinary feature is a fresco in the aisle to the left of the choir. Called the Danse Macabre, it depicts death as a sequence of skeletons, each of which beckons, pleads with, consoles, or compels its many victims—young and old, rich and poor, exalted or mean—toward their inevitable end. At times the skeleton’s posture is sinister and threatening, at others, as with children, it seems to turn away, as if to shield them from its fearful aspect. The skeletons seem to catch the movement of a single dancer as they select one partner after another, taking the life of each in a graceful though ghastly movement.The fresco depicts the Black Death—art inspired by disease and contagion. But even if you were as innocent of history as the typical American tourists you would confront in the fresco the undeniable image of death, and the caprice of its visitation, a thought contrasting strangely with the enduring granite of the church. Your experience may be enriched by history and lead you to moralize on the contrast [End Page 155] between the pomp and grandeur of the papal builder and the fresco’s depiction of the vanity of human wishes. But it would be a jarring note if some know-it-all in the company of viewers were to lecture for all to hear on the transmission and symptoms of pasteurella pestis. That is another story, and an interesting one, but not here and now.And so it is, if not so abrasively, with a recent book by Linda and Michael Hutcheon on desire, disease, and death in opera. They hope to shed new light, by combining literary analysis and the medical theory of disease and contagion, on the themes and purposes of opera, or certain operas anyway. Somehow the passages on mycobacterium tuberculosis, treponema pallidum, and vibrio cholerae, together with graphic descriptions of the symptoms caused by these micro-organisms, and an accompanying photograph of syphilitic gummæ seem intrusive, just as talk about the etiology and the pathology of the plague strikes a discordant note as we look upon the Danse Macabre in wonder and fear. The Hutcheons, a husband and wife team who practice, respectively, medicine and literary criticism, tell the reader they are opera lovers. I hope their affection is not prompted only by infection.But why shouldn’t medicine and its history be relevant to literary, artistic, or musical creation? Think here of a question Wittgenstein asks in Zettel (paragraph 610): “Why should there not be a psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity corresponds? If this upsets our concept of causality then it is high time it was upset.” He did not mean to say that it would not be surprising if someone talked and acted and looked like a person but turned out to have an empty skull. But he did mean surely that talk about human projects and emotions is complete as it stands; what is going on in the neurons and what busy microbes are doing are other stories. Literature is about human projects, the skill or clumsiness with which they are pursued, the responses to success and failure, achievement and frustration. Opera, which, ever since someone had the idea of putting story to song, raided literary invention for its subject matter, is the same. Heroes and villains may of course be expected to be vulnerable to the various vicissitudes of life. Diseases may lay them low, as well as passing trains. But disease enters their stories to delay or frustrate or put period to their projects, not as new characters on the stage. If you read about the death of Ivan Illych and come away dissatisfied because Tolstoy failed to identify the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arms and the Man:Wordplay and the Catasterism of Chiron in Ovid Fasti 5Barbara Weiden BoydIn a recent essay, Ian Brookes has drawn attention to the way in which Ovid's description of the catasterism of Chiron in Fasti 5 "suppresses Chiron's hybrid nature" as centaur "in order to allow us to sympathize with him as a fellow human."1 Brookes also directs us to the ironic ambiguity used by Ovid to (...) portray the episode's three main characters, Chiron, Achilles, and Hercules, each of whose histories, as alluded to by Ovid, shares with or borrows from the mythical histories of the other two characters.2 Thus, the wordplay associating Chiron's name with the Latin manus (as if derived from ), an etymological link already discussed by Santini (1976, 49-56), is demonstrated by Brookes to point instead here to the character of Achilles, whose "man-slaying hands" () are known from Iliad 18.317 and 24.478-79; the arrow wound in the left foot here fatal to Chiron is suggestive of Achilles' vulnerable heel; and the poison here responsible for Chiron's death is the same poison that Deianira will one day use to kill Hercules.3I want in the following discussion to extend the line of argument begun by Brookes through a fuller consideration of Ovid's exploitation of shared motifs in the mythical histories of each of these characters, and to focus in particular on the important role of wordplay, of a sort not previously observed, in the episode. My reading, while demonstrating that Brookes has made a valuable start on the literary analysis of the passage as a whole, will reach a somewhat different conclusion and suggest that Ovid's narrative intentionally subverts the superficial solemnity of the story told.It will be useful to begin with a full quotation of the episode (Fast. 5.379-414): [End Page 67] Nocte minus quarta promet sua sidera Chiron380 semivir et flavi corpore mixtus equi. Pelion Haemoniae mons est obversus in Austros: summa virent pinu, cetera quercus habet. Phillyrides tenuit: saxo stant antra vetusto, quae iustum memorant incoluisse senem.385 ille manus olim missuras Hectora leto creditur in lyricis detinuisse modis. venerat Alcides exhausta parte laborum, iussaque restabant ultima paene viro. stare simul casu Troiae duo fata videres:390 hinc puer Aeacides, hinc Iove natus erat. excipit hospitio iuvenem Philyreius heros, et causam adventus hic rogat, ille docet. respicit interea clavam spoliumque leonis, 'vir' que ait 'his armis, armaque digna viro!'395 nec se, quin horrens auderent tangere saetis vellus, Achilleae continuere manus. dumque senex tractat squalentia tela venenis, excidit et laevo fixa sagitta pede est. ingemuit Chiron, traxitque e corpore ferrum:400 adgemit Alcides Haemoniusque puer. ipse tamen lectas Pagasaeis collibus herbas temperat et varia volnera mulcet ope; virus edax superabat opem, penitusque recepta ossibus et toto corpore pestis erat:405 sanguine Centauri Lernaeae sanguis echidnae mixtus ad auxilium tempora nulla dabat. stabat, ut ante patrem, lacrimis perfusus Achilles: sic flendus Peleus, si moreretur, erat. saepe manus aegras manibus fingebat amicis:410 morum, quos fecit, praemia doctor habet. oscula saepe dedit, dixit quoque saepe iacenti 'vive, precor, nec me, care, relinque, pater.' nona dies aderat, cum tu, iustissime Chiron, bis septem stellis corpora cinctus eras.I have discussed elsewhere4 Ovid's effective use of second-person address to the reader at Fasti 5.389 to draw attention to the novelty of his narrative: this is the only extended narrative in the extant literary tradition [End Page 68] in which Achilles and Hercules actually meet as a result of their mutual acquaintance with Chiron. This meeting is, as Brookes (1994, 496) has observed, "something of a coup": only the most elastic of relative mythological chronologies could permit this meeting to occur. I propose that in fact we take Ovid's videres, appearing immediately after Ovid has set the scene by describing the landscape (379-82) and by introducing each of his three protagonists in three successive couplets (383-88), as an invitation to scrutinize carefully the play with characterization thus made possible, a play signaled first and foremost in this episode through Ovid's use of the epithet semivir (380) to describe... (shrink)

Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein as Being-in-the-world suggests a natural relation to environmental philosophy. Among environmentalists, however, closer inspection must raise alarm, both since Heidegger’s approach is in some senses inescapably anthropocentric and since Dasein discovers its environment through its usability, serviceability, and accessibility. Yet Heidegger does not simply adopt a traditionally modern, instrumental view. The conditions under which the environment appears imply neither that the environment consists only of tools, nor that what is true of the parts is also true (...) of the whole, nor that an orientation to use—where appropriate—precludes any other orientation. Heidegger’s anthropocentric commitments thus do not rule out the possibility of a non-instrumental perspective on the natural world. (shrink)

Human-eyelid conditioning was the principal source of information on Pavlovian conditioning, especially human, in the 1950s and 1960s, but it suffered a sharp decline in productivity, beginning in the late 1960s. The present article treats the decline as a case study with potential implications concerning the survival contingencies of research specialties. We make use of questionnaire data from eyelid-conditioning researchers and examine a variety of publication, topic-of-investigation, and institutional data to identify the major factors in the decline of human-eyelid conditioning.

A brief presentation of the major conclusions contained in the recently published monograph entitled "The Ascent to Law: Searches and Solutions," written over a period of many years. Chapter headings are: The law - an objective reality. The dogma of the law. The drama of scholarship. Searching. "The entire" substance of the law. Juridical constructs. The logic of laws. The secret of the law. Law - the highest purpose. Law in the life and fate of mankind.

Материалы конференции предназначены для специалистов.

Louis Frédéric Ancillon was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Belles Lettres whose imagined dialogue between Berkeley and Hume was read to the Academy in 1796 and published in 1799. It is important as an indicator of the reception of Hume and Berkeley in francophone philosophical circles in late eighteenth-century Prussia. Our introduction is followed by an English translation with notes.

This collection engages the work of Michael Oakeshott predominantly on the themes of his skepticism, politics, and aesthetics. An international set of authors engages and expands the analysis of Oakeshott’s writings in often neglected areas and topics and in ways that brings Oakeshott into conversation with a surprisingly diverse set of thinkers.

This review essay on R. Melvin Keiser's Roots of Relational Ethics: Responsibility in Origin and Maturity in H. Richard Niebuhr surveys selected works about Niebuhr, examines the strengths of Keiser's post-critical treatment of Niebuhr and raises questions about Keiser's views and about Niebuhr.

Hegel attempts both to give evil its metaphysical due and to give it intelligibility within a processive idealistic system. To accomplish these ends, he consistently employs the contrast between the natural and the free act of the subject and the contrast between the particular and the universal. He places these contrasts within the situation of an original and presupposed unity of spirit that itself is the ground of the mediation required for thinking freedom, for evil, and for ultimate reconciliation. He (...) argues for evil’s ultimate intelligibility in terms of its necessity as a consequent moment in the development of spirit from its ground; he resolves problems of evil’s penultimate irrationality in terms of its unstable contradictory elements in spirit’s history which is not yet fully concrete, a simultaneity of “ought to be” and “ought not to be” in the sense that the instability must be surpassed but not that it should never have been. The aims of this paper will be to summarize and evaluate Hegel’s efforts to give evil both significance and intelligibility within his system and to estimate if a system of progressive idealism contributes a philosophically new dimension to the problem of evil in a universe. (shrink)

Работа предназначена для ученых и специалистов, преподавателей, аспирантов, слушателей, студентов, а также всех интересующихся рассматриваемой темой.

A. P. Martinich has been perhaps the most prolific and influential contributor to a general understanding of Hobbes over the last three decades, producing a much-admired Hobbes biography, a volume introducing Hobbes's entire philosophical system, another placing it in historical context, an excellent student edition of Leviathan, a magnificent Oxford handbook of Hobbes, a monograph presenting Martinich's highly original interpretation of Hobbes's political philosophy, and more than a score of papers engaging controversial aspects of Hobbes interpretation or historical interpretation generally. (...) Martinich's landmark The Two Gods of Leviathan: Religion and Politics in Hobbes's Philosophy... (shrink)

Research indicates that consumers are particularly concerned about the safety of meat. More highly processed meat is perceived as more unsafe than fresh or natural meats, i.e., consumers trust processed meat less. This paper studies the relationship between perceived trust and day-to-day purchase behavior for meat, giving special attention to the degree of meat processing. Controlling for trust in food chain actors and demographic and socio-economic variables, actual meat purchases of Canadian households are linked to answers from a commissioned food (...) attitudes survey completed by the same households. Expenditures for processed and total meat (but not for fresh meat) are significantly different by three levels of trust in the food industry. Consumer with the lowest trust levels consume less (especially of processed meat) compared to those with higher trust levels. However, in a multivariate setting, trust shows no effect on fresh or processed meat purchases with or without demographic and socio-economic control variables, suggesting that the impact of trust on meat purchases is only small. However, the low trusting consumer segment could potentially be a target for marketing strategies focused on reputation and quality to increase sales in this particular group. (shrink)

In these notes it will be argued that our text of Cicero's Philippics may be improved in nearly a score passages by printing manuscript readings that editors have repeatedly spurned. If my detailed arguments are accepted, this article will have also a wider import, serving as a reminder that when a manuscript tradition is bifid both branches should be taken seriously, even if one branch is in general more corrupt than the other, and showing how modern technology may be harnassed (...) as a powerful aid in the study of Cicero's idiom. (shrink)

Since the publication of my critical edition in 1889 the Tristia of Ovid has received some attention. A paper in Hermathena, vol. vii. by Professor R. Ellis contains several conjectural emendations, and in a public lecture on The Second Book of Ovid's ‘Tristia’ , this veteran scholar analysed the intricate contents of Book II. Two learned pamphlets by Dr. R. Ehwald, Ad historiam carminum Ouidianorum recensionemque symbolae deal with the history of the text, and the textual criticism and interpretation generally. (...) Dr. Paul Vogel's Kritische und exegetische Bemerkungen zu Ovid ‘Tristien’ is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the text and its interpretation. (shrink)

Articles chiefly on tradition and philosophy; includes articles on the cultural history of India from philosophical perspectives.