Sándor Radnóti looks at forgeries, artistic reproductions, replicas, variations, and pastiches in order to study the dilemmas surrounding artistic illusion and "poetic license." He reveals how forgeries as the parasites of art make clear and transparent the meaning of artistic orginality.

This book offers an analysis of the status and function of the Anglo-Saxon prognostics in their manuscript context, a study of their introduction to and transmission in Anglo-Saxon England, and, for the first time, a comprehensive edition of prognostics in Old English and Latin.

Möbian Nights: Literary Reading in a Time of Crisis develops a new understanding of literary reading: that in the wake of disasters like the Holocaust, death remains a premise of our experience rather than a future. Challenging customary "aesthetic" assumptions that we write in order not to die, Sandor Goodhart suggests (with Kafka) we write to die. Drawing upon analyses developed by Girard, Foucault, Blanchot, and Levinas (along with examples from Homer to Beckett), Möbian Nights proposes that all literature (...) works "autobiographically", which is to say, in the wake of disaster; with the credo "I died; therefore, I am"; and for which the language of topology (for example, the "Möbius strip") offers a vocabulary for naming the "deep structure" of such literary, critical, and scriptural sacrificial and anti-sacrificial dynamics. (shrink)

To read literature is to read the way literature reads. René Girard’s immense body of work supports this thesis bountifully. Whether engaging the European novel, ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespeare’s plays, or Jewish and Christian scripture, Girard teaches us to read prophetically, not by offering a method he has developed, but by presenting the methodologies they have developed, the interpretative readings already available within (and constitutive of) such bodies of classical writing. In The Prophetic Law, literary scholar, theorist, and critic (...) class='Hi'>Sandor Goodhart divides his essays on René Girard since 1983 into four groupings. In three, he addresses Girardian concerns with Biblical scripture (Genesis and Exodus), literature (the European novel and Shakespeare), and philosophy and religious studies issues (especially ethical and Jewish subject matters). In a fourth section, he reproduces some of the polemical exchanges in which he has participated with others—including René Girard himself—as part of what could justly be deemed Jewish-Christian dialogue. The twelve texts that make up the heart of this captivating volume constitute the bulk of the author’s writings to date on Girard outside of his three previous books on Girardian topics. Taken together, they offer a comprehensive engagement with Girard’s sharpest and most original literary, anthropological, and scriptural insights. (shrink)

In his explorations of the relations between the sacred and violence, René Girard has hit upon the origin of culture — the way culture began, the way it continues to organize itself. The way communities of human beings structure themselves in a manner that is different from that of other species on the planet. Like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Martin Buber, or others who have changed the way we think in the humanities or in the human sciences, Girard (...) has put forth a set of ideas that have altered our perceptions of the world in which we function. We will never be able to think the same way again about mimetic desire, about the scapegoat mechanism, and about the role of Jewish and Christian scripture in explaining sacrifice, violence, and the crises from which our culture has been born. The contributions fall into roughly four areas of interpretive work: religion and religious study; literary study; the philosophy of social science; and psychological studies. The essays presented here are offered as "essays" in the older French sense of attempts or trials of ideas, as indeed Girard has tried out ideas with us. With a conscious echo of Montaigne, then, this hommage volume is titled _Essays in Friendship and in Truth_. (shrink)

After the rule of the canonized Marxism has come to an end, the present situation of philosophy in Hungary might be characterized as pluralistic and colourful. The academic, educational and institutional structure of philosophy, as well as the situation concerning the publication of journals and books has changed equally. In general, each of the relevant philosophical trends has gained its representation, significant individual and collective achievements have been reached, and we have also witnessed the rise of a new philosophical generation. (...) Though not as dominanting, philosophy has been integrated into Hungarian intellectual and public life. By now it is not regarded an isolated domain of knowledge as it was before. (shrink)

The idea that language is metaphoric in nature has often been suggested or stated since Vico and Rousseau. Derrida, too, often writes about metaphor and the impression he gives is that he is arguing for the metaphoric nature of both thought, whether philosophic or not, and language. Interpreters like de Man or Culler have helped to spread this impression. If it is correct, Derrida shares a pan-metaphoric view of language and whatever can be made with it. It is useful to (...) refer to Derrida's view because in my opinion he has been very good at saying what language is, even if he has been very much in the wrong in seeing no distinction between language and language use. Let us consider first what he has been good at. (shrink)

In the present paper we show that any at most countable linearly-ordered commutative residuated lattice can be embedded into a commutative residuated lattice on the real unit interval [0, 1]. We use this result to show that Esteva and Godo''s logic MTL is complete with respect to interpretations into commutative residuated lattices on [0, 1]. This solves an open problem raised in.

Under poor circumstances, co-residence of a grandmother is generally considered to be beneficial for children. Empirical evidence does not unequivocally support this expectation and suggests that the grandmother’s importance depends on the family’s circumstances. We study the relationship between grandmother’s co-residence and children’s schooling in sub-Saharan Africa under a broad range of circumstances. Results make clear that the effect of a co-residing grandmother varies but is almost always positive. Grandmothers over age 60 are most effective in helping their children. They (...) are particularly important for girls, and when the mother is deceased or not living in the household. Grandmothers are less effective in situations with few opportunities, as in very poor regions or in communities with few schooling opportunities. Our findings indicate that providing support to grandmothers should not be overlooked when designing policies aimed at strengthening the position of women and children in the sub-Saharan African context. (shrink)

Spatio-temporal logic is a variant of branching temporal logic where one of the so-called causal relations on spacetime plays the role of a time flow. Allowing only rational numbers as space and time co-ordinates, we prove that a first-order spatio-temporal theory over this flow is recursively enumerable if and only if the dimension of spacetime does not exceed 2. The situation is somewhat different compared to the case of real co-ordinates, because we establish that even dimension 2 does not permit (...) recursive enumerability in this case. The proof of the result on rational spacetime involves a more deeper portion of spacetime geometry than the corresponding, more evident result for the real co-ordinates. (shrink)

We generalize the notions of Girard algebras and MV-algebras by introducing rotation-invariant semigroups. Based on a geometrical characterization, we present five construction methods which result in rotation-invariant semigroups and in particular, Girard algebras and MV-algebras. We characterize divisibility of MV-algebras, and point out that integrality of Girard algebras follows from their other axioms.

This collection of essays focuses on sacrifice in the context of Jewish and Christian scripture and is inspired by the thought and writings of Rene Girard. The contributors engage in a dialogue with Girard in their search for answers to key questions about the relation between religion and violence. The book is divided into two parts. The first opens with a conversation in which Rene Girard and Sandor Goodhart explore the relation between imitation and violence throughout human history, especially (...) in religious culture. It is followed by essays on the subject of sacrifice contributed by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, including Bruce Chilton, Robert Daly, Louis Feldman, Michael Fishbane, Erich Gruen, and Alan Segal. The second part contains essays on specific scriptural texts. The authors explore new ways of applying Girardian analysis to episodes of sacrifice and scapegoating, demonstrating that fertile ground remains to further our understanding of violence in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. "In increasing numbers, scholars are turning to the mimetic theory espoused by Rene Girard in their research for answers to key questions about religion and violence. For the first time, the editors of this volume place in conversation with each other scholars who, from the perspective of Christian and Jewish traditions and scholarship, engage from the perspective of mimetic theory the sacrificial and antisacrificial features of ancient Judaism and early Christianity and explore their subsequent trajectories." --_Martha Reineke, University of Northern Iowa _. (shrink)

There are two approaches to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: to view it as a national or as a social affair; a fight for national independence or for a revolutionary transformation of society. The two approaches can be collapsed into a comprehensive one in the name of autonomy, and this is what Feher and Heller did, remaining mindful, however, of the two major and irreducible aspects of the actual events and their motivating forces. Their main argument is threefold. The people (...) in revolt wanted to establish a “dual system” of a socialist economy and a political pluralism; they wanted a renegotiation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements; and in the course of the revolution they achieved a national consensus that could actively negotiate a compromise implied by both major aims. (shrink)

According to estimates more than 400 biobanks currently operate across Europe. The term ‘biobank’ indicates a specific field of genetic study that has quietly developed without any significant critical reflection across European societies. Although scientists now routinely use this phrase, the wider public is still confused when the word ‘bank’ is being connected with the collection of their biological samples. There is a striking lack of knowledge of this field. In the recent Eurobarometer survey it was demonstrated that even in (...) 2010 two-thirds of the respondents had never even heard about biobanks. The term gives the impression that a systematic collection of biological samples can constitute a ‘bank’ of considerable financial worth, where the biological samples, which are insignificant in isolation but are valuable as a collection, can be preserved, analysed and put to ‘profitable use’. By studying the practices of the numerous already existing biobanks, the authors address the following questions: to what extent does the term ‘biobank’ reflect the normative concept of using biological samples for the purposes of biomedical research? Furthermore, is it in harmony with the so far agreed legal–ethical consensus in Europe or does it deliberately pull science to the territory of a new, ambiguous commercial field? In other words, do biobanks constitute a medico-legal fiction or are they substantively different from other biomedical research protocols on human tissues? (shrink)

Cioran and the Existential Philosophy of Lev Shestov. Cioran is said to have been influenced by Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, the author of La Chute dans le temps, thus enrolling in the line of existential philosophy. Much less - or not at all - is mentioned in this context Lev Shestov, who exerted a considerable influence on the intellectual environments in France, but also in Romania, in the period immediately following the First World War. Cioran considered Shestov as one of (...) his spiritual masters, the influence of the Russian thinker being present both in his youthful writings and in those written later in France. We will try to highlight some of Shestov’s ideas which have been creatively taken over by Cioran and that can be found constantly throughout his work. (shrink)

A Forgotten Figure of the Romanian Exile: Luc Badesco. Luc Badesco’s name is not among those generally retained by those who dealt with the Romanian cultural exile in France in the last century. References to this literary historian, who became the first Romanian professor of French literature at the University of Sorbonne, are rare. He became known through his research in the field of French literature, but his presence in the specific activities of the Romanian exile was quite low, which (...) explains the lack of interest of the Romanian researchers towards his personality and his work. I am trying to bring some light on less known aspects of his work in France, insisting on the role he played in the life of prominent figures of Romanian exile, like Emil Cioran, Virgil Ierunca and Mircea Eliade. (shrink)

Hahn’s embedding theorem asserts that linearly ordered abelian groups embed in some lexicographic product of real groups. Hahn’s theorem is generalized to a class of residuated semigroups in this paper, namely, to odd involutive commutative residuated chains which possess only finitely many idempotent elements. To this end, the partial lexicographic product construction is introduced to construct new odd involutive commutative residuated lattices from a pair of odd involutive commutative residuated lattices, and a representation theorem for odd involutive commutative residuated chains (...) which possess only finitely many idempotent elements, by means of linearly ordered abelian groups and the partial lexicographic product construction is presented. (shrink)

The studying of Marx, said Gyorgy Lukäcs at the beginning of the 1920s, does not mean the uncriticised recognition of the results of his researches, nor the set in well-defined theses, the interpretation of a book. One has to become absorbed in the ceuvre of Marx, so that then, as a second step, one can commence the systematic elaboration of the problems of our age. It is unjust that in western philosophies, especially in the Anglo-Saxon concerning literature the name of (...) the old-age Lukäcs does not appear, or is present as that of some Stalinist inquisitor, the indisputable pillar of Marxism and the Bolshevik movement. Yet his late piece of labour, his vast ontology experiment convincingly shows how one can penetrate the original texts of Marx and at the same time preserve one's conceptual souvereignity, sense of reality, and one's capacity, at least in a latent way, to judge or surpass the thoughts of one's master. This study aims to interpret the problem of Lukäcs's relation to Marx through the analysis of the labour concept of Lukäcs, and would like to prove that the rereading of Lukäcs (and Marx) can serve with surprises, new meanings and morals even today. (shrink)

A new structure, called equality algebras, will be introduced. It has two connectives, a meet operation and an equivalence, and a constant. A closure operator will be defined in the class of equality algebras, and we call the closed algebras equivalential. We show that equivalential equality algebras are term equivalent with BCK-algebras with meet. As a by-product, we obtain a quite general result, which is analogous to a result of Kabziński and Wroński: we provide an equational characterization for the equivalential (...) fragment of BCK-algebras with meet. (shrink)

Let be the class of odd involutive even the notion of partial lex products is not sufficiently general. One more tweak is needed, a slightly even more complex construction, called partial sublex product, introduced here.