In 1879, Wilhelm Marr coined the term ‘Antisemitismus’, which aroused extensive discussion in academic circles. With the deepening of research, scholars’ research on anti-Semitism gradually traced back to the ancient world. Texts with anti-Semitic thought appeared as early as Ptolemaic Egypt. Essentially, the main purpose of these words were self-justification, a response to the sinful image of the Egyptians in the narrative of Exodus. The early Ptolemaic Egyptian writers got rid of the charges against the Egyptians by rewriting (...) the narrative of Exodus and shifting responsibility for the entire event to the Jews. It is obvious that in the process, the image of the Jewish people has been severely vilified. Although the writers did not express a strong anti-Semitic tendency subjectively, they all expressed a certain degree of anti-Semitic thought objectively. The anti-Semitic thought was inherited by later writers in the Roman world and had a profound impact. This article focuses on the works of three Ptolemaic Egyptian writers and discusses their reasons and influences for rewriting the narrative of the Exodus in combination with their historical background. Contribution: This article discusses the origin and spread of anti-Semitic thought in the ancient world. It has important reference value for the study of ancient writers’ understanding of the Old Testament. At the same time, it has important academic value for the study of Jewish history. (shrink)

This essay looks at the image of the ship in Péter Forgács’s documentary The Danube Exodus (1999) as a site that enables the viewer to meditate the encounter of the historical Self and the Other. Forgács, who works with the found footage material of an amateur filmmaker, teases out the paradoxical double movement of the historical event, in which both Jewish and German refugees use the river Danube as an escape route in the early phase of World War II, (...) traveling on the same paddle steamer in opposite directions. The documentary about two river-stories directed by an Eastern European filmmaker becomes a contemplation on interconnectedness, national cross-pollination and the inscription of the viewer in these processes. I argue that the film offers its audiences a way to visually and conceptually consider the unfeasibility of historiographic authority. (shrink)

The concept of divine agency is central to the narrative traditions inherited by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The scriptures of the Abrahamic religions include repeated references to the intentional actions and intentional outcomes of the actions of God. For instance, in the “Song of Moses” (Exodus 15:1-18), Moses celebrates the freedom of the Hebrews from bondage, declaring that Yahweh is “awesome in splendor, doing wonders” (5:11 NRSV). Alongside the picture of God as an agent who performs actions is (...) a conception of God that developed over the centuries as a simple, immutable, impassable, timelessly eternal being. To many philosophers and theologians, this conception of God as a being who exists in a durationless eternity is inconsistent with the way God is characterized in the scriptures, viz., as an agent who acts in time, often in direct response to the actions of other agents. In this paper, I will assume that if the God of Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism exists, then God is an agent who has performed intentional actions. I will argue that if God is such an agent, then God cannot exist outside of time.1 This is because of how.. (shrink)

This paper, following the work of the sociologist Philip Selznick, identifies three stages of moral development in organizations: ethical improvisation, ethical institutionalization, and ethical revival. I argue here that the developmental perspective is inherent in the structure of biblical narrative, especially in the stories of Genesis and Exodus. The paper concludes by debunking three common myths associated with business ethics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Centrality to the Exodus of Torah as Ethical Projection Vern Neufeld Redekop Saint Paul University, Ontario How can those liberated from oppression avoid mimesis of their oppressors? When confronted with the stark realities of oppression, the question seems inappropriate, audacious, and even insensitive. Yet history teaches us that it is prudent to confront the question sooner rather than later. That this is a preoccupation ofTorah is indicated (...) by the often repeated phrase, "remember that you were slaves in Egypt." In what follows, we will enter the world of the Hebrew Bible to examine the relationship of Torah to the theme of oppression. Our points of entry will be the contemporary gates of liberation theology and Hebrew Bible exegesis. I will argue that Torah as teaching is central to the Exodus, that as teaching it combines awareness of a situation, interpretation of an event, and articulation of practical knowledge. Positively stated, the Exodus paradigm of liberation includes both afreedomfrom oppression and afreedom to enjoy and develop the resources of the land. This paradigm can be explained, in the vocabulary ofPaul Ricoeur, as a transformation of people from sufferers (understood as being acted upon) to actors (being able to take initiative). As such, it addresses the essential question, "How is a liberated people to act?" Torah answers this question through story and stipulation. Its teaching is both indirect and direct. The Exodus concerns not only the flight from Egypt into the promised land, but also the question of how a people is to live in that land. The central ethical projection to allow for sustained life in the new land is the focus of my investigation. I will examine its meaning in relation to the structure of the text, demonstrate why it affords a view of Torah as an essential gift to guide the life of freedom, and explore its implications for 120Vern Neufeld Redekop Girardian scholars and for those currently engaged in the struggle for, and challenges resulting from, liberation from oppression. Such an investigation, which involves textual questions as well as human action, must take into account specific methodologies and an awareness of ethics. It also presupposes a particular purpose and perspective on the part of the investigator. Since the present world situation provides an urgent background for this study, I begin, in part one, with observations about oppression in the 'current context', followed by a discussion of the relation of my own approach to the various methodologies which attempt to understand that context in the light of the phenomenon of liberation from oppression. In part two, I draw on the work of Paul Ricoeur to define my use of the term "ethical projection" and to propose a category for the role of temporality in a structural analysis. Part three elaborates the concepts of meaning and structure as developed by the disciplines of biblical studies, liberation theology, and ethics. I then focus on the use of the Exodus paradigm by liberation movements to legitimate their straggles for freedom, and suggest possible implications of the present study for our contemporary world situation. Part four explores the centrality of the ethical projection in the Exodus along three lines of inquiry: the structure of the Exodus as narrative, event, and paradigm; the sense ofprojection into a future; and the interpretation of Torah within the Hebrew Bible. This leads to the establishment of a category for an ethical projection and to the proposal of a particular type of ethical projection which can be derived from a liberation from oppression: the ethic of memory. In my conclusion, I suggest potential implications of the ethical projection for a Girardian hermeneutic and for those who—through their awareness of mimetic desire and scapegoating, and their interpretation of events based on such awareness—are in a position to generate practical knowledge which could limit the effects of negative mimesis and scapegoating. 1. Current context and methodology The current context involves an interaction between a world riddled with oppressive situations and our own Sitz im Leben. Given the diversity of those situations, most people can find ways in which they are part of both an oppressed group and an oppressor group. Theologian Sharon Welch, for example, sees herself... (shrink)

Situated in the larger collection of Psalms 51-72, also known as the second Davidic Psalter, the smaller group of Psalms 65-68 is found. This smaller collection of psalms can be classified mostly as psalms of praise and thanksgiving. The relation and compositional work in this cluster of psalms become apparent on many points in the pious expressions between groups and persons at prayer, especially in the universal praise of God, and in the imagery referring to the exodus, the Jerusalem (...) cult and blessing. Such piety becomes most discernible in the imagery and expressions in Psalm 66. The psalm's two main sections may be described as praise, with verses 1-12 being praise by the group or the 'we', and verses 13-20 being praise by the individual or the 'I'. Personal or individual piety and private piety are expressed by the desire of the 'we' and the 'I', and the experienced immediacy to God by transposing the past into the present through the memory of the exodus narrative, the Jerusalem cultic imagery and the use of body imagery. In this research article, an understanding of piety in Psalm 66 in terms of the memory of past events and body imagery is discussed from a perspective of space and appropriated for a time of pandemic where normal or traditional ecclesiological formal practices cannot take place. CONTRIBUTION: This article makes an interdisciplinary contribution based on knowledge from the Psalms in the Old Testament, social anthropology, literary spatial theories and practical theological perspectives on the church in order to contribute to the relevance and practice of theology today, during a time of turmoil and a global pandemic. (shrink)

Within the sources of black theology no narrative is more important than the Exodus. Its importance within the slave religion and the civil rights movement has made it foundational for understanding the nature of God, the work of Christ, and the purposes of humanity. However, the Sabbath, which is the Israelite response to the Exodus, has not been adopted as a part of the Exodus narrative. As such, it has been underutilized as a form of (...) social ethical critique. A rediscovery of the Sabbath provides a meaningful way of reinforcing the extant concerns of black theology and providing avenues for new exploration and conversation. The purpose of this essay is to point out a few of those meaningful avenues and to argue for continued exploration of the theological and ethical possibilities presented by the Sabbath. (shrink)

In The Politics of Exodus, Mark Dooley offers a lively interpretation of Kierkegaard as a precursor of the ethical and political insights of Jacques Derrida. While many connections have been forged in recent years between these two quintessentially "Continental" figures, Dooley's book argues that these affiliations run much deeper than any previous commentators have suggested. Indeed, his most controversial claim is that Kierkegaard is anything but a proponent of asocial individualism, but is one whose writings bear witness to the (...) notion of an "open quasi-community" which has driven much of Derrida's work over the past decade. In vigorously challenging conventional wisdom surrounding the place of Kierkegaard in contemporary thought and political theory, Dooley shows how powerfully postmodern and politically charged the latter's specifically 'religious' ideas are. As such, Kierkegaard ought to be read as someone who anticipated Derrida's claim that genuine responsibility in the political sphere depends upon a phophetic call for justice on behalf of the least among us. will appeal to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and postmodernism, as well as to those with interests in ethics and politics from a Continental perspective. It will undoubtedly change the way we read Kierkegaard in the new millennium. (shrink)

Metaphors may present some challenges in cases of self-illness ambiguity, yet they remain necessary to access a person’s perspective on illness and her relationship with it. The paper outlines the main functions of metaphors (i.e., naming, framing, changing functions) to explain why they can be valuable tools for reducing self-illness ambiguity. First, metaphor is presented as a creative way for a patient to (re)claim her ‘self’ through her own speaker’s meaning. Metaphor is not merely a way to name internal processes (...) and make them more communicable to others (compactness and inexpressibility theses), but primarily a way to represent what the mental illness means for herself (for-me-ness thesis). Second, particularly when extended in mental health narratives, metaphor can frame a person’s experiences of illness by offering a specific affective perspective for self-understanding (perspectivalness thesis). Third, the changing function of metaphor offers a new perspective on the experience of self-illness ambiguity in the narrative, allowing to look at the relationship with the illness, without fully identifying with it. The metaphorical functions can facilitate the discovery of new forms of affective coherence in a person’s mental health narrative and serve as crucial tools for clinicians’ understanding in the therapeutic process. (shrink)

_A chapter-by-chapter explanation of the Book of Exodus, revealing its wisdom about nation building and people formation__ "Kass draws from Exodus’ record of the founding of Judaism timely—even urgent—universal lessons about twenty-first-century preconditions for human flourishing in any community. Compelling modern reflections on ancient wisdom.”—Bryce Christensen, _Booklist_ (starred review)_ In this long-awaited follow-up to his 2003 book on Genesis, humanist scholar Leon Kass explores how Exodus raises and then answers the central political questions of what defines a (...) nation and how a nation should govern itself. Considered by some the most important book in the Hebrew Bible, Exodus tells the story of the Jewish people from their enslavement in Egypt, through their liberation under Moses’s leadership, to the covenantal founding at Sinai and the building of the Tabernacle. In Kass’s analysis, these events began the slow process of learning how to stop thinking like slaves and become an independent people. The Israelites ultimately founded their nation on three elements: a shared narrative that instills empathy for the poor and the suffering, the uplifting rule of a moral law, and devotion to a higher common purpose. These elements, Kass argues, remain the essential principles for any freedom-loving nation today. (shrink)

Extending the approach to a ‘theology of science’ developed in Faith and Wisdom in Science, I expand its theme of the tension between chaos and emergent order, within the arc of the Biblical story of creation, towards a theology of evolutionary science. In addition to the material in Job, the book of Wisdom provides a remarkable account of transmutation of species, within a recapitulation of the Exodus theme, that I juxtapose with a modern genotype-phenotype theory of evolutionary dynamics, exploiting (...) analogies with statistical mechanics. The dual and connected structures of microscopic and macroscopic provide a locus for the Joban tensions of chaos and emergent order, and provide an interpretative narrative for the emergent directionality of evolution, and a theology that situates within a creation of freedom to explore the potential of the created order. (shrink)

In the dialogue of scientists and theologians, participants experienced differences in linguistic usage of the various disciplines, for example different concepts, grammatical rules, characteristic terminology, specific phrases, and expressions. A fascinating subject of this dialogue concerned God’s agency in human history within space-time, where the concepts of ‘God’ and ‘divine agency’ were unusual. In the church tradition, believers learned to use these concepts using biblical training with narratives such as the Exodus or Babylon stories. But to handle these narratives (...) in historical situations, we need to analyse the concepts of ‘history’ and its ambiguity, and the ‘historical method of explanation’ to answer the question: ‘How does God act in history?’ The central question of this article was: Is history a domain of Divine Agency? It is imperative to pay attention to the specific grammar of religious language and to distinguish it categorically from the computational language of the natural sciences. History as such should be deconstructed into history 1 and history 2. However, religious and technical activities are of different logical types, so we cannot combine them in one conceptual scheme on the same level. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that coherence might be possible at a higher conceptual level. A qualitative method of a critical literature review across disciplines was used and a subsequent contemplative conceptualisation was proposed. Contribution: This article illustrated the difference between religious and scientific concepts to address Divine Agency in history. If reality or the universe can be described as an information-bearing entity in process, and if this is hierarchically structured, then we can imagine God interacting with this hierarchy. (shrink)

The survival and significance of the Latin American liberation theology movement relies, to some extent, on the power of the narratives of martyrdom. Precisely by relying on these narratives, through the dynamics of the theological category of memory that leads to solidarity, liberation theology situates itself in the tension between modernity and postmodernity. The categories of narrative, memory and solidarity, which are at play in the whole dynamic of martyrdom, constitute a postmodern way of doing a modern liberation theology. (...) Liberation theology will only be able to retain its “liberative” and “theological” element insofar as it continues to be “modern” and “postmodern” at the same time. Against the postmodern disbelief in the possibility of human emancipation, liberation theology continues to labor precisely under principium liberationis grounded in the promise of liberation contained in God’s revelation in the Scriptures. However, against the “modern” conception of emancipation based on reason and governed by the idea of progress, liberation theology envisions liberation as an integral process which takes place in a concrete, particular historical reality and under the eschatological promise of God. Keywords: liberation theology, martyrdom, modern, postmodern, narrative, memory, solidarity. Abstrak: Relevansi dan pertumbuhan teologi pembebasan, sampai tingkat tertentu, juga bergantung pada kekuatan kisah kemartiran. Dengan mendasarkan diri pada kisah (narrative) yang diolah lewat kategori pengingatan (memory) yang mengarah pada solidaritas, teologi pembebasan menempatkan diri dalam tegangan antara modernitas dan posmodernitas. Kategori kisah, pengingatan, dan solidaritas, yang berada dalam jantung narasi kemartiran, mengetengahkan sebuah cara posmodern untuk melakukan teologi pembebasan yang modern. Teologi pembebasan hanya akan berhasil mempertahankan unsur “teologi” dan “pembebasan” sejauh bersifat modern dan posmodern pada saat yang sama. Melawan ketidakpercayaan posmodernitas terhadap kemungkinan proyek pembebasan, teologi pembebasan mempertahankan prinsip pembebasan atas dasar isi pewahyuan Allah dalam Kitab Suci. Akan tetapi, melawan pemahaman modern tentang pembebasan berdasarkan akalbudi dan kemajuan, teologi pembebasan memahami pembebasan sebagai sebuah proses integral yang terjadi dalam waktu dan tempat yang nyata, dalam realitas sejarah yang partikular dan dalam kerangka janji eskatologis Allah. Kata-kata kunci: teologi pembebasan, kemartiran, modern, posmodern, narasi, pengingatan, solidaritas. (shrink)

This article argues that the narrative of public participation in environmental governance that emerged from the Earth Summit in 1992 can be read as a direct challenge to the neoliberal approach to environmental governance. The challenge comes from constructing the concept of public participation as (i) the practice of providing decision makers with more and better information in order to help them design more equitable policies, and (ii) the practice of potentially influencing policy decisions by bringing new perspectives and (...) values into the decision-making process. The article shows how this counter-narrative has itself now become a contested terrain: among a variety of normative presuppositions justifying practices of public participation, one can also find a market friendly rationale. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to comprehensively explore the phenomenon of the narrative of the Decalogue in its fundamental principles in the context of the theological understanding of Jewish law. For this purpose abstract-logical methods, historical-legal, phenomenological, axiological, epistemological methods, method of critical and systematic analysis and method of comparative theology were used. The result is a theological understanding of the basic moral and legal principles and reducing to a single, systematic; a study of the correlation between the (...) normative and the moral side of such a narrative was conducted. Of particular importance is the establishment and isolation of the basic initial principle in the defined context that underlies both Sinai law and all the biblical law. Because with the change of historical realities, which coincided with the destruction of the Temple and the termination of sacrifices, the law has also changed. However, the biblical law was of particular ideological importance, it set the tone and revealed and formed the basic principles for the further development of all Jewish law. Therefore, in our study we have drawn attention to the main ideological features of the biblical laws, because in our opinion, the basic formative essence is hidden in them and only by understanding it − will we be able to understand Jewish law itself. However, the phenomenon of law and even more so of Jewish law, is one of the best regulators and exponents of the educational principle that is designed to raise a person in love. Of course, morality is called for it and it should take precedence over everything else, but the legal part should not be ignored. Law should serve as a socially just, integrative, fundamental, binding, most effective, most respected regulator. Therefore, the problem of combining legal principles and moral precepts for biblical law did not stand basically. The significant part of the adopted legal norms initially was characterized by moral prescriptions, confirmed and expressed by law. Such a transition, the shift from morality to law, and the close relationship between them are one inseparable whole. And apart from Halacha, which was responsible for the legal aspect, there were also the writings of the prophets whose task was to illuminate the transition from law to morality, because precisely morality is the essence of everything. Here is the true meaning of the existence of a legal expression of such an educational principle. Thus, the basic educational principle of the Decalogue, in particular, and of biblical law in general, was to educate a high-moral person who had restrictive precepts that would not allow him to fall into lawlessness, and the formative commandments that would allow a person to be educated in the search for God, and to stabilize himself in the godlike state commanded by God through Moses. That is the essence of the Decalogue and Jewish law. The educational principle, both basic and effective, though not so familiar to the modern understanding of the nature of law, is precisely the principle that laid down both the basis of the Decalogue and the foundation of all Jewish law at least in its biblical part. (shrink)

While the history of Western philosophy as a whole can be seen as the appropriation by philosophers of the discourse of truth from the poets and makers of myth, of the replacement of the narrative form by the 'properly philosophical' form of argument, it is an appropriation that also takes place within medieval thought, particularly in the construction of theology as a legitimate academic discipline. Whether that appropriation constitutes progress or loss was as much debated in the Middle Ages (...) as it is in recent thought. I offer this medieval chapter not to take a side on the issue, but as an example of some of the presuppositions and dangers awaiting both sides of the polemic. The particular example I would like to examine is a well-known one, the conflicts over and changes in the nature of theology in the Latin twelfth century, beginning with the even more familiar conflict between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux. I offer this essay with fully knowledge that characterizations of this conflict are cliché-ridden. It has often been seen as the conflict between the first stirrings of the modern critical spirit and the conservative, fideistic opposition, between an emerging ‘Scholastic’ and a revised ‘monastic’ theology, and/or between ‘systematic’ and ‘mystical’ theologies. (shrink)

A conception of parental experience is proposed to enhance the move of the study of parenting into the interpersonal realm by describing parental subjectivity from the parent's point of view. Explanations are based on that which the parent can be accountable for, on parental dialogues with observers/clinicians about their dialogues with their infants. This conception of parental subjectivity is compared with other conceptions which define parental subjectivity as the mental apparatus of the parent and not as representing the evolving relation (...) of the parent with the infant, and with explanations which consider parental reports in terms of the parent's psychodynamics and cognitive abilities rather than in terms of the on-going dialogues between themselves and their infants. The paper introduces a typology of parental dialogues with observers/clinicians about their dialogues with their infants, within the context of the non-verbal nature of the infant's communication. The findings from empirical examinations of this typology are presented, and their implications for the proposal that the study of parental relations with their infants should consider the parent's accountability are discussed. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in (...) the divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Origen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture by Claire HallMilanna FritzOrigen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture by Claire Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 195 pp.Origen's (AD 185–255) surviving corpus is studied by scholars across the disciplines of theology philosophy and classics. Drawing from each of these fields, in Origen and Prophecy, Clare Hall applies Origen's self-proposed tripartite exegesis (...) of Scripture, in which verses can be read at a "somatic, psychic, or pneumatic level," to his conceptualization of prophecy [End Page 293] (193). Hall's argument examines the "landscape of pagan, Jewish, and early Christian religiosity" and considers the "whole range of Origen's corpus" in relation to "wider structures and themes in his work" (4, 25). In doing so, Hall presents a compelling analysis embedding Origen's system of exegesis and theology of prophecy within the intellectual history of prophecy in the late classical and early Christian world.In her first few chapters, Hall explores Origen's definitions of prophecy in relation to its Jewish and Greco-Roman influences and his system of scriptural exegesis. Hall remains cognizant of terminology used by classical authors as she describes Origen's word choice, noting, for instance, that he varies his language most when the prophetic validity of the author is in question (9–12). She summarizes Greek, Roman, and Jewish conceptualizations of prophecy, then turns to Scripture and early Christian texts, all of which shape Origen's own "notions of wisdom, knowledge, and prophecy" (20, 29). Hall argues that Origen's On First Principles and homilies on Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are underlaid by a coherent exegetical system. Further, she explains, Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs applies this same system to other forms of knowledge, including prophecy, which has a future-telling sense, a moral sense, and a mystical and revelatory sense (27, 50, 39–45). In her analysis, Hall provides insight into the philosophical and theological foundations for the "revelatory potential of allegory" as understood by Origen and other early Christian authors and carefully distinguishes Origen's own beliefs from the tenets of Origenism (30–31). To strengthen her argument, Hall cites a plethora of secondary scholars on Origen, including Caroline Bammel, Gunnar af Hällström, Robert Hauck, and Ilaria Ramelli (18–25).In her next few chapters, Hall unfolds Origen's system of distinguishing between true and false prophets and his advocacy for the unity of prophecy within Scripture in his response to Marcionism (199, 149–52). Chief among Hall's insightful contributions, however, is her treatment of the complex interrelation of prophecy and human autonomy: within Origen's framework, how does providential foreknowledge permit human free choice? To approach an answer, Hall traces the emerging conception of free will as "freedom of decision" among Greek authors such as Aristotle, Chrysippus and the Stoics, the Platonists, the Epicureans, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, who, she argues, laid the groundwork for Origen's "innovative narrative understanding of free will" in the context of "epistemological considerations surrounding prophecy" (55–71, 75). These sections of her book present a striking glimpse into early Christian departure from the Greek classical tradition, and her exploration of Origen's defense of both free will and [End Page 294] divine foreknowledge opens the door to further research on his theology of conversion and the relation between grace and nature (75–85, 91).While the entirety of her work is thought-provoking, some elements of Hall's presentation of Origen's theology may be open to a critical response by patristic scholars. Throughout her work, Hall consistently characterizes Origen's spiritual readings of Scripture—and prophecy—in direct opposition to its literal readings. For instance, she writes that, for Origen, just as "some verses do not have a somatic reading and cannot be taken literally," some prophecies are intended to be read as "stumbling blocks or riddles for the exegete to ponder," rather than accurate or "coherent" predictions of the future (193, 53). Additionally, Hall ties Origen's insights on prophecy in the Old Testament to his depiction of Christ as the "ultimate content of... (shrink)

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with an ecology of (...) artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct. (shrink)

This article examines the narrative approach to self found in philosophy and related disciplines. The strongest versions of the narrative approach hold that both a person's sense of self and a person's life are narrative in structure, and this is called the hermeneutical narrative theory. This article provides a provisional picture of the content of the narrative approach and considers some important objections that have been raised to the narrative approach. It defends the view (...) that the self constitutes itself in narrative and argues for something less than the hermeneutical view insofar as the narrative is less agency-oriented and without an overarching thematic unity. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the work of the Movement of Victims of State Crimes in Colombia. The work of Movice, I suggest, is an example of how the category of “victim” from international law discourse is adopted and used from below by victims of mass atrocities. I show that, through this category, Movice attempts to introduce an alternative narrative of the internal armed conflict in which the state is a perpetrator of violence against civilian population as part (...) of a practice of elimination of political opposition through violent means. To do this, I focus on three political opportunities in which Movice deployed the category of victim between 2005 and 2016. I suggest that Movice is an example of how a movement of victims can adopt categories of international law to frame their struggles and, in doing so, infuse them with new contents. (shrink)

A new translation of an important text for Greek mythology used as a source book by classicists from antiquity to Robert Graves, The Library of Greek Mythology is a complete summary of early Greek myth. Using the ancient system of detailed histories of the great families, it contains invaluable genealogical diagrams for maximum clarity. The introduction gives details of sources and narrative traditions, and there is comprehensive annotation. An indispensable reference work for anyone interested in classical mythology.

That literary scholarship is experiencing an "ethical turn" has become something of a commonplace, and seminal to this "turn" is the use of literary works as examples in moral-philosophical arguments. So far, however, ethical criticism has dealt almost exclusively with narrative texts—little work has been done on poetry. I argue that considering poetry in this context not only expands the corpus of exemplary works but also reveals methodological caveats applicable to ethical critics of poetry and fiction alike. Poetic examples (...) raise new doubts about the moral authority of literature—doubts elided in the narrative-based discussions that currently prevail. (shrink)

In this article I am making what is, as far as I know, the first systematic analysis of Justin books 7, 8 and 9. The method is that which I employed in analysing the sources of Diodorus 16 in CQ 31 , 79ff. and 32 , 137ff. Previous scholars had looked for similarities between the fragments of ancient historians and details in the text of Diodorus, and they had taken any such similarity as proof of a particular source being followed. (...) They had carried their method to extremes: A. Momigliano, for instance, had concluded that Diodorus changed his source 12 times within 23 chapters, and R. Laqueur 18 times within 4 chapters in book 16. My system was to define separable Groups of narrative on the basis of fullness, accuracy, military and political detail, and attitude to the general theme, and to see how far any one Group could be attributed to an ancient author. I begin, therefore, with separable Groups of narrative. (shrink)

This article discusses the potential of a contemporary understanding of what Heraclitus and the Stoics called ‘cosmological logos’, and its relation to human reason and cultural communication. I will relate the example of Descartes’ and his introspective method in Meditations on the First Philosophy (1647) to a contemporary understanding of the potential of introspection, related to theories of the embodied mind, virtual levels of nature and a possible connection between them. Where Descartes focused upon the rational properties of the logical (...) mind, and its potential to relate to nature’s higher logic, I relate my vision of a modern logos philosopher to Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of nature’s ‘habits’, triad semiosis and the overall phaneroscopic phenomenology, which I connect to the concept of ‘aesthetic reason’. Aesthetic reason, in this context, represents a complex kind of rationality that involves a broader variety of cognitive processes. It is based on Extended Sentience, which includes properties of quantum communication that simultaneously work within the confinements of the mind–body, while simultaneously transgressing it. This article takes an overall evolutionary perspective, and claims that the prerequisites for experience and rationality are changing over historical time, due to evolutionary changes at endosemiotic levels of the mind–body. The prerequisites for Descartes’ activity of cognitive mediation and such of a modern logos philosopher, would thus not be equal. I will elaborate on the differences in this article. (shrink)

Though the film does not have as its goal reestablishing authentic temporality asHeidegger understands it, Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener nonethelesstakes Heidegger’s exploration of the link between ideology and temporality as its point ofdeparture. The film depicts the politicisation of Justin Quayle through anarrative structure that breaks from an everyday or ideological conception of time.Politicisation occurs, the film implies, through an encounter with feminine enjoyment, anencounter that transforms the subject’s relationship to time and facilitates the subject’sentrance into a non-ideological temporality (...) or what one might call a temporality of the real.Justin’s romance with Tessa entails navigating her enjoyment, and the processof doing so alters his sense of time andtransforms him into a political being. This is the transformation that the film, through itstemporal structure and narrative form, attempts to effect on the spectator as well. Romancethus becomes the vehicle for political awakening rather than the path, as we see in itstraditional cinematic deployment, to an apolitical retreat. (shrink)

The women's silence in response to the message of the “young man” at the tomb is a feature found only in Mark. Its omission by Matthew and Luke suggests that they found this element in the narrative problematic. Yet Mark's text has played a significant role in the Easter liturgy of the ancient church and beyond. The reception history of the narrative reveals both harmonization and discord.

In this dissertation, I explore the significance of remembering, especially in its communal form, and its relationship to narrative identity by examining the practices that make possible the formation and transmission of a heritage. To explore this issue I use Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur, who have dedicated several of their major works to remembrance and forgetting. In comparing Heidegger and Ricoeur, I suggest that Ricoeur's formulation of the identity of a subject and a community offers an alternative to (...) Heidegger's account. For, if Heidegger's critique of subjectivity offers the possibility of a new relationship to history and community, it nevertheless overlooks the possibility of a humanism that is not tied to a metaphysical account of subjectivity. By contrast, the positive work of remembrance can recover heretofore concealed possibilities through our being faithful to the past, and saving it from the destructive forces of time. To show how the fragility of memory preserves the past against the destructive work of time and brings with it the hope of a better future, I emphasize one specific theme--namely, the debt we owe to the dead, which dissertations the possibility for ethical consideration of an historical community. In this regard, this dissertation pursues two goals. The first task is to elucidate how Heidegger's and Ricoeur's phenomenological projects understand the intimate connection between remembrance and the creation of a community. The second goal of this dissertation is to show how Ricoeur is able to respond to the problems that Heidegger's ontological account of memory raises. The completion of these two tasks will contribute to a phenomenological hermeneutics of memory and forgetting. (shrink)

This paper examines systematically which features of a life story (or history) make it good for the subject herself - not aesthetically or morally good, but prudentially good. The tentative narrative calculus presented claims that the prudential narrative value of an event is a function of the extent to which it contributes to her concurrent and non-concurrent goals, the value of those goals, and the degree to which success in reaching the goals is deserved in virtue of exercising (...) agency. The narrative value of a life is a simple sum of the values of individual events that comprise it. I claim that this view best explains and support common intuitions about the significance of the shape of a life. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 286—310. This mad play of writing —Stéphane Mallarmé Somewhere in between mathematics and theory, light and dark, physicality and projection, oscillates the poetry of Alessandro De Francesco. The texts hold no periods or commas, not even a capital letter for reference. Each piece stands as an individual construction, and yet the poetry flows in and out of the frame. Images resurface from one poem to the next, haunting the reader with reincarnations of an object lost in the (...) grass or a representation of a pear in a Dutch still life, embedded in cycles of cinematic close ups and multiple dimensions. As a whole, De Francesco’s oeuvre suggests, to use the title of one of his works, a redefinition —linguistic, epistemological, personal. The poem The End (un’agenda) (The End (an agenda)) opens with a quote by literary theorist Maurice Blanchot, which may be translated as follows: Speaking is not seeing. Speaking frees thought from this optical imperative that in the Western tradition, for thousands of years, has subjugated out approach to things, and induced us to think under the guaranty of light or under the threat of its absence.[1] In writing, De Francesco seeks to redefine our approach to things. His poems, like Blanchot’s writings, speak to both illuminate and to obscure. The reader hangs in an absence of reality within language that necessitates an attempt at interpretation, yet renders such a search ultimately futile. De Francesco draws the anonymous images that appear in this poem from the city of Paris, his current home. The fragmented narrative depicts an inner doubt of realness, calling for a confirmation of a physical existence beyond verbalization and cogitation. Cyclical references to film throw into question the reliability of the reality he creates. The light, sometimes red and safe, other times absent and murky, cannot necessarily be trusted as a guaranteed means of illumination. Blanchot’s distinction between language and visualization, and the relationship of each to reality, though linked specifically to The End (un’agenda) , can be a lens through which to read any of the three works that follow. assente obliqua (absent oblique) is composed of descriptions of six still life paintings, ranging from Dutch masterpieces of the seventeenth century to 1960s minimalism. The actual images of the paintings are absent, and the text is the sole source and object of a virtual reality created around the artwork. “Absent oblique” refers to the light source placed outside of the frame, which both informs and distracts viewing of the scene. Although mere description can be unreliable and unsatisfying in its necessary limitation, the representational act of description is shown as more than just a human want. It is a need, a means by which to grapple with an unsure reality. As the illustrations progress, they descend into abstraction and chaos. The precariously placed plate triggers the movement: the bottle bursts and the objects collapse into the movement of a tracking film camera. corpo estraneo in moto ascensionale (foreign body in ascending motion) is prose poetry in action. Its objective tone of description is skewed by the subjectivity of the narrative as horrific images are relayed in fragmented but matter-of-fact manner. A “foreign body” is both a mass of cancerous cells, and a corporeal description, and the poem takes the reader on a journey back and forth between the two, destination unclear. Beyond a questioning of the real, corpo estraneo in moto ascensionale is an examination of the possible. De Francesco’s poetry becomes a camera obscura through which to observe the constant flux of light and dark that blurs our reality. His work is colored by the idea of apo koinou , a Greek term meaning “from the common” that involves a construction of two clauses with a shared word or phrase. Through such melting of meaning, De Francesco creates a fluid ambiguity that is nonetheless grounded in bodily concepts. In assente obliqua , the reader is confronted with a description of a still life that rapidly transforms into a more chilling scene: the membrane of the mushroom in the basket emerges behind the white cloth a body could hide itself that asks for help In the realm of pure description, there is a mushroom that peeks out from behind a white cloth in a basket. Behind the white cloth, too, there could be a body, hiding, asking for help. Such an elision elicits disorienting mistrust in temporality, but also expands the planar possibilities of syntactical meaning. A white cloth is not merely a construct in still life painting, but veil that both shields and reveals potential mysteries. It is a proposed alternative to a traditional Western binary of subjectivity and objectivity. The apo koinou construction is rare in modern English, having slipped out of use after its resurgence in Old English poetry. De Francesco reintroduces this blur of object and subject relations into a modern light. He draws inspiration from a device used by Gruppo 63 founder and avant-garde poet Antonio Porta tended toward repetition of phrases in third person perspective. In Italian, it is perfectly grammatically correct to omit the subject, including only a verb conjugation. Gender, even humanity unknown, the subject dissolves into the action, thus giving to the poetry the power to change the reader’s perception of who or what is actually acting. To further push the relative boundaries of experience, De Francesco expands his written poetry into what he calls “reading environments.” In these sound experiments, De Francesco’s voice reading his poetry is manipulated by real time digital voice processing. The written is transformed to the spoken, and then injected with currents of electric sound. “At each activation of word in the darkness,” (from The End (un’agenda) ) language is permutated into a nonphysical yet all-encompassing being. In these projects, realized all over Europe, De Francesco continues his examination of the word’s potency beyond the page and into an “n-dimensional space,” where the lines between nature and affect are intertwined. To publish excerpts of De Francesco’s oeuvre is to show screen shots of full-length film, to read pull quotes from a philosophy treatise. In these poems, there are questions, not to be answered, but to be questioned again. The words will oscillate in and out of the square construction found in his poems, out of the borders of the page, out of the rectangle of the laptop screen. NOTES (1) Blanchot, Maurice. The Infinite Conversation . Trans. Susan Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 27. EDITORS' NOTE The .pdf above contains about twenty pages of translation and the original Italian poetry. Below we provide only a brief account. The End (an agenda) Parler, ce n’est pas voir. Parler libère la pensée de cette exigence optique qui, dans la tradition occidentale, soumet depuis des millénaires notre approche des choses et nous invite à penser sous la garantie de la lumière ou sous la menace de l’absence de lumière. —Maurice Blanchot in this n-dimensional space i could spy on myself from the cracks while going back and forth from the summer to the wardrobe from the night to the parking lot but something filters in through the half-closed shutters becomes an event enunciation we stay without explanation like parallel curves on the back of a solid growing older she enters the garden always repeats certain phrases the elevator to be redone the neighbor’s music the steps the pavement furls like the leaves of a fern when touched she is framed from behind while she moves rocking she covers distances slowly a bag overflows from the wardrobe something stirs inside but then the suitcase comes open not even by my hand it’s the objects that are starting to filter out the little red haired monster watches idling the appointments written on one of your agendas two years old still seem urgent each letter holds itself upright on the page with flourishes and arabesques each angle has its own geography i’m trying to describe the path the fingers trace on the carpet the zipper takes the opposite route we are suspended on the stairs above the water in the center is the summer seen from above the darkness of the city passes from one headlight to the next the surfaces of our arms cohere and are shiny underneath the blinking of a sign each pore is an open expanse the body dreams the hair gives form to the possible some daring swimmers were throwing themselves into the seine they swam upstream up to the first quay look there could exist behind the screen a room where even when the lamp is out and the curtains drawn even when the suitcase wasn’t closed everything seemed red everything calm construction of a four-dimensional tetrahedron by R. Courant – H. Robbins, What is Mathematics? Oxford University Press, 1941  . (shrink)

Utopia can be conceived as a possibility – a space within language, a set of principles, or the product of technological development – but it cannot be separated from questions of place, or more accurately, questions of “no place.” 1 In between the theoretically imaginable utopia and its realisation in a particular time and place, there is a space of critique, which is exploited in anti-Utopian and critical dystopian narratives. 2 In Science Fiction narratives of this kind, technology is responsible (...) for the transformation of the utopian impulse into a set of principles that are precisely stated and rigidly enforced. The critique focuses on the impossibility, due to the reductive force of instrumental reason, of any systematic realisation of a eutopia where the positive qualities of freedom, individualism and creativity are nurtured. The films Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg , and Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol , both examine utopian claims through speculation on the possible future use of current technologies, the tools of crime investigation and the genome project respectively. However, an examination of the plot cannot attend sufficiently to the particular properties of film and how it, as a medium, constructs utopia as a place. This article aims to address this issue by examining how technologically derived images of utopia are realised in the visual space of film, that is, on the level of the mise en scène. These images are often dystopian but the distinction between dystopia and eutopia is not crucial to the argument, because the aim is not to return utopian ism to its place at the vanguard of progressive politics, nor to reject utopianism on the basis that it is unrealisable, but rather to examine how technology and utopianism can combine in the visual language of film. My concern here is to investigate how utopia is conceived according to the specific features of the medium rather than to present an overarching narrative judgement as to the value of utopian principles. In Gattaca, the utopianism of a genetically determined future is reproduced in the mise en scène as a set of aesthetic principles, whereas in Minority Report the utopian technology itself resembles the apparatus of film. This involves two quite different approaches to the visualisation of utopia: 4 in Gattaca, utopia is embodied in a society in which there can be “no other place,” realised through the subtraction or reduction of visual difference; in Minority Report, utopia is an expression of a panoptic regime that can incorporate all visual and cultural difference such that the visible is “every place.”. (shrink)

Shifts to structurally new political formations or at times even governmental changes usually engender new representations of the past. This process generally involves the creation of official national histories or revisions to the existing narratives. These histories are ultimately tied to collective memory engineering and identity building to legitimize the new political formations and to ensure loyalty to them. Public education mostly provides a vital channel for the dissemination and the validation of the collective memory sanctioned by the ruling elite. (...) The rise of the Turkish Republic as a nation-state and the national historiography and educational system it established during the 1930s exemplify one of such cases. The consensus opinion in current scholarship argues that the early official historiography virtually circumvented the Ottoman and Islamic eras by curbing or even repealing their role by favoring strong accent on a remote pre-Islamic Turkish past. Although this view is warranted with regard to the state’s primary ideological emphasis on Turkishness, this approach at the same time misses the intricate subtleties involved in the official national narrative and potentially indicates a total exclusion or denunciation of these subjects. This article aims to assess the new national historical narrative reproduced in the new history textbooks in a more nuanced way with an exclusive concentration on the ideology, religion and history education triangulum. It aspires to unveil what it articulated about the supposedly avoided topic of the Islamic past and especially focus on the officially endorsed view of Islam as a religion. (shrink)

Can literature make it possible to represent histories that are otherwise ineffable? Making use of the Deleuzian concept of “the powers of the false,” Doro Wiese offers readings of three novels that deal with the Shoah, with colonialism, and with racialized identities. She argues that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish, and Richard Powers’s The Time of Our Singing are novels in which a space for unvoiced, silent, or silenced difference is created. Seen through (...) the lens of Deleuze and his collaborators’ philosophy, literature is a means for mediating knowledge and affects about historical events. Going beyond any simple dichotomy between true and untrue accounts of what “really” happened in the past, literature’s powers of the false incite readers to long for a narrative space in which painful or shameful stories can be included. (shrink)

This article is a reexamination of the author’s understanding of pedagogy, aimed at developing an increased awareness of the provinciality, limits and blind spots of the pedagogy and knowledge systems of colonial modernity. It engages with particular Indigenous epistemological theorisations of non-human agency, with Haraway’s notion of multispecies entanglement, and with the Australian Great Barrier Reef in an inquiry aimed at noticing absences and hauntings of pedagogies of modernity, including the absence of ways of knowing and being without separability and (...) determinacy and the damage that has come of this. This opens space for contemplating separability and determinacy as ontological difficulties contributing to socio-ecological crises of our time. The article is intended as a move by the author toward developing greater capacity to stay with the trouble of educating and living on a damaged planet that is fast becoming uninhabitable. (shrink)

The paper examines the four-step degeneration of the ideal state in Books 8 and 9 of Platon’s Politeia (timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny) and addresses the question of the number, choice, and succession of bad regimes. Against the common view which considers this part of the Politeia a confusing and structureless narrative, it is argued that the four steps of the devolution represent a systematic account based on the tripartition of the state and the soul.

Matthew usually handles his fulfilment quotations in such a way that the scriptural words are fulfilled in the events that are narrated immediately before a quotation, at least primarily or in the sense of making a later complete fulfilment possible. Another characteristic is that normally the entire scriptural passage as quoted by Matthew is fulfilled. At first sight, it seems to be very difficult to explain the long fulfilment quotation from Isa. 42:1-4 in a way that meets both standards. Scholars (...) either perceive only a very limited fulfilment in what precedes or they recognize the elements from the quotation all over Matthew 12. In this article, it is explored whether due attention to Matthew’s redactional emphases in the immediately preceding narrative may help to explain the quotation in such a way that it meets Matthew’s normal way of using fulfilment quotations. In the preceding narrative, the evangelist introduces Jesus’ awareness of the plan of the Pharisees to destroy him. In Matthew’s view, Jesus withdraws because the appointed time for the execution of their plan has not yet come . The subsequent command, to those whom Jesus has healed, “not to make him known” has to be interpreted along the same line: Jesus’ true identity as the Christ and the Son of God can be made known only after the execution of the plan of the Pharisees . The quotation from Isaiah has then been fulfilled in the narrative of Matt. 12:14-16 in the following way: Matthew recognizes Jesus’ true identity, including his significance for the Gentiles, in 12:18; Jesus’ response to the Pharisees and their response to him in 12:19; his healing activity in 12:20ab; his death and resurrection as the realization of justice, again in connection with his significance for the Gentiles, in 12:20c-21. Even here, Matthew has carefully attuned quotation and preceding context to each other. The unusual traits of the function and size of the quotation are due to the circumstance that in the preceding context, Jesus’ death on the cross comes explicitly into view for the first time in Matthew. (shrink)

The challenge of pursuing sustainability in agriculture is often viewed as mainly or wholly technical in nature, requiring the reform of farming methods and the development and adoption of alternative technologies. Likewise, the purpose of sustainability is frequently cast in utilitarian terms, as a means of protecting a valuable resource (i.e., soil) and of satisfying market demands for healthy, tasty food. Paul B. Thompson has argued that the embrace of these views by many in the consumer/environmental movement enables easy co-optation (...) by agribusiness. It also reflects a critical weakness in this movement: a lack of commitment to philosophical principles that depart from the utilitarian premises of the industrial model of agriculture. This paper draws on the writings of Thomas Berry and Liberty Hyde Bailey to identify the philosophical principles of what we call planetary agrarianism. From the perspective of planetary agrarianism, the pursuit of sustainability is a broad and challenging moral, educational, and political task. Berry helps us see that it is fundamentally a project of worldview transition, which requires a new cultural narrative that must rival, in form and appeal, the mythic power of the utilitarian industrial vision. Liberty Hyde Bailey, author of The Holy Earth (1915) and a leader in the land-grant education and nature-study movements, took up the project of worldview transition in his life work. While in some ways dated and flawed, Bailey’s writings are a valuable source of guidance for developing and pursuing a viable philosophy of agriculture for the 21st century. (shrink)

This book explores Aristotelian and Confucian wisdom traditions to understand education and what counts as a good teacher in an embodied dialogic approach. The book creates a dialogue between ancient ideas and the author's lived experiences as a teacher in cross-cultural landscapes today to ruminate on the important themes of educational purpose, teacher excellence, teacher-student relationships, and teaching skill. It asks fundamental educational questions including "Why Do We Educate? Eudaimonia and Dao"; "What Do We Educate? Phronesis, Philia and Ren"; and (...) "How Do We Educate? Techne and Liuyi". Moving beyond the dominant epistemological concerns such as how to teach more effectively to help students gain better marks in schools, it constitutes an ethical inquiry that illuminates the values, purposes, concerns, and hopes that animate genuinely educational work. Using a comparative approach to wisdom traditions from both the East and the West, it addresses parochialism and challenges Eurocentric research paradigms. Embedded in the messy ground of teaching in intergenerational and cross-cultural narratives, the author's own experiences as a student/teacher/daughter of a teacher/mother of a student crucially unpacks and concretizes ancient concepts and reactivates them in concrete situations. A sense of a whole without completeness, a conception of the good without closure, and an aspiration without achievement continue to haunt the search for an ultimate answer to the question "what counts as a good teacher?". It will appeal to scholars, teachers, and teacher educators with an interest in narrative inquiry and educational research, as well as those in the field of curriculum studies and the philosophy of education. (shrink)