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Humanities and Social Sciences80%

Selected Abstracts

Faith and Reason: Schiller's "Die Sendung Moses"

THE GERMAN QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2008
Alexander Mathäs
In Schiller's re-interpretation of Moses' life, Moses becomes the archetypical poet/writer who, like Schiller himself, was committed to converting his audience to "truth" by appealing to their base instincts and ingrained habits. In "Die Sendung Moses" Schiller uses a widely known biblical source to reinterpret the beginnings of monotheist religion in a way that supports his Enlightenment anthropology. The question is whether Schiller's elevation of reason to the status of a Vernunftreligion prepares the path for the tyranny of reason, and whether the concomitant devaluation of "bare life" (Agamben) paves the way for a political theology that justifies human sacrifice in the name of ethical ideals, thus creating a fertile ground for nineteenth-century imperialist and, even worse, racist fantasies. My reading of "Die Sendung Moses" suggests that while Schiller seems to favor an abstract universal truth over and against the particular rights of individuals, the text shows also the price that this favoring exacts from the individual and thus points to Schiller's own struggle with the Enlightenment's coercive potential. [source]

The mother in the text: Metapsychology and phantasy in the work of interpretation,

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 3 2008
Fausto Petrella
In this paper the author discusses some characteristics of a psychoanalytic text on the basis of two pages of Freud's essay, Delusions and dreams in Jensen's ,Gradiva' (Freud, 1906), on the concept of the return of the repressed. Analysis of the text shows that the four references (Horace, Rops, Rousseau, and a clinical vignette) occurring in it present unexpected connections both with each other and with the phenomenon they illustrate. There thus emerges a hidden scenario that reveals a concealed level of the text, relating to the maternal imago. Particular attention is devoted to the importance of the figurative apparatus and images (examples in the form of narrations and visual images, metaphors, and similes) that accompany the metapsychological and conceptual construction of Freud's text. Representation in visual form is necessary for the description and construction of the psyche and for conferring life on its conceptual formulations. However, metapsychological definition also reveals a phantasy dimension underlying the text. In addition, the author shows how certain textual constraints limit the intrinsic intuitive and arbitrary nature of interpretation. Finally, the complexity of the psychoanalytic text (with its various planes and levels) is emphasized, as well as the network of possible connections fundamental to the work of interpretation. A diagram illustrates the spatio-temporal aspects of the interpretive process, as defined by the interaction between conceptual factors and specific flights of the imagination which also have to do with unconscious affects, whether in the text, the author, or the reader. [source]

THE NATURE OF FIRE AND ITS COMPLICATIONS: THEOPHRASTUS' DE IGNE 1,10

BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2010
MARLEIN VAN RAALTE
This article offers a running commentary on De igne 1,10 (with text and translation). The way in which Theophrastus sets out to ascribe to the simple body of fire characteristics of terrestrial, burning fire, and only gradually dismisses his focus on fire (and its alter ego of heat) as a principle seems to indicate an early stage of his thought. On the other hand, a formal analysis of the text shows that the argument bears an unmistakably Theophrastean stamp. Finally it is argued that it cannot be inferred from De igne that Theophrastus adhered to the Aristotelian concept of aithêr, and that it is also very unlikely that he did so. The relevant passages from Theophrastus' botanical treatises and Metaphysics confirm this picture. Even the quite explicit testimonies from Philoponus and Julian seem to allow of an interpretation that does not involve Theophrastus having adopted this Aristotelian concept. [source]

The Truth about Philosophical Investigations I §§134,1371

PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 2 2005
Gerald Vision
A broad, though not unanimous, consensus among commentators is that the later Wittgenstein subscribes to a redundancy conception of truth. I reject that interpretation. No doubt much depends on what is meant by a redundancy theory. But once even mildly plausible versions of that view are isolated a review of the relevant texts shows that the evidence for that interpretation collapses. Moreover, the redundancy interpretation is at odds with guiding prescriptions in the post-1932 corpus. Wittgenstein doesn't hold that truth can be defined or characterized thinly, as redundancy theorists propose, but that it isn't susceptible to any such generic treatment. [source]

ETHICAL BLIND-SPOTS: WHY SOCRATES WAS NOT A COSMOPOLITAN

RATIO, Issue 1 2010
Timothy Chappell
Though Socrates can easily look like a cosmopolitan in moral and political theory, a closer reading of the relevant texts shows that, in the most important sense of the term as we now use it, he turns out , disappointingly, perhaps , not to be. The reasons why not are instructive and important, both for readers of Plato and for political theorists; they have to do with the phenomenon that I shall call ethical blind-spots. [source]