‘Eadem,sed aliter’: Arthur Schopenhauer as a Critic of ‘Progress’

Summary

Scholars have tended to overlook the political import of the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). This is perhaps unsurprising, since Schopenhauer himself was not a political philosopher and wrote relatively little about political matters. But Schopenhauer's near-silence on political topics should warrant our attention: why would a systematic philosopher, who made lasting contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics, devote so little attention to politics? Connecting his political thought with his philosophy of history, I argue that Schopenhauer can best be regarded as a critic of the idea of progress, especially ‘progress’ conceived of as national development or the growth of the state.     

Uranium-series age determination of travertines from the site of Vértesszöllös,Hungary

The site of Vértesszöllös has yielded a pebble-tool industry, a fragment of the cranium of a primitive form of Homo sapiens, and a vertebrate fauna indicative of the Biharian faunal stage. We have analyzed the travertines under- and overlying the hominid-bearing marl. All the samples are significantly contaminated with detritus, so that calculated U-series disequilibrium ages provide upper limits to the true age. The individual samples, when corrected for a possible initial ²³⁰Th/²³²Th ratio of 1·5, give an average age of 211 ± 13 Ky. By fitting the data to a model consisting of a mixture of authigenic and detrital components, we obtain an age of 162 _?62⁺⁷³ Ky. The travertines appear to have been deposited over a span of about 40,000 years centred at about 185 ± 25 Ky bp. This places their deposition near the beginning of isotope stage 6, much younger than has been generally believed.     

The playwright who dramatised his own war record: a reassessment of William Douglas-Home’s accounts of his refusal to fight for the liberation of Le Havre

At a court martial in October 1944, William Douglas-Home was convicted of wilfully disobeying a lawful command because he claimed a moral justification to do so. Cashiered and jailed for his offence, he would return to the events that occasioned his refusal throughout a long career as a playwright. In his post-war accounts, Mr Douglas-Home developed a defence of his decision that depicted it as principled. He submitted petitions in which he sought to overturn retrospectively the court martial ruling. This essay argues that he concocted the accounts of his actions on which his efforts to revise the record were based.     

The Beauty of a Beam: The Continuity of Joan Torras’s Beam of Equal Strength in the Work of his Disciples—Guastavino,Gaudí, and Jujol

Joan Torras, professor of the strength of materials at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (1871–1910), considered the beam of equal strength not only as a structurally extremely efficient beam, but also as beautiful because of its ability to reflect the material’s strength. Torras’ structures have left their special mark on Barcelona and on the work of his most illustrious students: Rafael Guastavino in the United States published similar structures, but it was Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol who transfigured them mimetically for Barcelona’s Park Güell and Tarragona’s Metropol Theatre, respectively. These examples will show how an expressive gesture can thoroughly transform a “technical form” into an “artistic form”, a fact that inevitably recalls the wisdom of classical Greek mimesis.     

Death of a President and his Assassin—Errors in their Diagnosis and Autopsies

On July 2, 1881, Charles Julius Guiteau shot President James Abram Garfield in the right flank. The President died because of infection produced by the unsterile fingers and probes repeatedly inserted into the wound. The major complaint of the wounded President was intractable pain in his legs and feet. This symptom failed to alert the doctors to the possibility of vertebral and spinal cord injury. Garfield died with sepsis after 80 days of intense national concern, and for the patient there was psychological, physical, and nutritional deprivation. His autopsy revealed the bullet was not in the pelvis as his doctors had expected, but adjacent to the first lumbar vertebra it had shattered. The trial and execution of Guiteau split the medical community into those that considered him insane and those who felt execution was justified. Guiteau was delusional and his brain revealed chronic inflammation and histological features suggestive of syphilis. At the time, and since, the propriety of the execution has been questioned.     

Political Parties and Women’s Success in Municipal Elections in 2005 in Montérégie and Montréal (Québec,Canada)

ABSTRACT

We examine the impact of political parties on the success of women and men candidates in the 2005 municipal elections of Québec’s two most populous regions, Montérégie and Montréal. We built the dataset by requesting documentation from each municipality separately. This original dataset supports our two hypotheses. First, we demonstrate that the presence of political parties did not affect the difference in percentages of votes obtained by women and men candidates. No matter the gender, candidates affiliated with a political party obtained more votes than independent ones. Second, we find that gender did not affect contributions. No matter the gender, the presence of political parties and the candidates’ affiliation had a positive impact on their contributions. Québec conforms to findings in the U.S. literature: women and men candidates, under similar circumstances, are equally likely to obtain votes and contributions.     

Towards a self‐reflecting archaeology: Vágar,Vågan and Reidar

Sámi sacrificial sites that have been investigated in Lapland, northern Sweden, all show an increase in deposited metal objects, for example arrowheads, coins and pendants, in late Iron Age and early Medieval times (ca. 700 ‐ 1400 A.D.). The origins of these artefacts suggest there was an active gift exchange taking place between the Sámi hunters and Finno‐Ugrian settlers to the east, in the context of the fur trade. The presence of wealth objects in sacrificial sites is interpreted as a form of “potlatch”, i.e. the result of decisions by local groups (sijdda) to preserve social stability by removing from the society the possibility for an accumulation of wealth and prestige. This interpretation is consistent with the archaeological evidence of settlement patterns, seasonal mobility and a lack of social hierarchy in the interior of northern Sweden. Rituals at sacrificial sites thus helped to maintain a Sámi hunting society that was based on religious principles of animal ceremonialism, social principles of general reciprocity, and an economy centred on cooperative activities, despite the potential of the fur trade to disrupt this society, for example by enhancing the prestige of successful individuals. In this way the egalitarian character of the Sámi sijdda was maintained right up until the transition to reindeer pastoralism in the 16th‐nth centuries.     

Four English ‘Bohemians’ Manqués: A Short-Term Resident,a Lost Opportunity,One to Do Without,and a Case of Confused Antecedents

Abstract

The article reflects the author’s longstanding interest in the appearance in the English lexicon of items emanating from the Bohemian/Czech environment, including the incidence of the very word Bohemian/bohemian. It discusses four cases where ‘Bohemian’ does not feature, though might well do so. These are: one bird name, the waxwing, once the ‘Bohemian waxwing’, which name survives only in American English because of the local need to distinguish the bird from another in the family; one spring flower, the early star-of-Bethlehem, restricted in Britain to a single site on the Welsh border, which could, on the basis of its Latin name, Gagea bohemica, have become the ‘Bohemian star-of-Bethlehem’; one pernicious hybrid knotweed, Reynoutria × bohemica, which has no common English name, but was identified and named in Bohemia, and would be potentially nameable geographically as ‘Bohemian knotweed’, like one of its parents, the Japanese knotweed; and one modest vegetable, the swede, which owes its name to a perceived origin in Sweden, though it is conjectured that during or after the Thirty Years’ War it was first taken to Sweden from Bohemia and so might have become analogously the ‘bohemian’. The article contains other conjectures as to the items’ origins and explores the history of their naming in Czech and German as well as English.     

Isabelle of France,queen of England— a reconsideration

In speaking of historiographical attitudes towards Edward III, Professor May McKisack points out “a problem of historical reputation” (1960:1). If, indeed such a problem exists, it is not unique to Edward III. Indeed McKisack's analysis applies also to the case of Edward's mother, Isabelle of France. The political interplay between Isabelle of France, Edward II, the English nobility and the townsmen raised some enigmas surrounding the queen: a stranger of French birth in England, just ten years before the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War, Isabelle succeeded in uniting all the vital powers of the kingdom under her flag and in bringing about an unprecedented action—the deposing of the king of England. Contemporary sources ascribe an indescribable beauty to Isabel, also devotion and moral strength. Yet contrasted to the figure emerging from the contemporary sources, often in violent contrast to it, is the she-wolf image, perpetuated by research in the context of Isabelle's activities. The wide gap separating the she-wolf from the charming figure of the sources creates a paradox, even a challenge, which requires explanation.     

Rex imago dei: Charles V of France and the Livre des propriétés des choses

The subject of this paper is the Livre des propriétés des choses, the fourteenth-century French translation of the thirteenth-century encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum. The translation was made for Charles V of France, and the original copy is lost. Here a reconstruction is offered of the appearance of the frontispiece of the royal exemplar. The textual additions of the translator and the iconography of this frontispiece reveal a new conception of the meaning and usage of the encyclopedia, as well as a concerted attempt to draw this authoritative work into the orbit of royal aims and aspirations. The reconstructed frontispiece also allows us to correct an error, which originates with Montfaucon, concerning the illustration of the original copy of the Livre des propriétés des choses.