EXTENDED MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Many historians focus primarily on authors' “intended meanings.” Yet all textual interpreters, including historians, need a second kind of meaning. I call this idea “extended meaning,” a new name for an old idea: “P means Q” is the same as “P logically implies Q.” Extended and intended meaning involve different kinds of understanding: even if we grasp exactly what authors meant, we miss something important if we overlook their errors, for example. Crucially, extended and intended meaning are not alternatives: just as some parts of texts cannot be understood without historical analysis, so too some parts of texts cannot be understood without philosophical analysis. Indeed, some historians are adept at using extended meanings to recover intended meanings. But the failure to make this explicit has led many historians to undervalue philosophical analysis. This article thus applies the idea of extended meaning to three practical questions: whether we can deviate from authors' intended meanings, whether we can use anachronisms, and how we can use extended meanings to recover intended meanings. The idea of extended meaning thus strengthens our theoretical foundations and offers valuable practical tools.     

THE TEETH OF TIME: PIERRE HADOT ON MEANING AND MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS1

The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he chose to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo‐Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid‐1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time.     

秦汉时的行钱

行钱一辞见于《汉书·百官公卿表》,武帝元鼎三年,“郸侯周仲居为太常,坐不收赤仄钱收行钱论。” 周仲居获罪之由是因为“不收赤仄钱”、“收行钱”。行钱是什么?先看颜师古对这段话作出的解释:     

AGA,AMIO AND LOTO: PERSPECTIVES ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE SELF IN SAMOA

The article concerns the Shore/Freeman controversy about the terms aga and amio. Shore sees aga as the Samoan category for ‘culture’ and amio as the category for ‘nature’ in the Hobbesian sense. Freeman says that Shore has his terms backwards. I argue that Freeman is correct in his assertion that aga cannot be equated with ‘culture‘. However, Freeman wrongly defines aga as innate essence. In fact aga is the term for identity, which in Samoa is external and social. Amio is best understood as a derivative of that part of the self which Samoans call the loto and which we call subjectivity.     

关于摇钱树起源及内涵的研究

“摇钱树”一词,最早见于明冯梦龙的《警世通言》三二卷“杜十娘怒沉百宝箱”一文中。作为一个考古学名词,是我国著名考古学家冯汉骥先生,在四十年代对彭山汉代崖墓出土的一种随葬器物,进行研究后提出来的。六十年代,于豪亮先生《“钱树”“钱树座”和鱼龙漫衍之戏》一文在《文物》杂志上发表后,这一称谓便为考古学界所接受。     

THE ROLE AND MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE OUTER ZONE IN THE TERRITORIAL STRUCTURE OF THE MOSCOW REGION

The proposed basic functions and structure of the “Outer Zone” of the Moscow Region are outlined as part of a long-term physical planning model. The zone, which includes the Transition Zone, Linear Anti-Cores I and II, and Peripheral Zone I of the original model (Soviet Geography, February 1987), is to serve primarily as a check to territorial growth of the Core (a function once assigned to the more centrally located, but now largely developed Buffer Zone) and a potential base for new economic development in the future. A ranking of sites for limited, more immediate development is included (translated by H. L. Haslett, Birmingham, UK).     

THE STORY BEHIND AGYA AND HIS ALBUM THE SOUND OF HEART

<正>In Tibet,people often give alms to the pilgrims who get down and give a kowtow every three steps,by which they place their will to pay pilgrimage to them so as to comfort their own sense of loss that they cannot make by themselves.Getting the alms,no matter more or less,the pilgrims usually do nothing but give a smile     

TERRITORIAL STRUCTURE OF TOURIST SERVICES IN THE USSR AND TRENDS IN ITS DEVELOPMENT

Differences in the support structure for tourism in various parts of the USSR are analyzed as a consequence of such factors as natural conditions, proximity to major population centers and tourist attractions, route connectivity, and the variable shares of private (e.g., dacha) and rental accommodations. Elements of both dynamism and stability in the current spatial pattern are identified and comparisons of tourism infrastructure for 1976, 1980, and 1986 are used to analyze changes occurring in subregions within four broad macrozones. Tourism infrastructure and interregional tourist travel both are concentrated in the central and southern parts of the European USSR. Translated by H. L. Haslett, Leamington Spa, UK from: Izvestiya Vsesoyuznogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, 1990, No. 1, pp. 86-94.     

A COMPARATIVE-GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF URBAN TRANSPORT NETWORKS IN MOSCOW AND LENINGRAD

A graph-analytic technique is used to compare the public transport networks in Moscow and Leningrad. The technique makes it possible to identify gaps in the public transport systems of the two cities and to suggest remedial measures. In general, the public transport system of Leningrad is found to be better integrated than that of Moscow. The transport network of Moscow is more heavily dissected than that of Leningrad, lacks enough lateral connections between outlying city areas (as opposed to linkages between outlying areas and the city center), and generally lags in providing electric ground transportation (street cars and trolley buses) to newly developed residential areas.     

CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF EVAPORATION IN THE ARAL SEA BASIN

An analysis of evaporation changes in the Central Asian plain in connection with the drop of the Aral Sea level beginning in 1961 shows that there has been a reduction in evaporation from stream valleys and deltas and an increase in evaporation from irrigated land and newly formed evaporating surfaces. These new entities are primarily the Arnasay depression (west of the Golodnaya Steppe irrigation district) and the Sarykamysh depression (west of the lower reaches of the Amudarya), which have become filled with spent irrigation water draining from the irrigated land. Another new source of evaporation associated with human activity are the lakes and wetlands formed along the Kara Kum Canal as a result of the filtration of canal water. It turns out, furthermore, that irrigation on sloping piedomon plains, such as those watered by the Kara Kum Canal, requires more water than in old irrigated alluvial plains because of the additional water needed to flush salt out of the soil and to fill subsoil cavities and raise the watertable.