WRITING THE HISTORY OF SPINOZISM

In this essay I reflect on Knox Peden's Spinoza contra Phenomenology, a history of French rationalist Spinozism in the mid‐twentieth century. The book marks an important intervention in modern French and European intellectual history, depicting the importance of Baruch Spinoza's thought in the negotiation of and resistance to the phenomenology that captivated much of twentieth‐century French intellectual life. With philosophical and historical sophistication, Peden tells the story of several relatively overlooked thinkers while also providing substantially new contexts and interpretations of the well‐known Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze. While accounting for Peden's major accomplishment, my aim is also to situate his work among a number of recent works in the history of Spinozism in order to reflect on the specific methodological questions that pertain to the widely varying appropriations of Spinoza's thought since the seventeenth century. In particular, I reflect on Peden's claim that Spinoza's thought cannot provide an actionable politics, a claim that runs counter to nearly two centuries of leftist forms of Spinozism. I offer a short account of some of the ways that theorists have mobilized Spinoza's thought for political purposes, redefining “action” itself in Spinozist terms. I then conclude by reflecting on the dimensions of Spinoza's thought (and recent interpretations of it) that make it possible for such significantly different claims about its political potential to be credible.     

The Josephan Judge Jephthah

This article offers a detailed comparison of Josephus' account (Ant. 5.255-270) of the judge Jephthah both with its biblical prototype (Judg 10,6-12,7) as attested by the ancient text-witnesses (MT, LXX, etc.), and with another, virtually contemporary, retelling of the Jephthah story, i.e. that of Pseudo-Philo in L.A.B. 39-40. Josephus' version involves abbreviations, expansions, rearrangements and other modifications of the biblical data. As a result of his application of these rewriting techniques, Josephus presents his Greco-Roman readers with a streamlined, easier-to-understand rendering of the Jephthah story in which, e.g., the divine role is downplayed, and Jephthah's vow is explicitly censured. In comparison to both the Bible and Josephus, Pseudo-Philo eliminates whole components of the story shared by them (e.g., the slaughter of the Ephraimites, 12,1-6// 5.267-269), while also going beyond both in his highlighting the tragic figure of Jephthah's daughter.     

Waltharius and Carolingian morality: satire and lay values

Some recent interpretations of the early medieval Latin poem Waltharius have seen it as offering a clerical critique of warrior culture. While the poem is difficult to date accurately, it seems more likely to belong to the ninth than the tenth century. When the poem is analysed in the context of contemporary Frankish works providing moral instruction to lay noblemen, its attitudes towards pride, wealth and warfare can be shown to lie within the mainstream of Carolingian reformers' thought. The notoriously bloody ending to the poem is also best seen as emphasizing Walter's successful heroism rather than undermining it.     

“Kontakte” – Reflexionen naturwissenschaftlich‐technischer Innovationsprozesse in der frühen Elektronischen Musik Karlheinz Stockhausens (1952–1960)

“Kontakte” – Reflections of Innovative Processes in Science and Technology in Karlheinz Stockhausen's Early Electronic Music (1952–1960). The following article will give an overview of the interdependence of aesthetic and scientific/technical developments in German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's early works of electronic music. It is an outline of the major steps in his artistic evolution between the works “Etude (Musique concrète)” and “Kontakte”, their relation to innovations in psychoacoustic and sound‐studio technology as well as the impact, that the works from that period had on the fundamental changes in musical aesthetics during the course of the 20th century.     

Rebel with a cause? From traitor prince to exemplary martyr: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's representation of San Hermenegildo

El mártir del sacramento, San Hermenegildo is an auto sacramental or Eucharistic play, written in the 1680s by the Mexican nun and literary superstar, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The play centres on the story of a (purportedly Catholic) Visigothic prince who died in Seville in 586 by order of his Arian father, Leovigild. Contempary sources vary in their portrayal of Hermenegild, with most painting him as a traitor who rebelled against his father for political gain. Gregory the Great, however, championed Hermenegild as an exemplary martyr who died in defence of the Faith. One thousand years on, Spain saw a revival of its Visigothic ‘Golden Age’, and Hermenegild was among those to be venerated; he was canonised in 1585 and his memory was brought to life in various artistic forms; in poetry, paintings and even on the stage. This paper will examine the part that Sor Juana's auto played within this tradition, exploring the purpose of the play and the various historical and biblical sources used to create it.     

Malthusianism,socialism and feminism in the United States

This article examines and compares Adam Ferguson's and Guillaume-Thomas Raynal's analyses of modern commercial states by reconstructing their accounts of the history and politics of the Dutch Republic. For both writers, the Dutch case stood as a clear instance of the political dangers implicit in a particular type of commercial polity, and both sought to apply its lessons to an understanding of the future of their own states. Although Ferguson's and Raynal's arguments about the decline of the Dutch trading state overlapped, their analyses reflected different evaluations of the relationship between modern states and modern economic institutions (trading companies and public debts). The broader purpose of the article is to shed light on the distinctive theories of commerce and models of European development that informed the major works of Enlightenment historiography and political thought produced by Ferguson and Raynal in the 1760s and 1770s.     

The Non-Sense of an Ending

This article contributes to the scholarship on Portuguese writer José Cardoso Pires as well as the study of the neorealist short story in Portugal. It analyzes the ending of the neorealist short story as a moment of utopian projection and draws a comparison with Cardoso Pires's short story endings. This study demonstrates that Cardoso Pires displaces the ending of the story as a moment of concordance to a moment of continuing crisis. The author suggests that through the design of problematic narratorial voices that advance ambiguity and irony, Cardoso Pires requires from the reader an engagement with the text that mirrors the writer's engagement in society.     

Art,Transformation, Liberation: Balzac's Eugénie Grandet

Balzac's works about actual artists like Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu have long been studied to derive the author's ideas about the artistic creative process. Eugénie Grandet also deals with art, however, even though there is not a real artist in it. In telling the story of Eugénie and her cousin Charles, Balzac suggests his views on the effects of beauty created by artful arrangement as opposed to the beauty in nature uncrafted by human art.     

From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth,Folklore, and Christian Origins

The American Orientalist William F. Albright (1891–1971) is remembered as a leading voice of twentieth‐century “biblical archaeology,” a field that aimed to demonstrate empirically the Hebrew Bible's substantial historicity. Less well known is Albright's research on Christian backgrounds, which by contrast reflected modernist theology's scepticism about the gospel narratives' literal truth. Drawing ideas from the “Pan‐Babylonian” school of biblical criticism, Albright invoked the influence of ancient Near Eastern myth and folklore on the Christ story, this being the culminating theme of his magnum opus From the Stone Age to Christianity (1940). Originally Albright believed that this mythological interpretation would reestablish Christianity's intellectual credibility in the twentieth century and thus help revive New Testament theology. Yet in the latter part of his career he omitted the mythological thesis from his writings, apparently having concluded that it was harmful to orthodox Christian faith.     

Josephus' Retelling of Nathan's Oracle (2 Samuel 7)

This paper deals with the way Josephus has retold and rewritten the narrative in 2 Sam 7 in his Jewish Antiquities 7.90-95. Recent studies made on this issue have focused either on the question of Messianism or on the characterization of king David in Josephus' writings. However, our study focuses on Josephus' qualities as a commentator and discusses how Josephus handled the hermeneutical problems he encountered in the story, for example: why did God forbid David to build a temple? What was the nature of God's promise to David that his dynasty will rule forever? These questions are examined through a close reading of the Josephus' retelling of the biblical story in 2 Sam 7. We have considered omissions, additions, and changes in the sequence of actions. Our aim was to find out whether the differences between the biblical text and that of Josephus should be ascribed to a different Vorlage (which may be identical to the LXX), to harmonization or to intentional changes made to clarify difficult verses within the text.     

Divinity and decay: the narrative of miraculous renovation and the repair of sacred images in colonial Mexico

Miraculous images in the early modern period were continually restored and touched up to ensure their continued decency, relevancy, and efficacy as divine conduits. This article focuses on the miraculous narratives that accompanied those artistic alterations, and in particular, on the trope of miraculous renovation that explained the dramatic restoration of several blackened and decayed crucifixes in seventeenth-century Mexico. By unpacking the biography of the Señor de Santa Teresa, Mexico's most famous Cristo Renovado, I reveal how the ‘renovation narrative’ that took hold in the region wove together artistic and religious discourses to explain the formal transformation of indecent statues of Christ. I also show how the story resolved broader concerns regarding artistic decorum, the inherently corruptible media from which the images were crafted, fears of native idolatry held by the clergy, and the struggle between devotees and patrons to control images imbedded within devotional communities.     

Tu m'as repondu

ABSTRACT

Literal biblical interpretation advocates the view that at the outset of the paradise story Adam and Eve were only banned to eat of the tree of knowledge. The present paper challenges this view through an economic, ra-tional choice interpretation and the application of a self-interested decision calculus (model of economic man). I mount the thesis that, on grounds of a rational choice reconstruction, Adam and Eve must have been implicitly banned from the outset not to eat of the tree of life, despite no explicit ban be-ing stated in Genesis. The paper argues for the validity and insightfulness of such a rational choice analysis of the paradise story, which considerably clari-fies the conceptual logic and structure of the Eden story.     

Towards a new philosophy of history. European Vichianism and Neapolitan Hegelianism (1804–48)

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Hegel’s reception among nineteenth-century Neapolitan authors went hand-in-hand with a renewed interest in Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history. It considers the mechanisms of circulation and reception that shaped responses to Hegelianism within the broader context of European debates on La Scienza Nuova. These developments largely directed Neapolitans’ understanding of Hegel’s ideas and encouraged the merging of local thought with wider European currents. Neapolitan Hegelians engaged very extensively with the works of French and northern Italian authors, such as Jules Michelet and Carlo Cattaneo, who had understood Vico as a proponent of an absolute concept of historical time that neatly dovetailed with the philosophical preoccupations common among German idealists. The article makes a case for a transnational understanding of Neapolitan Hegelianism, arguing that this current of thought did not merely stem from the passive absorption of Hegel’s ideas, but emerged as the synthesis of a local and a European dimension of philosophy.     

A Note on Henry Timberlake's Route from Gaza to Beersheba to Hebron in 1601

Abstract

The proper identification of the town that Christian travellers described as biblical Beersheba during the Crusader, Medieval, and Early Modern periods is key to understanding many pilgrim accounts, and none more so than that of Henry Timberlake. During these periods Christian pilgrim viewed Bayt Jibrīn as biblical Beersheba, not Bi'r al-Sab' as most scholars do today. Once this identification is clear it is possible to trace the likely route Timberlake followed from Gaza to Bayt Jibrīn and on to the Hebron area. Timberlake's caravan had the choice of two roads as they left Bayt Jibrīn and, in part because of the social conditions of 1601, I argue the caravan took the more northerly road to reach the Hebron area as opposed to the better known and southerly Roman Road.     

Engineering Art and Telling Tales: Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy

Anish Kapoor has become well known for his enormous architectural installations and for his use of vibrant colour. Much of his work depends critically on good engineering and he has collaborated closely with engineers for many years. I discuss several of Kapoor's large works, approaching them from an engineer's perspective. I also show how Kapoor weaves layers of narrative in some of his work: so that a naïve understanding of a piece's construction is a falsehood layered over the true engineering solution. The story seems initially obvious to the audience but a little digging, a little thought, reveals that it is a fiction and that reality is something other.     

Tracing the Line of Europa: Migration,Genealogy, and the Power of Holy Origins in Ancient Greek Narrative Knowledge and Cultural Memory

This essay explores the place of the mythical heroine Europa in the narrative knowledge and cultural memory of ancient Greece and modern Europe. Early Greek sources make reference to several women named Europa, only one of whom is Agenor's (or Phoenix's) daughter abducted by Zeus who made her the member of a divine lineage. However, during the fifth-century BCE, the diverse “Europa” figures came to be identified with the Phoenician princess; and the foundations were laid for the abduction story to take on its modern notion as founding myth of Europe. This elevation to founding myth can, in part, be attributed to Europa's membership in a family of eponymous founders. From the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods, Europa's kin gradually grew as various myths were integrated with each other—myths, which shaped identities by creating memory through storytelling. Mythical family bonds came to be seen as biological facts and served both to consolidate local identities and to affirm a Panhellenic identity in times when inner and outer boundaries had to be negotiated as a consequence of migration, colonization, or warfare. The high degree of migration and the dense genealogical network in the narratives of Europa's kin allowed many different groups to lay claim to this narrative knowledge and in doing so, created new myths and cults, interpretations and evaluations of a family well-established in the Greek mind on account of its holy origins. Thus foundation myths surrounding Europa helped to define cultural and ethnic space shaped by migration and the dialectics of unity and plurality. As such, these myths remain relevant to Europe today.     

“Voy a empeñar la Edad de Oro”: Historia,música y política en la crisis española (2011–2016)

ABSTRACT

Spain's current economic and social crisis has involved a profound reappraisal of the country's history, institutions, and official narratives, especially after the emergence of the 15M or indignados movement in 2011. A crucial example of this shift has been the widespread criticism of Spain's “Transition to Democracy” or Transición, widely considered Spain's “foundational” narrative. In this article, a series of examples from the musical field—including essays, songs, and public uses of music—are studied and contextualized in order to analyze different interpretations and critiques of the Transición developed by artists, intellectuals, and politicians who took part in the 15M or have been influenced by its “climate” (Fernández Savater). In these examples, two complementary trends are identified: on the one hand, an intention to reclaim part of the Transición's collective mood through its musical symbols; on the other, a rejection of its political legacy, as expressed in criticisms of its musical canon.     

LESTER GRABBE AND HISTORIOGRAPHY: AN APOLOGIA

This response to Lester Grabbe's review of Th.L. Thompson's The Bible in History marks out substantial differences in their approach to history. It argues that Grabbe appears to overlook the book's intention to offer a critique of historicism and its rhetoric of objectivity. Particularly, Grabbe's understanding of the Bible as historiographical is disputed, and the understanding of social-historians and their concentration on Tendenz critique - a commonplace in ''second temple'' studies - is not shared by the author. Accepting a loss in both detail and accuracy, he rather recommends an approach which uses anthropological and archaeological insights, supplemented by the unwritten implications of texts, geo-political trends and intellectual history. Against Grabbe's strong objections, the necessity of caution in accepting the historicity of specific unconfirmed kings in the synchronisms of Judean and Samaritan kinglists, implied by 2 Kings, is re-asserted. On the other hand, Grabbe's charge of casting greater doubt on biblical texts in contrast to his treatment of extra-biblical texts is falsified by the author's Historicity of 1974 and subsequent known practice. He corrects Grabbe's misunderstanding of his treatment of the deity Yahweh, and, after objecting to the personally derogatory innuendoes of Grabbe's presentation of his understanding of early Judaism, he addresses the question of whether stories lie by addressing the rhetoric of story. In closing, a brief exegesis of Mark 7, 31-37 is offered as an illustration of how historicism has distorted biblical scholarship.     

God,Otherness, and Community: Some Reflections on Hegel and Levinas

Many critics have argued that the alterity of God is negated within Hegel's philosophy of religion. This paper will present the position that Hegel's approach to theology depends on a rigorous hermeneutic which does not negate the meaning and power of religious language and practice as they are found within various Christian traditions, though it does challenge the view that God is absolutely “other” than the human. Further, Hegel's approach to the interpretation of the divine-human relationship need not be limited to Christianity alone. Although Hegel regards Christianity as the highest, most spiritually developed form of religious life, certain fruitful correlations can be established between his work on the ethical dimensions of religious community and Levinas's ethical interpretation of Judaism. These correlations suggest that both Hegel and Levinas offer articulations of what can be seen as a “biblical” mode of thought in which the dialectical relation of God and human beings is central.