Everyday transcendence? Robert Musil,William James,and mysticism

ABSTRACT

In the early twentieth century, as a reaction against scientific positivism, a widespread interest in mysticism developed, especially among German writers. Mystical experience in the form of ‘epiphanies' was described by the psychologist William James and explored by the novelist Robert Musil. In his novel The Man without Qualities, Musil proposes an approach to mysticism which captures the phenomenology of the experience and makes it available for scientific study without subjecting it to a religious, or any other, interpretation.     

‘Seeing in the Dark’: Franz Joseph Thun and his Encyclopedia

Abstract

In the late 1790s the extravagant Bohemian aristocrat Franz Joseph Thun (1734–1801) composed a massive encyclopedia containing his wide-ranging and esoteric knowledge, which was not discovered until 2009. In this article I discuss the contents of his encyclopedia and investigate Thun’s place within the broader intellectual climate in Central Europe. I argue that Thun was an exceptional case in the Habsburg context, where scientists generally rejected outright the sort of excesses his encyclopedia contains. None the less, he became famous for his experiments with a spirit named ‘Gablidon’ and for his sessions in Mesmerism. His encyclopedia focuses on three topics: human ethics, man’s place in nature, and the sins of the French Revolution. He saw man as the middle link in the ‘great chain of being’, whose morality must be based on submission to God. Although he distanced himself from the Catholic Church, he rejected the French Revolution as an attempt to establish a state without religious basis.     

Friedrich Sunder and the boundaries of gender

The article explores the gendered imaginary in the Gnadenleben of Friedrich Sunder (1254–1328) and the formation of clerical masculinity in the context of feminine devotional life. Friedrich Sunder worked as a convent chaplain for a Dominican female community and lived within the convent's area. In his book Sunder employs language, images and devotional practices that can be considered in medieval culture to have been feminine. Almost simultaneously, however, he applied masculine roles and emphasised his own manliness. Although Sunder accepted female forms of religiosity and wrote on practices that were considered especially suitable for women, at the same time his priestly masculinity was defined by the physical boundary the cloister created between the enclosed feminine religiosity and that of a pastoral masculine priesthood. His discussion of gender within the mystical frame defined the boundaries of his own masculinity in the web of different traditions of both the proper way of life and the gendered nature of religious practices.     

春赏加拿大 无处不飞花

<正>不经意间,冬去春来,春天步姿婀娜地来到我们身边。阳春时节,大洋彼岸,加拿大正慢慢从积雪中苏醒,绿意悄然爬上枝头,早春的各色花朵亭亭玉立。加国的春景向来迷人,各处的春色各有千秋,很难以用一两个词语去笼统概括。辽阔的地域,各异的地貌,造就了缤纷多彩的加拿大之春。     

美丽的花卉 自然的精灵

<正>花卉受大多数人的喜欢,特别是受到摄影人的钟爱。自古以来,有多少文人墨客用优美的诗句称赞花卉的绚丽!其中很多作品更是家喻户晓。《诗经》记载:春日迟迟,卉木萋萋。仓庚喈喈,采蘩祁祁。乐府古辞中有赋:阳春二三月,草与水同色。到了唐宋,对花的讴歌,更是比比皆是。李白曾咏:寒雪梅中尽,春风柳上归;杜甫赞颂:侵陵雪色还萱草,漏泄春光有柳条;叶绍翁抒怀:春色满园关不住,一枝红杏出墙来;苏东坡写道:只恐夜间花睡去,故烧红烛     

餐芳饮露

《诗经·幽风》云：＂采紫祁祁＂,这里的＂紫＂即白色小野菊。古人于入秋之际大批采集,既可入馔,又能入药。这被认为是食用花卉的最早记载。     

Commemorating a Rural African-American Family at a National Battlefield Park

The Robinson House site is situated within the Manassas National Battlefield Park in northern Virginia. The original Robinson House was constructed in the 1840s and was occupied until 1936 by the same free African-American family. The National Park Service recognizes and interprets the Robinson House since it was part of the Civil War battlefield landscape during the First and Second Battles of Manassas. The original house went through a series of structural additions and alterations in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The house stood until 1993 when arsonists burned it, causing 60% damage to the structure. Today, the east chimney and the stone foundations remain. Amidst the many Civil War monuments at the battlefield park the interpretation of a century of occupation by the Robinson family through the remaining foundations adds meaning and depth to the area's local history. The Robinson House remains symbolize an African-American family's way of life as well as their struggle to survive during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. The foundations and site are a steadfast symbol of African-American cultural persistence that has prevailed for over 100 years on a battlefield landscape.     

Normative Political Theology as Intensified Critique

ABSTRACT

Some theorists are suspicious of normative political theology because they believe it undermines critical rationality. In my view, these theorists neglect theological traditions that resist dogmatism through intensified critique. Because authoritarian dogma is not unique to religion, theology offers sophisticated techniques that may be useful for those who are not themselves religious. A normative theology that intensifies critique represents a valuable resource for political reflection, and not only for the faithful.     

Mixing Religious Rituals and Mystical Experience with Modern Democracy: Indonesia's Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX

Abstract

Religion is the most divisive, even violent, issue dividing Indonesians both in the past and today. Nevertheless, this paper argues that the Western-educated Sultan's mystical experiences and religious rituals were used as tools for creating democratic traditions, preserving peace and religious tolerance in religiously diverse Yogyakarta province, the national educational center. As the Muslim King who ruled the Mataram kingdom from 1940–1988, Sultan Hamengku Buwono (HB) IX strived to combine elements of rationality with both his Muslim faith and Javanese mysticism. He primarily invoked traditional Javanese ethics and mysticism, rather than Islamic orthodoxy, to appeal to the cultural legacy of the indigenous citizenry, and invoked western democratic values to reassure the Indonesians from other provinces and foreigners engaged in Yogyakarta's colleges and universities. Research findings explain how the Sultan shared with many educated/uneducated persons this particular worldview in which there is no conflict between modern scientific education and a traditional religious worldview and practice     

追寻隐匿在青藏高原的四大名花

<正>在被称为“世界屋脊”和地球“第三极”的青藏高原上,在人迹罕至的高寒山区,生长着许多美丽的珍稀野生观赏植物,大名鼎鼎的绿绒蒿、报春、龙胆、杜鹃就是它们的典型代表。每当冰雪消融、春回大地时,这些美丽的花卉便竞相绽放,让人流连忘返。     

和谐风催放幸福花——互助盐昌村致富纪实

盐昌村地处互助土族自治县哈拉直沟乡,近年来,这个村在积极调整农业产业结构,提高单位面积生产效益的同时,大力拓展玉石、石膏、红粘土等优势产业,拓宽了农民增收渠道。2006年农民人均纯收入达2800元。一个门户开放,卫生整洁,群众安居乐业,村风健康向上,各业和谐发展的新农村正呈现在人们面前。     

春天正在绽放

三月,当第一抹暖阳照耀在大地上时,蛰伏了一冬的春开始慢慢绽放。在这个山水含笑、草长莺飞的季节,每一株树木都有肆意生长的自由,每一朵花都有尽情绽放的权利,每一只鸟儿都有自在欢唱的资格。这是属于春天的协奏曲,音乐已经响起,狂欢party才刚刚开始。     

赴一场“多点开花”的约会

＂桃花＂朵朵开 又是一年光棍节,还是一条光棍汉。依旧单身或者变成单身的你,要如何度过这个寂寞的节日？或许,美美地吃上一些桃花食物,让自己转个运,没准从此就告别光棍生活了呢!     

The Pleistocene art of Asia

While the Pleistocene art of Europe has been described, discussed, analyzed and explained in thousands of publications, that of Asia has attracted almost no interest at all. This paper is a brief summary of all known Ice Age art of Asia, both rock art and portable art. The current evidence is critically reviewed, region by region, and hundreds of specimens purported to be art are rejected by the author. Those considered to be authentic are often extremely isolated, in both time and space. It is argued that this record can only be explained effectively as having been greatly distorted by several factors. The geographical distribution, for instance, is clearly conditioned by such factors as intensity of research activities and local preservation conditions. Thus the pronounced paucity of available evidence is, at least in part, imposed by taphonomic biases of various types.     

A new era and new themes in Italian politics: The case of Padania

Abstract

By calling for the independence of Padania from the rest of Italy, the Lega Nord has recently drawn a great deal of attention to itself. In support of this campaign the Lega has actively introduced mythical and Utopian models onto the Italian political scene, combining a degree of cultural innovation with a certain political adventurism. This article focuses on these elements, beginning with the events of the autumn of 1996 when the Lega organized a ‘grande festa’ along the banks and in the towns of the River Po aimed at marking the birth of the new nation of Padania. The principal events of the festival were dominated by the many performances of the League's founder and leader, Umberto Bossi, whose speeches were full of pseudo‐religious or pseudo‐prophetic elements. Though the festival ended in Venice with a unilateral declaration of independence by the Lega and its followers in the north, it did not lead to any immediate political consequences. Nevertheless, the situation in Padania is marked by a complex mixture of identities. The Lega has not just introduced new methods of political opposition, it has also brought many subjects (local cultures, regionalism, the right to self‐determination) into the Italian political debate. Furthermore, it has used the language of the sacred and of ‘origins’ to create new characters, new calendars and new sacred sites.     

三门峡虢国博物馆形式设计综述

三门峡虢国博物馆在空间、整体造型与色彩、环境辅助设施等方面力求艺术性,在造型和色彩设计上具有象征性,而且在功能设计的各个环节强调其功能性,因此取得了良好的效果。     

The Unevenness of Political Theology

ABSTRACT

Those who agree that Carl Schmitt was correct to prefer to political theology to liberalism nonetheless need to develop an account of how an authority structure can sustain itself without imposing an ideology on those over whom it rules. This article suggests that one possibility forward is found in the mystical political theology of Jacob Taubes's 1955 essay “On The Symbolic Order of Modern Democracy,” since that essay posits a political body in which sovereignty is distributed, without forcing that distribution in an arbitrary manner.     

Fruit stones from Tiao Lei's tomb of Jiangxi in China,and their palaeoethnobotanical significance

Fruit stones were discovered in Mr. Tiao Lei's Tomb (around 300 AD) at Nanchang, China. The morphology and anatomy of the fruit stones were investigated. They are identified as belonging to three species, namely, Chinese plum (Prunus salicina Lindley), red bayberry (Myrica rubra Sieb. et Zucc.), and Chinese date (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.). These stones suggest the possibility of orchards in the local area, and the fresh or processed drupes of these three species probably played important roles in the tomb owner's life.     

Symbols, Myth-Making, and Identity: The Red Hand of Ulster in Late Nineteenth-Century Paterson, New Jersey

Symbols are manipulated to express social identity and to reaffirm or create a sense of place. Smoking pipes recovered from late nineteenth-century privies in the Dublin Section of Paterson, New Jersey, bear the symbol of the Red Hand of Ulster. Today, the Red Hand of Ulster is ubiquitous on Unionist murals throughout Northern Ireland symbolizing Northern Irish Protestant identity. Originally, the Red Hand symbolized the dawn of the Irish High King of Ulster. In late-nineteenth-century Paterson, it is argued here, the symbol was embedded in ethnic politics involving the Irish Diaspora and Irish–American identity developed through the Gaelic revival and Irish–American organizations and labor unions.     

Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language,Symbolism, and Music–An Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective

In recent years, there has been a tendency to correlate the origin of modern culture and language with that of anatomically modern humans. Here we discuss this correlation in the light of results provided by our first hand analysis of ancient and recently discovered relevant archaeological and paleontological material from Africa and Europe. We focus in particular on the evolutionary significance of lithic and bone technology, the emergence of symbolism, Neandertal behavioral patterns, the identification of early mortuary practices, the anatomical evidence for the acquisition of language, the development of conscious symbolic storage, the emergence of musical traditions, and the archaeological evidence for the diversification of languages during the Upper Paleolithic. This critical reappraisal contradicts the hypothesis of a symbolic revolution coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago, but also highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically–culturally modern equation and the potential contribution of anatomically pre-modern human populations to the emergence of these abilities. No firm evidence of conscious symbolic storage and musical traditions are found before the Upper Paleolithic. However, the oldest known European objects that testify to these practices already show a high degree of complexity and geographic variability suggestive of possible earlier, and still unrecorded, phases of development.