Sexual Selection,Automata and Ethics in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and Olive Schreiner's Undine and From Man to Man

Abstract

This paper brings together two related areas of debate in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first concerns how the courtship plot of the nineteenth-century novel responded to, and helped to shape, scientific ideas of sexual competition and selection. In The Mill on the Floss (1860), George Eliot strikingly prefigures Darwin's later work on sexual selection, drawing from her own extensive knowledge of the wider debates within which evolutionary theory developed. Maggie Tulliver's characterisation allows Eliot to explore the ethical complexities raised by an increasingly powerful scientific naturalism, where biology is seen to be embedded within morality in newly specific ways. The second strand of the paper examines the extension of scientific method to human mind and motivation which constituted the new psychology. It argues that there are crucial continuities of long-established ethical and religious ideas within this increasingly naturalistic view of human mind and motivation. The contention that such ideas persist and are transformed, rather than simply jettisoned, is illustrated through the example of Thomas Henry Huxley's 1874 essay on automata. Turning finally to focus on Olive Schreiner's Undine (1929) and From Man to Man (1926), the paper explores the importance of these persistent ethical and religious ideas in two novels which remained unpublished during her lifetime. It argues that they produce both difficulty and opportunity for imagining love plots within the context of increasingly assertive biological and naturalistic accounts of human beings.     

日本唯美主义文学对狮吼社的影响

本文将以章克标和滕固为研究对象,以日本唯美主义文学对其影响为研究视域,运用接受美学理论对其进行解读。从中发现他们虽曾深受日本唯美主义文学的影响,但其影响具有鲜明的限阈性和时代性。     

大漠选美 谁是非洲好男人?

<正>作为西非富拉尼人的一个分支,尼日尔博罗罗人至今仍过着几乎与现代生活隔绝的原始游牧生活。尽管生活条件恶劣,但他们仍然非常热爱生活、追求美,"男子选美"活动就是他们爱美之心的一个表现,它就发生在尼日尔的盖雷沃尔节上。有人说尼日尔是世界上最热的国家之一,依我看大概也是世界上最荒凉的国家之一。单调平坦的高原一望无际,滚滚而来的热浪在荒原上扬起漫天尘埃……这就是我在塔瓦省的图法米尼村看到的景象。要不是为了博罗罗人的盖雷沃尔节,谁愿意到这种地方来!当然,博罗罗人的这种"男子选     

The Ethics of Philanthropy

Abstract

This essay considers the ancient antecedents to the “new field” of the ethics of philanthropy, arguing that key questions such as “to whom should we give our money?” have already been explored by ancient authors and that the answers they give to these questions can be quite different to the answers given by contemporary scholars. By analysing the treatment of giving in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s De Officiis, and Seneca’s De Beneficiis, I argue that the focus of ancient thinkers upon giving within one’s own community can be viewed as a possible response to a number of issues that have been raised by modern scholars, including the “problem of acting at a distance” and the “problem of accountability.” Moreover, these ancient thinkers have additional, positive reasons for thinking that philanthropy should take place within one’s own community, based upon their ideas of man’s natural duty to his political community, and the social benefits that can be derived from local philanthropy. The integration of ancient perspectives, then, into these modern debates, can serve to complement and broaden research in this emerging field.     

The Riddle of Paul de Man

The discovery in 1987 of Paul de Man’s pro‐Nazi literary activities in wartime Belgium prompted a debate over the fact that de Man neither publicly declared his collaboration, nor clarified the relationship between his wartime experience and his post‐war work. De Man’s detractors argued that he insidiously hid his past. The evidence of his concealment, they maintained, was his silence and unwavering conviction in his mature work that the meaning of every text contains its opposite. De Man guaranteed the impossibility of knowing the original meanings of his wartime articles. In contrast, de Man’s supporters argued that what appeared to be de Man’s silence masked his life‐long critique of his wartime errors. His heroic analysis, they maintained, was expressed in his post‐war work. In contrast to these interpretations, it is argued that de Man’s silence and post‐war work resulted from his rejection of his former self and the influence of its unacknowledged presence. The unintentional presence of his past caused de Man’s inability to speak openly about his coll aboration and shaped the content of his late work.     

当惊世界殊——远古“北京人”出土纪略

楔子爆炸，爆炸，接连不断的爆炸。睡梦中的美国海军基地珍珠港，神不知鬼不觉地成了日军炮火的命中点，遭到了致命的打击。与此同时，远在中国渤海的港口城市秦皇岛，一列美军列车被日军截获，人批军用物资流入日军之手。损失一列车军用物资对于一场浩大的世界战争来说，根本算不了什么，可搭载其上的一人一小两只木箱，却有着非同凡响的意义。它的神秘失踪，给中国乃至全人类留下了一个巨大的谜团。请记住，这一天是１９４１年１２月７日。５８年后。１９９９年１０月，北京最美丽的金秋。人民共和国刚刚结束了自己５０华诞的盛大庆典，“…     

老人与鹤

正内蒙古扎鲁特草原的生态危机,致使原本生活于此的动物们食物短缺,无家可归。为了生存,野生动物不得不放弃原野所赋予的自由,寻求人类所给予的最后保护。《老人与鹤》这组图片,记录了2016年蒙古族老人舍楞喂养两只小蓑羽鹤并放飞的生活片断。这个故事,只是草原兴衰变化过程中的一个插曲:有人性光辉的高音,有弱小生命无助的低音,有涓涓如细流的节奏,还有让人欲说还休的休止符。     

《辽左见闻录》及作者王一元

《辽左见闻录》是记载辽东故实之较早,价值颇高的专书。本介绍了该书的作王一元,进而揭示了该书的史料价值和版本价值。     

Proceedings Of The Fourth Annual Meeting Of The European Association For The History Of Psychiatry (Eahp), The European Club For The History Of Neurology (Echn), And The International Society For The History Of The History Of The Neurosciences (Ishn)

Abstract

Osphresiology, though beginning with Aristotle, and the title of a classical monograph from 1819 by Cloquet, has, like the human sense of smell itself, played a relatively modest role, compared to other sensory functions. The anatomical and physiological connections of the nose to the brain proved to be more complex than those of sight, hearing and even touch, and were therefore poorly understood before the second half of the 19th century. Moreover, the close association between smell and taste gave rise to much controversy regarding the respective roles of the first and the fifth cranial nerves. Next, came the unfolding of the evolutionary influence of cerebral structure and function ‐ viz Broca's “limbic”; concept, and the “olfactory desert”; in the brains of “anosmatic”; animals. Jackson's “uncinate”; seizures featuring olfactory hallucinations brought the hippocampal formation into focus. Finally, there were the clinical manifestations of hyposmia and hyperosmia, from “coryza”;, the common cold, to injury or neoplasms causing hyposmia, as well as some endocrine alterations causing hyperosmia. (And let us not forget Charles Huysman's “Against the Grain”; and Marcel Proust's evocative fragrant madeleine.)     

浅析近世误读进化论所产生之负面效应

本文分别从个人主义的泛滥与新道德和民主政治构建的难产、理想主义的滥觞与激进主义者实践道路的迷惘、唯科学主义思潮的横行与国人人生观的困惑等视角发掘出误读进化论所产生的近代社会转型问题,希望唤起学界对进化论展开深刻反思,审视它在近代所带来的负面效应.