The Christian Peace of Erasmus

The aim of this essay is to show that Erasmus’s concept of peace should be understood as a form of irenicism rather than pacifism. I argue that Erasmus’s basic claims on war and peace do not qualify him as a pacifist, first of all because his concept of peace is non-universal: it is exclusively Christian since it does not include Muslims and Jews unless they have converted to Christianity. Secondly, Erasmus’s willingness to fight the Turks and his call for a Christian war against them suggests that he was not a pacifist. Since the peace Erasmus preached for was exclusively Christian, it cannot be identified as pacifism in its accepted universal sense, but rather as a commitment to the peace of Christendom, and therefore his concept of peace should more precisely be described as irenic. By shedding new light on Erasmus’s notion of war and peace, this essay suggests that his alleged religious tolerance should be considered anew.     

SONIC GEOGRAPHY, PLACE AND RACE IN THE FORMATION OF LOCAL IDENTITY: LIVERPOOL AND SCOUSERS

The concept of identity has attracted significant academic attention. This article unpacks what constitutes the Scouse identity, how it is constructed and its different dimensions, with particular reference to place, phonology and race . Its novelty lies in developing the underused concept of "sonic geography" to examine the extent to which sound, for example a distinctive accent and/or dialect, affects the construction of local identity. Empirically this is conducted through a detailed analysis of the Scouse, or Liverpudlian, identity. The article also deploys the concept of "sonic exclusion" to examine the role a distinguishing vernacular plays in shaping local identity and the extent to which it determines "who is in" and "who is out" as a Scouser. The conclusion is that an effective understanding of a Scouser is not only spatial – someone born in Liverpool – because the sonoric landscape of spoken Scouse, and thereby Scouse identity, extends beyond the contemporary political and geographic boundaries of the City of Liverpool.     

大遗址概念的由来与发展

“大遗址”不是一个严格意义上的学术甚至工作概念,而是一个综合的、需要放在一定学术研究或工作背景下探讨的概念.它是伴随对中国独具特色的大型古代文化遗址保护实践逐步提出、成熟的工作或管理概念.其从民国时期萌芽到新中国建国初期提出,经过“文革”到改革开放后的发展、完善,是一个漫长过程,是伴随人们对大遗址的认知开始的,并与考古学在中国落地、发展密切相关,与中国现代文物保护意识的出现和兴起密切相关,更与国家的发展与兴旺密切相关.     

董仲舒人性论再认识

董仲舒将“人性”范畴界定为人的自然性,但这种自然性不同于庄子的“自然性”,董仲舒把儒家伦理价值观念也论证为人的自然本性。善恶等人伦观念作为一种莱布尼茨意义上的“预定和谐”先在性地包容于人性范畴中,而后又展现于每个人的本性之中。因此,将董仲舒的人性论概括为“天赋善恶论”,似乎更符合其原意。重视人的自我创造性与自我超越性,是中国古代人性理论一大特点,而这一点又恰恰正是中西人性学说的会通之处。     

Being Hegelian after Danto

In this article I will discuss some systematic issues of Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and art history from a Hegelian perspective. Belonging to "Absolute Spirit," art can be called a "spiritual kind." Since spiritual kinds are reflective and self-determining, they are not susceptible to philosophical definition. Nevertheless, elements of essentialism can be maintained when describing art's historicity and conceptual structure. To this end, "art" can be interpreted as a two-tier concept: in inherently reflecting its concept, it projects its own conditions into the past, co-opting "prehistorical" artworks as predecessors and classical examples. Hegel's view of art as conceptually structured in itself can have disenfranchising or reenfranchising consequences: either reducing art to minor philosophy, or acknowledging its privileged access to its own essence. After Danto's detachment of the philosophy of art from aesthetics, Hegel would himself be deprived of the possibility to "define" art by intuition ( Anschauung ). Even if the spirit consists of essential kinds, philosophy is not in a privileged position to establish the essence of art and thus the difference between art and philosophy. Rather, philosophy must acknowledge art as a neighbor (Heidegger) and as partner in a dialogue.     

清前期“版图”概念考析

清朝前期,作为核心疆土界定概念的"版图",并非如学界普遍认为的系指王朝直接控制的地区。其时,"版图"的内涵、外延尚无清晰的界定,国人对土司地区、台湾生番之地、重要属国的定位多有歧见。乾隆朝以前,清人中较主流的观点认为,"版图"包括行省地区(不含台湾生番之地和土司地区)、东北三将军辖区、诸藩部。乾隆朝起,土司地区亦多被视为"版图"。清人对"版图"的认定,标准有异,但基本以纳贡为底线。自根本上言,"版图"概念的模糊性,是天下主义影响下的产物;而其维系,得益于清朝在中华世界秩序中的主导地位。     

Rethinking Overdetermination, Structural Power, and Social Change: A Critique of Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff

Working in the wake of theoretical tendencies that became prominent within geography during the 1980s, many studies of resistance have either bracketed or ignored structural power, with some versions of poststructuralism simply denying that structural power is a useful concept in a world where power is putatively highly fluid and dispersed. These sorts of approaches, exemplified by the recent works of J K Gibson-Graham, Stephen A Resnick, and Richard D Wolff (GGRW), limit the ability of studies of resistance to articulate the conditions under which political and social struggles might transcend resistance and succeed in liberating groups of humans from the oppressive conditions against which they struggle. In this paper, I discuss issues surrounding analysis of structural power in the wake of poststructuralist critiques of "structural Marxism," presenting an alternative to GGRW's interpretation of Louis Althusser's concept of "overdetermination." Overdetermination is a crucial concept, because it is rightly seen as the key to a noneconomistic Marxism and has been championed as such by GGRW. I re-examine the roots of Althusser's concept in the writings of Lenin and Mao, arguing for a way of reading overdetermination that is both noneconomistic and compatible with a notion of structural power.     

Behavior of Gravity Type Retaining Wall under Earthquake Load with Generalized Backfill

Dynamic response of gravity type retaining wall under seismic load is a topic of considerable research for the last 90 years or more. The concept of deriving dynamic pressure based on rigid body mechanics as proposed by Mononobe and Okabe (M-O method) in 1929 continues to dominate the majority of the codes around the world, although it is reported in a number of cases that the M-O method underestimates the response in many cases. Although the M-O method was originally derived for cohesion less soil yet it is used frequently in deriving pressure for other general soil conditions also, like c-φ soil, c-φ soil with surcharge, etc.

This article is an attempt to predict the response of a gravity wall having a generalized backfill (i.e., c-φ soil with surcharge q and that could also be partially saturated) considering its structural deformation as well as the effect of dynamic soil structure interaction (DSSI), a phenomenon which is often ignored in practice. The results are finally compared with a 2-D finite element analysis carried out in ANSYS to check its validity.     

The New Annalistic: A Sketch of a Theory of History

This article argues for the establishment of a new, "annalistic" model of history and historical investigation. This implies a new concept of historical event: instead of being seen as an element within a historical narrative, the historical event is defined as the common reference point of many narratives that can be told about it. The annalistic model also implies a new concept of historical change: instead of being defined as the change of an "object" within a set of given historical parameters, historical change has to be perceived as the change of parameters related to a given historical object. A new concept of history follows from the annalistic model: instead of history being a metaphysical unity of space and time (the destiny of mankind, the positivist's world of facts), in which everything is linked to everything, it is instead the product of historical judgment carried out by those who design stories about their own past, present, and future. To the "annalist" a world is imaginable in which no history has existed, exists, or will exist.
The article analyzes three aspects of the concept of historical time: it demonstrates the huge variety of temporal structures in history; it argues for the foundation of the representation of historical time in linguistic concepts; and it discusses the relationship of fictionality and reality in historical discourse. Finally, the annalistic model is compared to the traditional concept of history established by historicism in the nineteenth century.     

Schizophrenia, reification and deadened life

Recent debates concerning the abolition of the schizophrenia label in psychiatry have focused upon problems with the scientific status of the concept. In this article, I argue that rather than attacking schizophrenia for its lack of scientific validity, we should focus on the conceptual history of this label. I reconstruct a specific tradition when exploring the conceptual history of schizophrenia. This is the concern with the question of the sense of life itself, conducted through the confrontation with schizophrenia as a form of life that does not live, or as Robert Jay Lifton termed it "lifeless life" (1979: 222-39). I conclude by arguing that the contemporary attempt to deconstruct or abolish the schizophrenia concept involves a fundamental shift in concern. The attempt both to normalize psychotic experiences, and to conceive them purely in terms of cognitive processes that can be mapped onto brain function, results in a fundamental move away from the attempt to understand the experience of madness.     

“历程”中的客观性——对柯林武德思想的再认识

柯林武德试图将历史学建立在一种新的客观性概念的基础上。他指出:历史中的客观性是在绵延不断的"历程"中得到体现的,在这一历程中,历史当事人的思想与后来的历史学家对它的反思不是"两个"思想而是"一个"思想,历史体系是历史与历史学家的统一。在历史体系中,历史学家即使不受纯粹历史"事实"的制约,也必然受整体"历程"的制约。柯林武德的这些观点使得一种新的史学"客观性"观念成为可能。     

The Cage of Nature: Modernity's History in Japan

"The Cage of Nature" focuses on the concept of nature as a way to rethink Japanese and European versions of modernity and the historical tropes that distance "East" from "West." This essay begins by comparing Japanese political philosopher Maruyama Masao and his contemporaries, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Both sets of authors define modernity as the moment when humanity overcomes nature, but Maruyama longs for this triumph while Horkheimer and Adorno deplore its consequences. Maruyama insists that Japan has failed to attain the freedom promised by modernity because it remains in the thrall of nature defined in three ways: as Japan's deformed past, as the mark of Japan's tragic difference from "the West,"and as Japan's accursed sensuality, shackling it to uncritical bodily pleasures. In short, Maruyama sees Japan as trapped in the cage of nature.
My argument is that Maruyama's frustration arises from the trap set by modern historiography, which simultaneously traces the trajectory of modernity from servile Nature to freedom of Spirit and at the same time bases the identity of the non-Western world on its closeness to nature. In other words, nature represents both the past and the East, an impossible dilemma for an Asian nationalist desirous of liberty. By revising our historical narratives to take into account the ways in which Western modernity continued to engage versions of nature, it becomes possible to reposition Japan and "the East" within modernity's history rather than treating them as the Other.     

HOW WE LIVE WITH THE PAST NOW

Michael Roth's new collection of essays, written over the last two decades, is held together by its author's pervasive concern with human temporality: our individual and collective passages through time, recorded by the faculty of memory, which pose some of our most intractable problems. The essays treat, and indeed provide a map to, several adjacent areas of inquiry: the history of the psychopathology of memory in the long nineteenth century; the vicissitudes of the trauma‐concept from its relatively modest medical origins to its postmodern apotheosis; and photography as a medium and art form embroiled in our relationship with the past. Roth's major interventions are threefold. First, while persuaded of the value of the psychoanalytic version of the trauma‐concept, he critiques the so‐called traumatophilia of postmodern theorists who, usually with reference to the Holocaust, seek to invest trauma with ethical valences and powers of legitimation or even, as in the case of Agamben, raise it to ontological status. Second, through his fine‐grained account of Freud's convergence with and divergence from his French colleagues, especially Charcot and Janet, Roth argues that the stunning breakthrough of psychoanalysis was to take the past seriously, to recognize the inevitable penetration of the past into the present in the human psyche as well our affective investment in and need to narrativize the past. For Roth, Freud's continued relevance today resides in what he has taught us about living with the past. Finally, Roth begins to develop the concept of “piety” as an attitude toward the past that fuels the writing of history. He leaves the concept in rudimentary form, but his evocative remarks suggest the fruitfulness of developing it further.     

"人文奥运"与当代北京城市建设

北京为申办和举办2008年奥运会提出了"绿色奥运、科技奥运、人文奥运"理念,而其中的"人文奥运"有着极其丰富的内涵,我们不但要从与时俱进、发展创新的角度来看待它,还要从使北京走向世界、让世界了解北京的角度来理解它,从促进北京发展、推进北京社会文明进步和加强北京城市文化环境建设来落实"人文奥运",在保护好北京这个历史文化名城的基础上,展现给世人一个将现代化建设和古都风貌完美结合的大都市.     

Spectres,monstres et fantômes: Les Chants de Maldoror et le spectacle de la fantasmagorie

As an introduction to his show in the Capucins' convent, Etienne Robertson states, "Gentlemen, the spectacle about to take place under your very eyes is not a frivolous one. It was created for the thinking man, for the philosopher who enjoys wandering among the tombs" (qtd. in Remise 41). The nineteenth century, and Robertson in particular, grant phantasmagoria a large place in history, even though the concept and the technique existed long before.

With such a success, it should not be surprising that phantasmagoria found its home in literature, especially in Isidore Ducasse's (Comte de Lautréamont's) texts. Indeed, Maldoror's Cantos, in which visual effects hold a significant place, seem to occur behind a thick fog that the reader appears to have difficulty escaping. Just as the spectacles of phantasmagoria are not meant for a "frivolous" audience, as Robertson said, the Cantos are not meant for a reader whom Lautréamont defines as "naive." This article will focus on the visual arts that were prevalent at the time and their influence on the Cantos. Using Roland Barthes's theory, the author shows that Maldoror's Cantos can be read as a spectacle of phantasmagoria in writing.     

清末民初“传统”的出现:概念史视角的考察

古代汉语中已有"传"和"统"两字连用的情况,但所指的都是皇位的传递。日语里"传统"的词义在19世纪90年代开始发生变化,到大正时期新义"传统"真正流行,汉语受此影响,作为新词的"传统"从1920年后才开始频繁出现在报端著述,到20世纪30年代之后才进入辞典,并成为"tradition"的译词。"传统"在新文化运动之后开始流行,有其历史缘由,它为经过"新旧之争"冲击的文化保守主义表述提供了一个更适合的词汇选择。但同时,围绕"传统"和"现代"迅速形成了二元对立的观念和话语体系,这使得"传统"不断被重新定义,增加了它的复杂性。     

Were Women Present at the Demographic Transition? Questions from a Feminist Historian to Historical Demographers

This essay identifies some of the deficiencies in discussions about fertility decline that bridge the gap between feminist historians and historical demographers. The author suggests that women are portrayed in the historical demographic literature as lacking decision-making ability. The author emphasizes that women are viewed in the literature as reproductive resources in a national context or statistical entities in quantitative analysis rather than as active and informed participants in reproductive decision-making. The author points out that the concept of fertility decline itself identifies reproduction with a biological universe unrelated to issues of social change. Since the concept of demographic transition was introduced in the 1950s, it has been criticized for its false sense of universalism about a complex set of social relations. Princeton University's European Fertility Project is criticized by David Levine as describing "large-group behavior at the expense of familial experience." Levine uses the couple as the primary unit of analysis rather than region, but ignores, as pointed out by Jay Winter and Wally Seccombe, that the changing position of women and changing marital relations are key to fertility decline. Fertility discourses at the turn of the century focused on the decline in racial dominance, class differences in fertility, and women's selfishness in taking control of their bodies. Thereafter, there was a shift from eugenics and biologism to medical sciences, statistics, and social sciences and policy. The long period of historical invisibility of women is now being reworked by scholars such as McNicholl, who recognize the different interests of men and women in families. It is argued by Anthony Gibbons that lesbian couples may be pioneers in clearly separating their reproductive capacities from their sexuality, a direction that heterosexuals may be approaching.     

论段义孚早期的环境经验研究及其现象学态度

从段义孚在《人文主义地理学》发表之前的作品来看,他对于人的环境经验研究有如下基本观点:1反对生硬的量化记录,推崇基于丰富的感知觉的直接描述式地理学论文写作;2反对用偏狭的意象与心智地图来阐释人类的环境认知,推崇能够将环境认知的过程与结果相结合的"基模";3反对孤立地认识和使用"环境"概念,推崇富有人文精神且能够将环境概念容纳于其中的"世界"概念。对段义孚而言,现象学主要是一种哲学立场,而不是需要从形式上去模仿、从术语上去标示甚至被某些"定论"所绑缚的一种操作指南,因此,与其说他的作品中运用了某种严格的"现象学方法",不如说他的工作体现出一种方法论层面的"现象学态度"。     

THE CONCEPT “SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY”: THE CASE OF JACOB BRUCKER'S HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PHILOSOPHY1

In this essay I examine and discuss the concept “system of philosophy” as a methodological tool in the history of philosophy; I do so in two moves. First I analyze the historical origin of the concept in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thereafter I undertake a discussion of its methodological weaknesses–a discussion that is not only relevant to the writing of history of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also to the writing of history of philosophy in our times, where the concept remains an important methodological tool. My first move is to analyze Jacob Brucker's employment of the concept in his influential history of philosophy, Historia critica philosophiae, dating from 1742–1744. To Brucker, a “system of philosophy” is characterized by the following four features: (a) it is autonomous in regard to other, non‐philosophical disciplines; (b) all doctrines stated within the various branches of philosophy can be deduced from one principle; (c) as an autonomous system it comprises all branches of philosophy; (d) the doctrines stated within these various branches of philosophy are internally coherent. Brucker employed the concept on the entire history of philosophy, and he gave it a defining role in regard to two other methodological concepts, namely “eclecticism” and “syncretism,” which he regarded as more or less successful forms of systematic philosophy. My second move is to point out the weakness of the concept of “system of philosophy” as a methodological tool in the history of philosophy. I argue that the interdisciplinary nature of much premodern philosophy makes Brucker's methodological concept “system of philosophy” inadequate, and that we may be better off leaving it behind in our future exploration of premodern philosophy.     

Quarantine Matters: Colonial Quarantine at North Head,Sydney and Its Material and Ideological Ruins

Australia’s quarantine regulations have their roots in colonial practice. This paper is concerned with the “matter” of quarantine—its location, spatialization, and materialization—and the ways in which it contributed to the colonial agenda. Through an exploration of Sydney’s North Head Quarantine Station, quarantine is shown to be a technology through which the colony and the continent were framed as simultaneously pure and vulnerable. These colonial roots of quarantine practice are then brought back to the present, drawing on Stoler’s (2008) concept of “imperial debris” to contemplate the contemporary ruins, both material and ideological, of colonial quarantine practice.