‘The Happy Accident’: Merleau-Ponty and Kant on the Judgment of God

Kant's ideas about, questions, and challenges to the Western tradition of philosophy reverberate into the third century of the reception of his texts. The writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the twentieth-century French existential and hermeneutic phenomenologist, are interlaced with engagements with Kant's ideas. Often these incidents are marked by Merleau-Ponty's critique, yet there is a noticeable recurrence of his efforts to contend with Kant's philosophy. In Merleau-Ponty's course notes, Nature (2002), he wrestles with Kant's version of nature in the Critique of Judgment (1790), specifically citing “the happy accident” between sensibility and the understanding. This opens upon realms of metaphysical thought that remain deeply contentious within Kantian scholarship. An interrogation of this “happy accident” leads to insights about Merleau-Ponty's conceptualization of an existentialized metaphysics the implications of which shed light on theology and the judgment of God.     

Comments on Gro B. Jerpåsen: ‘Application of Visual Archaeological Analysis: Some Results’

Owing to their large number, gold bracteates should be well suited to form the framework of a style chronology for the Migration Period which is not based on typological development. Where copies from the same die appear in different finds they indicate contemporaneity. The relative time of production of the associated objects in the finds may be judged from the wear on the loops and rims of the bracteates. On the basis of this a sort of stratigraphy may be established in relation to which other objects such as relief brooches may also be placed.

The development of style should then be investigated through an analysis of the motives down to the smallest detail as well as an evaluation of their stylistic content. In both cases precise definitions should be applied. In the process of this work one may distinguish different workshops on the basis of consistent similarities, such as mirror image dies or specific rare details.     

The Preaching of the Master: Thomas Aquinas’s University Sermons on Happiness

ABSTRACT

The single task of the Parisian masters of the thirteenth century was to read Scripture, a task they performed by way of the famous legere, disputare, praedicare. Although intimately connected these three are rarely studied in relation to each other. Thomas Aquinas’s sermons on the beatitudes (Matthew 5. 1–10) can be compared to his commentary on Matthew and the Summa Theologiae. This opens up a new perspective on the sermons, addressing some of the questions they raise. The edition of Aquinas’s sermons by Louis Bataillon is instrumental in performing this task and will therefore be considered in greater detail. The present article seeks to contribute to Medieval Sermon Studies by way of a more theological approach and to present to theologians the importance of a greater appreciation for the sermons of the masters.     

‘Impressions of Weird Fate’: Revision and Crisis in ‘The Lady of Shalott’

Alfred Tennyson disliked the engraving of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ produced by William Holman Hunt for the 1857 Moxon edition of Tennyson’s Poems, accusing the artist of taking too many liberties in depicting the Lady’s hair and the threads of her weaving as ‘wildly tossing’ around her. This essay traces the histories of both Hunt’s image and Tennyson’s text, arguing that the poet’s objection is grounded in the fact the engraving reproduces the fierce agency that characterizes the Lady in Tennyson’s 1832 original but not his 1842 revision. That pattern of revision, I suggest, reflects the poet’s distress over the 1833 death of his beloved friend Arthur Hallam and is motivated by his new ways of thinking, in the wake of that catastrophe, about the crisis of desire and the perpetual trauma of communication between the living and the dead.     

‘‘The Acceptable Face of the Unintelligible’: Intermediality and the Science Play’

Abstract

The limitations of the ‘science-in-theatre’ genre is explored and the concept of the intermedial science play is introduced as an alternative to conventional science plays. How the science-in-theatre play dampens the mediality of the stage in order to establish a specific contract with its audience in order to realize what Carl Djerassi calls ‘didactic realism’ is considered. By virtue of the dramatic form and the didacticism it establishes, the science-in-theatre play limits the means by which audiences may encounter and enjoy responding to science. In particular, when staging concepts from the postclassical sciences, the intermedial science play offers artists and spectators new approaches to the sciences of infinities, complexity and emergence whilst also establishing a new, interactive contract with the audience based on forms of pedagogy associated with the thinking of Jacques Rancière. Using the media theory of Peter Boenisch and others, intermediality is identified as more than the mere presence of multimedia, but in terms of the effects it produce on the sensorium of the spectator.     

Comments on Jörn Staecker: The Concepts of imitatio and translatio: Perceptions of a Viking‐Age Past.

Three groups of motifs – cervids, boats and human figures – dominate North European hunter‐gatherer rock art. The scarcity of explicit narrative scenes makes the interpretation of this art a very difficult task, but important clues can be found in a group of ‘ambiguous’ images, where the said three categories are combined in ‘unrealistic’ ways. In this paper, the prospect of an ethnographically informed approach to their interpretation is explored, using as a case study the rock painting of Pyhänpää (Central Finland) and ethnographic material drawn chiefly from Saami religion and traditional Finnish epic poetry. It is argued that the ambiguous imagery of rock art has a clear counterpart in the pre‐Christian religious tradition, where cervids and boats have a similarly ambiguous nature. The painting, which shows an elk, a boat and a human figure merged together, is interpreted as representing the shamanic flight and the sense of co‐essence between the shaman and his spirit helper beings. The making of the painting is associated with the belief that such beings lived inside specific rock cliffs and that their power could be obtained through visits to rock art sites.     

‘Invisible Government’ and Intelligence Crusaders: Three Cold War Espionage Biographies

Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. 641 pp. $51.00 (cloth).

Oleg Kalugin, Spy Master: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West. London: Smith Gryphon, 1995. 375 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Oleg Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution. London: Macmillan, 1995. 404 pp. No price given.     

Pleasure: ‘The Choice of Hercules’

In this article I contend that John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism has been widely misunderstood, and hence the importance of his philosophical project has been diminished. This misunderstanding arises primarily from misconceptions regarding Mill’s definition of pleasure. However, these misconceptions may be successfully resolved by reflecting on Mill’s educational roots and his commitment to Greco-Roman philosophy. In particular, I hold that a deeper understanding of Mill’s philosophical progenitors (i.e., Aristotle and Epicurus) would lead us to conclude that for Mill the “pleasures” of the Utilitarian project are in the final analysis nothing other than the “pleasures” of the mind and conscience. Thus, by following Mill’s line of reasoning and adhering to some of the salient points of his work, specifically in Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism, we may reach a richer and more nuanced understanding of his impressive philosophical project.