In search of a spiritus: Francesco Patrizi on tides

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes two chapters of Francesco Patrizi’s Nova de universis philosophia that deal with a topic widely debated in European intellectual circles at the time: the origin of tides. By deconstructing Patrizi’s views on the phenomenon of ebb and flow, this paper places these chapters of Patrizi’s opus magnum into a larger context and shows how, with the use of novel philosophical arguments, he sought to replace what he considered an outdated theory of tides.     

Is Francesco Patrizi’s L’Amorosa Filosofia a heterodox reading of the Symposium?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on L’Amorosa Filosofia, perhaps the most compelling response to Ficino’s De Amore produced in the sixteenth century, as it is centered on the notion of love as philautia, based upon a naturalistic and psychological interpretation. The learned lady Tarquinia Molza, the most important interlocutor of Francesco Patrizi, affirms that love, from its beginnings in the inner self to its end, when reaching the divine, cannot but be a phenomenon that engages the sense of touch, showing a naturalistic attitude toward the body and an interest in the mediation between matter and spirit. Contrary to popular notions of self-love as selfish and callous, an honest man must necessarily love himself first in order to love others. In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus also tackles the concept, making Folly praise Philautia as a fundamental means for happiness. More relevant to Patrizi’s work, in Mario Equicola’s De Natura de Amore, there is a long digression on the virtues of self-love.     

Francesco Patrizi’s concept of “nature”: presence and refutation of Stoicism

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes the ways in which, in his Nova de Universis Philosophia, Francesco Patrizi uses, adopts, and, in some cases, rejects the Stoic philosophical tradition. Although, at first glance, most of Patrizi’s remarks on Stoicism and Stoic understanding of nature are critical – as this article demonstrates – he widely relied on Stoic teaching that he sought to combine with Neoplatonism and the prisca theologia doctrine.     

Priestley and Kant on materialism

ABSTRACT

Kant maintains in the Critique of Pure Reason that both materialism and spiritualism cannot explain our existence. This paper argues that Kant’s relation to (psychological) materialism is more complex than this rejection suggests and is usually thought, and it evaluates this relation in a new and more positive light. The paper shows that Priestley anticipates some of Kant’s arguments against rationalist psychology, and that Kant’s rejection of materialism does not commit him to an immaterialist metaphysics of the soul. These arguments involve a discussion of the problem of the unity of consciousness and of notions such as simplicity and identity.     

Francesco Patrizi da Cherso and the anti-Aristotelian tradition: interpreting the Discussiones Peripateticae (1581)

ABSTRACT

This paper tries to present a different view of Francesco Patrizi’s anti-Aristotelian philology such as it transpires in his masterful monograph of 1581, the Discussiones Peripateticae, the influence of which was widely felt in seventeenth-century Europe. The book is the product of a learned, Hellenizing, and deeply inspired critique of a major doctrinal corpus from classical antiquity, and it is usually taken as a stepping stone in a self-righteous fight by “modern” philosophers to replace Aristotelianism as the dominant academic system. This essay is revisionist on the second of these accounts.     

Do we have any genuine works by Aristotle? Francesco Patrizi da Cherso’s discussion of the corpus Aristotelicum

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with the scrutiny, as found in the Discussiones Peripateticae 1, 2–4, to which Francesco Patrizi da Cherso subjected the works of the transmitted corpus Aristotelicum, and those attributed to Aristotle outside the corpus. It explains why Patrizi rejected most of the transmitted ?uvre as spurious, and shows what would have been the most radical consequence of his hyper-critical stance, had it carried the day. Particular attention is paid to contemporary (i.e. sixteenth-century) scholarship available to, and used by, Patrizi.     

History and theory: the paradox in Francesco Patrizi

ABSTRACT

Patrizi's Ten Dialogues on History bring the Renaissance humanist discourse on the meaning of history to a new level. First, he emphasizes narrativity as the fundamental structure of history. Then he asks for the essence of history, which hinges on the creativity of the narrator, who organizes the facts to be told. With a focus on the Third Dialogue, we see that, for Patrizi, history is elapsing time preserved beyond time and human knowledge enacted in time or reenacted in events. A theory of history shows that history is the connection between contingency and truth.     

Circean transformation and the poetics of Milton’s Masque

ABSTRACT

Circe’s presence in A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus) invites readers to read both Milton’s Circe and Milton’s own poetic activity through long and intertwined traditions of theology and literary commentary. Stretching from Augustine and Aquinas to the commentaries and translations of Homer and Ovid by Sponde, Sandys, and Chapman, these traditions use Circe to explore and conflate the possibility, the permanence, and the experience of both human and literary transformation. Taken up by Townshend and Jones in their Caroline court masque Tempe Restored, they become essential intertexts for Milton’s Masque. Milton embeds this discourse in his masque – a genre that places metamorphosis at the heart of its poetics – to examine the nature of Renaissance intertextuality and the authorial self and interrogate his own use of Renaissance practices of imitatio and aemulatio. In Comus’ wood, Circean transformation becomes a touchstone for the virtuous soul and the virtuous poet alike.     

Originality and Eroticism: Constantine Cavafy and the Alexandrian Epigram

Abstract

Although it has become generally accepted by critics that Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) was influenced greatly by the Hellenistic epigram ‘in attitude, subject matter, and technique’, a close comparison of that poetic tradition and Cavafy's poems reveals interesting differences as well as similarities. We know that Cavafy was familiar with Hellenistic literature and that he had a copy of J. W. Mackail's Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology in his personal library. His reading, however, ‘was much more extensive than his library’. More significant than this is the evidence to be found in his poems, which range from an actual mention of ancient epigrams to obvious imitations of them. Cavafy's poems for the most part, however, are quite original in their tone and erotic stance when compared directly to the Alexandrian epigrams.     

China,the international criminal court,and global governance

ABSTRACT

This article explores the Chinese policies towards the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the context of global governance. Despite China’s fast-growing foreign policy competence, the level of confidence held by China in engaging with global governance systems has not yet fully transmitted to the legal institutions governing human rights issues, and the ICC is such an example. This article examines specific policy concerns of China regarding the ICC in light of China’s engagement with global governance, and some of the traditional concerns that have had an impact on that engagement. It discusses the extent to which these concerns should still be regarded as policy barriers preventing China’s full accession to the ICC in years to come.     

‘Time-twisted space’: an exploration of the synaesthetic continuum through the work of Vladimir Nabokov

ABSTRACT

The synaesthetic author Vladimir Nabokov undertakes extensive consideration of the relationship between time and space, and its manifestation in human perception, throughout his fictional and autobiographical writing. The following dissertation considers this in the light time–space synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon where time is visualized in a spatial form often external to the subject’s body. Using the idea that synaesthesia exists on a continuum alongside common constructs integral to cognitive perception such as cross-modality and metaphor, these three will be explored in detail in Nabokov’s work through a multidisciplinary lens incorporating literature, cognitive science, philosophy and anthropology.     

Captivating thoughts: nocturnal pollution,imagination and the sleeping mind in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

ABSTRACT

Medieval attempts to understand nocturnal emissions – involuntary bodily excretions during sleep which were identified as morally ambiguous – became extensive explorations of the unique and problematic features of sleep and the mental state it produced. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, nocturnal pollutions became the object of an intensive scrutiny of sleep as a site of moral concern. Causal explanations often centred on human psychology, in particular the unusual status of the sleeping mind, in an attempt to understand the intricate ways in which mind, body and soul were uniquely bound together in sleep. The mental states before, during and after sleep were understood to interact with one another in complex ways which centred on questions of culpability and its lack. A comparison of medical, natural-philosophical, theological and canon law materials discussing nocturnal pollution reveals a preoccupation with the sleeper’s mind as exceptional, uncontrollable and problematic.     

Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni: A Literary and Philosophical Confrontation

Abstract

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was one of the first Jewish thinkers to express republican positions, yet very little is known about his knowledge of humanistic republican conceptions. Had he read Leonardo Bruni’s republican writings? Had he even heard of them? In this essay I attempt to address this philological gap by comparing Abravanel’s republican commentary on 1 Samuel 8 with Bruni’s Laudatio florentinae Urbis, especially the motif of the plea to God to authorize a political regime. This comparison is particularly useful for illuminating their respective positions on republicanism, their shared interests and conceptions, as well as their divergent attitudes to their own political and historical environment. This divergence, I argue, sheds light on the early modern Christian and Jewish receptions of ancient republicanism.     

Space,time and history in the Polish People’s Republic: the trilogy Sami swoi,Nie ma mocnych,Kochaj albo rzuć

Abstract

The article discusses the meanings of popular culture, authenticity and history in People’s Republic of Poland. As an example it uses a popular film trilogy. The trilogy Sami swoi, Nie ma mocnych and Kochaj albo rzu? (‘All friends here’, ‘Take it easy’ and ‘Love or leave me’) was shown in Polish cinemas between 1967 and 1977. The reviews were written just after the premières. The article uses the concepts of time and space elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Doreen Massey to analyze the different chronotopes of the films. It analyses both the films and the reviews as strategies of creating authenticity and creating cultural meanings: the meaning of history and the meanings of rurality. I will show how history and present, memory and society are interwoven in the light of popular production. In addition, I will emphasize the diverse interpretation possibilities resulting from this micro-historical view and the transnational critique of modernism highlighting the small and local which emerged throughout Europe in the 1970s.     

Al-Fārābī’s Cave: Aristotle’s Logic and the Ways of Socrates and Thrasymachus

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric al-Fārābī harmonizes Plato and Aristotle in terms of philosophic education by ordering Aristotle’s eight logical works onto Plato’s famous image of the cave. He represents the way out of the cave with Aristotle’s four logical works of ascent (Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, and Posterior Analytics) and the return into the cave through Aristotle’s four logical works of the descent (Topics, Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric, and Poetics). Al-Fārābī’s image of ascent and descent also alludes to Socrates’ conception of protreptic education in Book VII of the Republic. In essence, protreptic education consists in the Socratic art that freely turns the soul from the images and political interpretations of things to being itself. In this essay I argue that for al-Fārābī the four logical works of ascent guide the soul to free itself from its habituations so as to contemplate real beings, particularly the good of one’s own soul and the souls of one’s fellow citizens. Yet the ruler needs to use the arts of “descent,” as demonstrated by Thrasymachus, in order to rule the city well. The way of Socrates consists of the logical methods used to come to possess knowledge of being, while the way of Thrasymachus comprises the methods of persuasion to habituate citizens and protect the philosophic quest for the truth. Al-Fārābī, I conclude, combines the way of Socrates and the way of Thrasymachus in order to show that both ways are useful and necessary for good governance.     

Symbolism and Irony in Three Novels by Kosmas Politis

Abstract

In a recent book, Mario Vitti has described Kosmas Politis as ‘emotionally the most highly charged novelist’ of the Generation of 1930. Vitti also points out that Eroica is ‘compositely organized down to the minutest detail’, despite the author's assertion that he wrote each instalment ‘on the presses’. In an attempt to account for the ‘magical’, ‘Poetic' quality of Politis’ writing as pointed out by Greek critics, Vitti investigates Politis' use of irony and of the interior monologue. My purpose in this article is to examine further Politis' ironical approach and to make some preliminary remarks about his use of symbols and imagery (a subject on which far more work has to be done), in the hope that, in so doing, I shall shed some light on the ‘emotionally charged’ and ‘highly organized’ nature of Politis' writing. For reasons of space and time I must confine myself to his first three novels, Lemonodasos (1930), Hekate (1933) and Eroica (1937).     

Eavesdropper on the Past: John W. Burrow (1935–2009), Intellectual History and Its Future

Summary

Focused on the much-debated historiographical and academic status of intellectual history, this article addresses for the first time and in detail the methodological views of the British historian John Wyon Burrow (1935–2009). Making use both of his published works and of unpublished material left to the University of Sussex Library (including lectures, letters, academic projects and biographical sketches), its goal is to provide a thorough account of an original and eclectic intellectual historian and, at the same time, cast new light on the role of the discipline in the scholarly context of the last few decades in Europe and the US. More specifically, the following pages will illustrate Burrow's work and career, with particular attention being paid to his insistence on narrative, imagination, irony and style; present his writings as an original instance of the anti-methodological practice of intellectual history; and study his opinions of what it means to carry out the métier d'historien. Finally, by examining Burrow's idea of the intellectual historian as a creative ‘eavesdropper’ on the ‘conversations of the past’ and as a ‘translator’ of past dialogues, this article will both pose some central questions and advance some proposals concerning the future of intellectual history.     

Descartes and the pineal gland in animals: A frequent misinterpretation

Abstract

Rene Descartes presented a number of reasons for his choice of the pineal gland as a logical place for the soul to interact with the physical machinery of the body. It is often stated that one of his reasons was that be believed animals do not have pineal glands, whereas humans alone possess a soul and this small structure. This is a misinterpretation of Descartes. The philosopher knew that barnyard and other animals possess pineal glands, having seen this with his own eyes. His point was that the pineal is unique in humans only because of a special function — acting as the seat for the rational soul.     

Resisting popular feminisms: gender,sexuality and the lure of the modern

Abstract

This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and sexual equality in nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the ways in which such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in the articulation of ‘the Modern’ in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. It further explores the increasing popularity of feminism in some media and celebrity contexts that have historically been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under what conditions feminism is cited as ‘universally desirable’ in light of this history. I suggest that feminism is partly reframed in this way insofar as it is newly sutured to femininity rather than masculinity, but also to singular rather than multiple or intersectional understandings of women’s oppression. A related claim of this article is that this shift of affective association with feminism is only possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is firmly understood as sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is understood primarily or even only a fight against sexual oppression by men then the oppositional gendered roles that allow for its tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. In conclusion the article calls for an appreciation of feminism as a minority pursuit attentive to multiple power relations and histories.