Conceptual Debts: Modern Architecture and Neo-Thomism in Postwar America

This article analyzes the formative role of medieval theology and aesthetics in the development of postwar American architecture by focusing on the architectural theory and practice of Mies van der Rohe and Jean Labatut, both of whom became actively interested in Neo-Thomism from the late 1940s. More specifically, a closer look at their reliance on the work of Jacques Maritain, the preeminent promotor of Neo-Thomism, sheds light on the transmission and circulation of old and new concepts within twentieth-century architectural theory. By revealing how Maritain’s ideas helped to codify the latter and thus exposed the premodern ideas at the heart of modern architecture, I argue that modernist aesthetics should be re-evaluated with regards to its definition of “the new” and its emphasis on the breakdown or mutation of premodern frames of reference.     

Containment and intensification in political war: Carl Schmitt and the Clausewitzian heritage

This article provides the first comprehensive and chronological analysis of Carl Schmitt’s reception of Carl von Clausewitz. While earlier scholarship has mostly stressed Schmitt’s shift from Clausewitzian ‘instrumentality’ to an ‘existential’ view of war, I note some inherent difficulties in this dichotomy and instead promote the parallel distinction between two argument types: those of containment and intensification. Schmitt theorized both limited political war and the intensification of war out of traditional bounds, and focusing on one should not eclipse the other. Further, both elements are identifiable already in Clausewitz. I analyse Schmitt’s oscillation between containment and intensification arguments chronologically from the mid-1920s to the 1960s. Despite sometimes nominally rejecting Clausewitz’s famous thesis of war as the continuation of politics, Schmitt nevertheless affirmed the idea of war’s political nature. I conclude that Schmitt’s view can be read as a radicalized version of the Clausewitzian political theory of war rather than a strict deviation from it. This becomes evident as soon as we place Schmitt’s partly incoherent observations on Clausewitz in their argumentative contexts.     

A History of Depressed Skull Fractures from Ancient Times to 1800

The story of managing depressed fractures illustrates how knowledge of proven value does not always get handed down. Celsus was the first to describe sensible management for depressed fractures. As he wrote in Latin this was forgotten. Galen’s Greek writings survived forming the basis of management until the sixteenth century. In 1517, Hans von Gersdorff published a formidable illustrated surgical text. One illustration depicts an instrument for elevating depressed bone fragments. It looked dramatic but could not work and its defects were finally defined in the eighteenth century. Ambroise Paré used a bone punch just as we do today, but no later surgeon mentions this, though the instrument was well known. Elements of chance, fashion, emotionally powerful illustrations, and perhaps stubbornness had a profound effect on management delaying rational treatment for centuries.     

The Late Upper Palaeolithic Occupation of the Moroccan Northwest Maghreb During the Last Glacial Maximum

New work at Kehf el Hammar Cave provides the first well-dated palaeoenvironmental sequence for the Late Upper Palaeolithic in this region of the northwest Maghreb. The archaeological layers are dated via a combination of AMS radiocarbon and luminescence dating methods. The sequence contains charcoal-rich occupation layers with faunal, human and lithic finds. Local vegetational patterns are reconstructed on the basis of preliminary analysis of the charcoal evidence. Using standard calibration curves the AMS radiocarbon dates are compared with proxy evidence for climatic change from sea core records in the Alborán Sea. These appear to show that the Late Upper Palaeolithic occupation of the region coincides closely with Heinrich Event 1, a period marked by intense aridification and dating to ca. 16,700–17,250 calendar years ago.Les nouvelles recherches dans la grotte de Kehf el Hammar ont permis d’obtenir la première séquence paléoenevironnementale bien datée du Paléolithique supérieur tardif au Nord Ouest du Maghreb. En effet, les niveaux archéologiques ont été datés par le radiocarbone par accélérateur (AMS) et des méthodes radiométriques basées sur la luminescence. En revanche, les paléoenvironnements végétaux ont été partiellement reconstitués à base des premières analyses des charbons de bois. Les dates AMS calibrées ont été comparées aux données climatiques issues des carottes marines dans la mer Alborán. Ainsi, les occupations humaines du Paléolithique supérieur tardif dans la région ont sensiblement coïncidé avec l’événement climatique Heinrich 1. Celui-ci correspond à une période qui a été marquée par une aridification intense entre 16.700 et 17.250 ans (cal.).     

Idealistisch geprägte Axiomatik des Selbstorganisationsparadigmas

The essay shows that the axiomatics of the systemic‐cybernetic‐biological theory of self‐organization by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela have their roots in the philosophy of German Idealism. Especially the completely subject‐centered philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte already contains the central axiomatics of Maturana and Varela.     

Schweretheorie und Weltbild des Nikolaus von Kues: Zu ihrer vermeintlichen Modernität

Regarding his world view and his heaviness theory Nicolaus Cusanus is imputed to having used (at least to some extent) forebodings and anticipations of modern conceptions. In the dialog Idiota de staticis experimentis he imputed the quantitative points of view of modern physics programmatically. In contrast with this, this article will show that the quantitative point of view is proposed for an inapt object at least. Cusanus based his reflections on one hand on the Aristotelic theories of elements and their heaviness with ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ weight (only thus, assumed inconsistencies can be explained), on the other hand he wants to determine the essential, qualitative properties of the forma, while only their complete abstraction by reduction on the mass without properties should result in an object for comparative weighings — lately in different ways by René Descartes and Isaac Newton. The putative modernness of cusanian conceptions compared with Aristotle are based on the tradition of platonian and stoic modifications which sooner were compatible with christian ideas.     

THE LETTER KILLS: ON SOME IMPLICATIONS OF 2 CORINTHIANS 3:62

The paper focuses on an argument put forward by Augustine in his De doctrina Christiana: there are passages in the Bible that need to be read in a literal, contextual, and ultimately rhetorical perspective. This approach to the Bible (usually overshadowed by Augustine's own parallel emphasis on the importance of allegory) was needed to deal with customs—for instance the patriarchs' polygamy—that had to be evaluated, Augustine argued, according to standards different from those prevailing in the present day. This need inspired Augustine to utter some sharp remarks on the need to avoid (as we would say today) ethnocentric, anachronistic projections into the Biblical text. The long‐term impact of Augustine's argument was profound. The emphasis on the letter played a significant role in the exchanges between Christian and Jewish medieval readings of the Bible, which affected Nicholas of Lyra's influential commentary (Postilla). The same tradition may have contributed to Valla's and Karlstadt's audacious hermeneutic remarks on the Biblical canon, which covertly or openly focused on contradictions in the Biblical text, questioning the role of Moses as author of Deuteronomy. Traces of those discussions can be detected in Spinoza's Tractatus theologico‐politicus. The paper suggests that the emphasis on a literal, contextual reading of the Bible provided a model for secular reading in general. The possible role of this model in the aggressive encounter between Europe and alien cultures is a matter of speculation.     

DWELLING WITHIN: THE INHABITED RUINS OF HISTORY1

Addressing the recent call to rethink history as a form of presence, the essay works toward a recovery of a space in which such presence of history is encoded. I argue that history as a form of active perception is akin to virtual witnessing of the past in the moment of our encounter with historical artifacts, be they texts, photographs, or buildings. To this end, I engage with the conceptual and material aspects of historical perception, deriving a model of history as “inhabited ruins,” the way it emerges together with historical consciousness and finds an especially dynamic expression in Georg Simmel's philosophy of culture. Throughout, I work with the notion of distance and trans‐dimensional presence as the forces that shape and reshape historical awareness. Ruins, intimately connected to the modern historical imagination, are approached not as sites of commemoration or nostalgia, but as spaces of active exchange between presence and disappearance. As such, they are taken to be the models for the transitive character of history itself, blurring the division between perception and thought. In other words, ruins are taken as structures that evoke and summon the past to an encounter with contemporary reality—a type of co‐appearance that opens the possibility of virtually witnessing the past. I conclude that the logic of “inhabited ruins” constitutes the event‐horizon of modern identity, always placing history right at the threshold of fragmentation.