“But Do the Lord Care?”

Abstract

The slain rapper Tupac Shakur contributes indispensably to two contemporary theologies centered around the crucified people, the theological aesthetics of liberation presented by Roberto Goizueta and the theology of the lynching tree articulated by James Cone. Placing the pioneering work of Goizueta and Cone in conversation with existing scholarship on the theological importance of Shakur’s music, I argue that Tupac crafts a theological aesthetics of liberation aimed at illuminating the injustice and Christological implications of the hypersegregated ghetto and the black mass prison     

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Critique of Nationalism

Abstract

This paper argues that Han Urs von Balthasar’s work contains a thorough critique of nationalism that is rooted in theological categories. First, it examines the bases of this critique in Balthasar’s theology of history and in his thought on biblical Israel. Then, it outlines four categories of actors included in Balthasar’s notion of a theological drama: Christ, the individual, humanity, and the Church. Both implicitly and explicitly, these four categories displace the nation from the realm of theologically-significant history. Thus, the paper contends, there is a clear and compelling theological rejection of nationalistic ideology running throughout key aspects of Balthasar’s thought.     

Rough Justice: Lars von Trier's Dogville and Manderlay and the Book of Amos

Abstract

In his films Dogville and Manderlay, Lars von Trier offers an account of divine justice which has paradoxically offended humanists but has struck a chord with some Christian theologians. This paper seeks to show that the account of divine justice in the book of Amos and in the Hebrew Bible more generally is illuminated by juxtaposition with von Trier's work. Importantly, however, the two films cited have to be seen as part of a uncompleted trilogy which means that the criticisms directed at von Trier on the basis of the first film alone need to be reassessed in the light of the second. Key issues that emerge are the relationship between individual and communal guilt and the arrogance involved both in judging and not judging others. Justice is not to be equated with law or individual deserts in either Von Trier or Amos but is more closely related to the inevitable restoration of balance in a natural system. Such justice is rough—both approximate and violent—but arrogant attempts to mitigate that roughness almost always end up with even more approximate and violent results.     

Geschichte als leitende Orientierungswissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert

The nineteenth century has sometimes been dubbed “the age of historical science”, taking account of the hegemonic position occupied by historiography vis-à-vis the natural sciences and also its fellow humanities. The “historical method” was widely adopted by all kinds of Kulturwissenschaften. Moreover, public interest focussed on historiography to a quite exceptional degree since it combined scholarly inquiry and the purposes of general education and personal cultivation. Historiography reached the peak of its influence during the two decades leading up to the revolution of 1848. During this period, the ideas of historians on the national state, on the social order and on cultural affairs carried considerable weight. In the second half of the nineteenth century, historiography gradually lost its position of a “pilot discipline”. Sciences such as economics and sociology were better equipped to respond to the needs of German society in the age of industrialization.     

Disziplinerneuerung und Universitätsreform: Das Ius publicum Romano Germanicum

What caused the reforms which permitted the universities in the Holy Roman Empire to become leading places of scientific communication and mental orientation for centuries? In most cases, outside influences - pressures from governments, princes, scholars, councillors, consistories, or, as we would say today, state and churches - were decisive. But some reforms were the consequences of paradigm-changes within the universities themselves. Such shifts were less likely to originate with faculties concerned with medicine or the natural sciences than with those which were concerned directly with the political community or human societies. This changed only in the nineteenth century, which cannot be dealt with here.     

Design als ‘mediating interface’ Zur Zeugen‐ und Zeichenhaftigkeit des Radioapparates

Design as Mediating Interface: Historical Evidence and Symbolic Enunciation of the Radio Set. – Based on a case study on the invention of the radio station scale in the late 1920's and early 1930's, this article pleads for an interdisciplinary look at the importance of design as a mediating interface in the production‐consumption junction. In this cultural history perspective on technology, the material artifact matters both as a witness of and a sign for the symbolic meaning and appropriation of the technical object, which transgresses the functional logic of instrumental rationality. In presenting five different perspectives on design offering some alternative looks for a cultural history of technology, this theoretically inspired essay wants to sound the critical potential of a multilayered semantic approach to the radio apparatus as a prominent representation of a radical innovation in media technology.     

The reception of Gall’s organology in early-nineteenth-century Vilnius

Much has been written about the development and reception of Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) ideas in Western Europe. There has been little coverage, however, of how his Schädellehre or organology was received in Eastern Europe. With this in mind, we examined the transmission and acceptance/rejection of Gall’s doctrine in Vilnius (now Lithuania). We shall focus on what two prominent professors at Vilnius University felt about organology. The first of these men was Andrew Sniadecki (1768–1838), who published an article on Gall’s system in the journal Dziennik Wileński in 1805. The second is his contemporary, Joseph Frank (1771–1842), who wrote about the doctrine in his memoirs and published an article on phrenology in the journal Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Both Frank and Sniadecki had previously worked in Vienna’s hospitals, where they became acquainted with Gall and his system, but they formed different opinions. Sniadecki explained the doctrine not only to students and doctors but also to the general public in Vilnius, believing the new science had merit. Frank, in contrast, attempted to prove the futility of cranioscopy. Briefer mention will be made of the assessments of Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821) and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827), two other physicians who overlapped Gall in Vienna and went to Vilnius afterward. Additionally, we shall bring up how a rich collection of human skulls was used for teaching purposes at Vilnius University, and how students were encouraged to mark the organs on crania using Gall’s system. Though organology in Vilnius, as in many other places, was always controversial, it was taught at the university, accepted by many medical professionals, and discussed by an inquisitive public.     

From Karl von Frisch to Neuroethology: A Methodological Perspective on the Frischean Tradition's Expansion into Neuroethology**

This paper examines a tradition of eusocial insect research stemming from the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch. As I show in this paper, one of the most enduring features of the Frischean tradition has been an experimental methodology developed by Frisch in the early 1910s. By tracing this methodology's use through Frisch's student, Martin Lindauer, and two of Lindauer's students, Rüdiger Wehner and Randolf Menzel, this paper illuminates a surprising aspect of ethology's development during the last half of the 20^th century. Namely, it sheds light on how the Frischean tradition, a tradition that had a complicated relationship with ethology since the discipline's formation in the 1930s, produced scientists who became leading figures in neuroethology, the most prominent contemporary field of behavioral research to retain the label of “ethology.” Some of the features that distinguished Frisch's training method from the program of classical ethology and the work of his contemporaries later helped his academic descendants adapt the method to the neuroethological program.