谈文学作品中“盗亦有道”的奸夫形象

妻子对丈夫不忠,并要求奸夫杀死亲夫,奸夫激于义愤,却将情妇杀死,此类故事自唐中期产生以后,即成为古代文学作品中的一个重要母题。到了明代,又异变为奸夫看见亲夫疼爱妻子,即因痛恨情妇背叛亲夫而将其杀死。日本小说家芥川龙之介的著名小说《竹林中》更描写了强奸者因为看到被强奸者对丈夫不忠,而要将其杀死的情节。如果说前者作品中的奸夫形象尚有正义一面的话,后两者则纯属邪恶。此类作品的产生和传统文化中男尊女卑、红颜祸水的思想密切相关。     

Johann Baptist Metz's Memoria Passionis and the Possibility of Political Forgiveness

The idea of memoria passionis promoted by Johann Baptist Metz provides a strong basis for correlating the Christian creed of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and our political engagement in atrocious situations. However, Metz's idea of memory and remembering is not sufficient as we attempt to construct a just and peaceful society based on the Christian notion of forgiveness. This article attempts to make use of Metz's memoria passionis, while at the same time proposing the necessity of political forgiveness as an intrinsic aspect of such a memorative faith. In such a proposal, forgiving and remembering must be two unavoidable and intertwined dimensions of memoria passionis Jesu Christi.     

Esoteric Tangles

Abstract

I attempt here a very general reply to the preceding sixteen essays by addressing the broad, structural constraints of my book, from which many of the particular problems raised in the essays flow. Philosophy Between the Lines is an effort to give a very sweeping account—theoretically and historically—of a phenomenon that is, in many respects, highly particularized and situation specific. The characteristic sin of the book is overgeneralization or simplification. In the present essay I attempt a brief and partial clarification, primarily by selecting one main theme of the book—defensive esotericism—and redescribing it from a more localized and fine-grained perspective.     

Naked wax and necessary existence: modal voluntarism and Descartes’s motives

ABSTRACT

Descartes’s commitment to modal voluntarism was one of his most notorious and controversial doctrines. The reaction of contemporaries was hostility and incredulity; the reaction of modern scholars has been little different. Yet, though the issue has fomented considerable discussion and disagreement in the literature, the overwhelming majority of scholarly output has focused on questions of whether Descartes actually upheld the doctrine, or what he was committed too if he indeed did. Surprisingly, the underlying question of why Descartes would have upheld such a doctrine in the first place has gone almost entirely unnoticed and unasked. This paper proposes several possible answers to this question, each of which provides at least a partial explanation for Descartes’s attraction to modal voluntarism. The ultimate motive, however, was likely not one of positive attraction, but driven by Descartes’s anxieties over the thorny and deeply heretical implications of his conception of matter.