Tacitus' Conception of the Function of History

1936 ◽  
Vol 6 (16) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
R. L. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual

There were various conceptions of the function of history current in the ancient world. There was always one school of so-called historians who wrote with the motive of giving pleasure uppermost in their minds. The absence of a novel from classical literature left romance to invade history and oratory, and writers of this school might often be more properly called historical novelists than historians. They were especially susceptible to the influence of declamation and the rhetorical worship of style. For this school, in brief, history was nothing but the raw material for the literary artist. A second school, of which Polybius is the most prominent representative, held that history should be the training-ground of politicians, statesmen, and soldiers, who may learn from the past how to discover the real significance of events. Polybius naturally attached more importance to truth (which, he says, is to history what the eye is to the human body) than did those who wrote only for entertainment. Thirdly, there was the view that it is the function of history to teach men of all stations the lessons of the past, and by so teaching form and strengthen the individual moral character. This last is the view of Tacitus, though his conception of the function of history is broad enough to embrace the other two in a properly subordinate measure.

scholarly journals Connection and Disconnection in Tom’s Midnight Garden

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ-tls for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Mouhiba Jamoussi
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The Individual

This paper entitled ‘Connection and Disconnection in Tom’s Midnight Garden’ aims to challenge a particular reading of Philippa Pearce’s novel Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958) as nostalgic and concerned with aging and death. Tom’s Midnight Garden is regarded by some literary critics as a nostalgic work concerned with the past rather than the present. Its protagonist Tom is sometimes considered as disconnected from the real world and living in the fantastic. This paper will argue that, quite the contrary, Tom’s Midnight Garden stands against disconnection, between the child and the adult, the fantastic and the real, and the past and the present. Tom’s Midnight Garden celebrates connection through the interrelation between the self and the other, through a fantastic world constantly interwoven with the real, and a past tightly tied to the present. This paper relies on a thorough reading of the novel, on findings on the child-adult relationship, and on the effects of connection and disconnection on the individual.

THE HORMONAL COMPOSITION OF MILK IN PRODUCTIVE ANIMALS AND ITS SAFETY FOR HUMANS

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-321
Author(s):  
P.A. Popov ◽  
◽  
V.S. Babunova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Trace Elements ◽  
Growth Factor ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Important Food ◽  
The Past ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
And Control

Hormones are an integral part of milk and throughout lactation, the content of certain hormones is unstable. Hormones regulate the process of starting lactation of animals, the lactation process itself, and also the other functions of the body. Milk is of great importance for the growth of young animals and the formation of immunity. Milk is a special product in the diet and is an important food and raw material for the production of dairy products for people. It contains a large amount of protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and trace elements in biologically available form. But at the same time, over the past few years, more and more evidence has emerged that hormones in dairy products can impact on human health. Thus, some estrogens and insulin-like growth factor IGF-1 are involved in the initiation and provocation of breast, prostate and endometrial tumors. That’s why, it is necessary to normalize and control the content of certain hormones in milk with highly sensitive methods.

Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor, and Liberation. By David McNally. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 277p. $72.50 cloth, $23.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-191
Author(s):  
Nicholas Xenos
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
State University ◽  
The Real

David McNally styles this book as beginning in a polemic and ending in a “materialist approach to language” much indebted to the German critic Walter Benjamin. The charge is that “postmodernist theory, whether it calls itself poststructuralism, deconstruction or post-Marxism, is constituted by a radical attempt to banish the real human body—the sensate, biocultural, laboring body—from the sphere of language and social life” (p. 1). By treating language as an abstraction, McNally argues, postmodernism constitutes a form of idealism. More than that, it succumbs to and perpetuates the fetishism of commodities disclosed by Marx insofar as it treats the products of human laboring bodies as entities independently of them. Clearly irritated by the claims to radicalism made by those he labels postmodern, McNally thinks he has found their Achilles' heel: “The extra-discursive body, the body that exceeds language and discourse, is the ‘other’ of the new idealism, the entity it seeks to efface in order to bestow absolute sovereignty on language. To acknowledge the centrality of the sensate body to language and society is thus to threaten the whole edifice of postmodernist theory” (p. 2).

scholarly journals Libertad, equidad, igualdad y desarrollo

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Waters
Keyword(s):  
External Environment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Amartya Sen ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Official Control ◽  
Politica Publica ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Economic

Se analizan dos vertientes del entendimiento de libertad en la literatura clásica. Por un lado, se refiere a complejas relaciones entre el individuo y su gobierno y la ausencia relativa de control oficial sobre las acciones individuales y privadas. Por otro lado, se refiere a la calidad o el estado de ser libre, que es una característica de la persona independiente del entorno externo. Para Amartya Sen, la segunda definición permite entender la libertad en términos de oportunidades en un contexto de equidad. Independiente de lo que se permite o limita formalmente, la política pública promueve la libertad y el desarrollo cuando los ciudadanos pueden actuar a base de opciones reales en condiciones sociales, políticas, económicas y culturales existentes.Two interpretations of an understanding of liberty in the classical literature are discussed. On one hand, the term refers to complex relations between the individual and the government and the relative absence of official control over individual and private actions. On the other hand, the term refers to the quality or status of being free, which is a characteristic of the person independent of the external environment. According to Amartya Sen, the second definition allows us to understand liberty in terms of opportunities in the context of equity. Independent of what is formally allowed or limited, public policy promotes liberty and development when citizens can act on the basis of real options within existing social, political, economic, and cultural conditions.

scholarly journals Onnipotenza divina e ordine naturale nel Medioevo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Possamai
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Pliny The Elder ◽  
The One

The present essay aims, on the one hand, to recall the reasons of anti-naturalism, intended in a metaphysical perspective, of a large part of medieval philosophical and theological reflection and, on the other hand, to show how the same type of problems, specifically those concerning the possible mutability or immutability of the past, can be employed in favour of various conflicting positions on the matter. To demonstrate this, reference was made to some thinkers who could represent emblematic positions on the theme, in particular: Pliny the Elder for the ancient world, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Damian, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas for the medieval era.

scholarly journals La cuentística erótica de Jaramillo Levi a través de sus máquinas deseantes

LETRAS ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Fátima R. Nogueira
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The Other ◽  
Death Instinct ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Sexual Drive ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

Se estudia la narrativa de Jaramillo Levi centrada en la relación entre el erotismo y la muerte, desde el intercambio de dos fuerzas que actúan en la producción del deseo: una, de naturaleza libidinosa e inconsciente, la otra de filiación social. Estos relatos exploran el vínculo entre las pulsiones sexuales y el instinto de la muerte revelando el exceso y la violencia ocultos en el erotismo; además, plasman la magnitud del deseo que al exceder los límites del cuerpo y del individuo deviene una experiencia de la sexualidad inhumana reafirmada sólo por un campo saturado de intensidades y vibraciones. Partiendo de la teoría lacaniana del deseo, y de conceptos de Deleuze y Guattari, en los relatos tal encuentro de fuerzas objetiviza el sujeto y cuestiona la noción antropomórfica de sexualidad. This study deals with Jaramillo Levi’s short stories centered on the relationship between eroticism and death, examining the exchange of two driving forces which create desire. The nature of one of these forces is unconscious and libidinous while the other is social. These stories explore the link between sexual drive and the death instinct, disclosing overindulgence and violence hidden behind eroticism. In addition, they depict the magnitude of desire, which upon exceeding the boundaries of the human body and the individual, becomes an experience of inhuman sexuality that can reaffirm itself only in a field permeated with intensity and vibrations. Considering Lacan’s theory of desire and other concepts from Deleuze and Guattari, the exchange of forces in these stories objectifies the subject and questions the anthropomorphic notion of sexuality.

Epidemics as Leisure Killers: The Transformation of Japan’s Entertainment Industry in the Second Half of the 19th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-217
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Disorganization ◽  
The Other ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The 19Th Century

Among the various human attitudes toward a pandemic, along with fear, despair and anger, there is also an urge to praise the catastrophe or imbue it with some sort of hope. In 2020 such hopes were voiced in the stream of all the other COVID-19 reactions and interpretations in the form of predictions of imminent social, political or economic changes that may or must be brought on by the pandemic, or as calls to “rise above” the common human sentiment and see the pandemic as some sort of cruel-but-necessary bitter pill to cure human depravity or social disorganization. Is it really possible for a plague of any kind to be considered a relief? Or perhaps a just punishment? In order to assess the validity of such interpretations, this paper considers the artistic reactions to the pandemics of the past, specifically the images of the plague from Alexander Pushkin’s play Feast During the Plague, Antonin Artaud’s essay “The Theatre and the Plague” and Albert Camus’s novel The Plague. These works in different ways explore an attitude in which a plague can be praised in some respect. The plague can be a means of self-overcoming and purification for both an individual and for society. At the same time, Pushkin and Camus, each in his own way and by different means, show the illusory nature of that attitude. A mass catastrophe can reveal the resources already present in humankind, but it does not help either the individual or the society to progress.

Faustus. The mythical memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Józsa István
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
German Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Time Dimension ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Preliminary Work ◽  
Literary Heritage

The figure and story of Faustus is part of the European cultural heritage, and as it usually, even inevitably happens with legends, it lives further in the adaptations of later periods and authors . It is mainly linked to Goethe’s name, his figure became well known and immortal in his works. Ever since Goethe, all authors – who respect themselves – in German literature must write a new Faustus, while in other nation’s literatures newer and newer paraphrases were born, which on their turn gave rise to further adaptations, and the scientific, aesthetic etc. literature also has gotten richer. However the canonized, more precisely, classicisized framework of interpretation is not transgressed by any of the newer writers and poets of the past centuries, moreover it is only the form of the legend that is rewritten – naturally with the aim of modernization. All of that as part of the literary heritage. As far as the problem of original sources is concerned: what can be regarded as a source and what is adaptation, which are the works that motivated writers, are just a matter of the preliminary work of the interpretation. On the other hand the problem that within the ancient, mythical tradition there is an original, ancient Faustus legend, does not raise any attention as that is “mere raw material”. The truth is ... that the beginning that has been preliminarily, yet directly definitory for centuries, is that original force that is given in the topic and thus it is difficult to bring it to the surface, preferably independently from the heritage that was built upon it. As far as the time dimension is concerned, we are searching in an undefineable, open past, moreover it is most probable that the legend itself is not entirely original, so to say, but it is the adaptation of a more ancient idea or topic. And by this its symbolism and hidden semantics lose their European characteristics.

scholarly journals Three Mothers (2006) by Dina Zvi-Riklis: The Repressed Israeli Trauma of Immigration

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Yael Munk
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
Outstanding Achievement ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Past ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
Complex Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Jewish Religion

This article relates to the complex approach of Dina Zvi-Riklis’ film Three Mothers (2006) to immigration, an issue that is central to both the Jewish religion and Israeli identity. While for both, reaching the land of Israel means arriving in the promised land, they are quite dissimilar, in that one is a religious command, while the other is an ideological imperative. Both instruct the individual to opt for the obliteration of his past. However, this system does not apply to the protagonists of Three Mothers, a film which follows the extraordinary trajectory of triplet sisters, born to a rich Jewish family in Alexandria, who are forced to leave Egypt after King Farouk’s abdication and immigrate to Israel. This article will demonstrate that Three Mothers represents an outstanding achievement, because it dares to deal with its protagonists’ longing for the world left behind and the complexity of integrating the past into the present. Following Nicholas Bourriaud’s radicant theory, designating an organism that grows roots and adds new ones as it advances, this article will argue that, although the protagonists of Three Mothers never avow their longing for Egypt, the film’s narrative succeeds in revealing a subversive démarche, through which the sisters succeed in integrating Egypt into their present.

New Book Chronicle

Antiquity ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 90 (349) ◽  
pp. 270-281
Author(s):  
Robert Witcher
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Industrial Cities ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Super League

With over half of the world's population living in cities, urbanism is one of the defining characteristics of the contemporary age. In the past, by contrast, most people lived scattered in villages and rural settlements. Yet pre-industrial cities still exerted a disproportionate influence on society, economy and culture. InCities that shaped the ancient world,John Julius Norwichcollects 40 of the most influential. Taking inspiration from this urban super league, this instalment of New Book Chronicle tackles a selection of new volumes, each concerned with one of the cities identified by Norwich, taking us 5000 years and 13 000 km from Ur to Tikal. Each book also presents a different publication format, offering the opportunity to think not only about the individual cities, but also how we write about them.

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