The End of the Universe in Medieval Jewish Philosophy

AJS Review ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour Feldman
Keyword(s):  
General Principle ◽  
The Other ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Cosmological Principle ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Strict Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medieval Jewish Philosophy ◽  
The Universe

Both the Bible and the earliest Greek philosophers begin with accounts of the world's genesis. It is thus not surprising that medieval cosmological thought was preoccupied, perhaps obsessed, with the issue of creation. But what about the end of the world? If the universe had a beginning, does it necessarily have an end? Does creation imply destruction? On this topic the Bible is not so explicit and unambiguous. Greek philosophy, however, was virtually unanimous in claiming that whatever has a beginning will have an end, and that whatever will have an end had a beginning. If this cosmological principle is construed strictly, then the world's past and its future are essentially and necessarily linked together, such that the finitude of one entails the finitude of the other. This would mean that if the temporal history of the world is finite a pane ante, then by virtue of this cosmological principle it will have a temporal end a pane post. The most vigorous and detailed defense of the strict interpretation of this general principle was given by Aristotle, who attempted to prove it in his treatise On the Heavens. Henceforth, I shall refer to this principle as “Aristotle's theorem.”

Interlude: Helium, Argon, and Creationism

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Time Span ◽  
The Other ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Fort Lauderdale ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Creation Science ◽  
Strict Interpretation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Creationism ◽  
The Subject

Henry M. Morris, widely regarded as the founder of the modern creationist movement, died February 25, 2006, at the age of eighty-seven. His 1961 book The Genesis Flood, subtitled, The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications, was a cornerstone of the movement. Many more books followed, including Scientific Creationism; What Is Creation Science?; Men of Science; Men of God; History of Modern Creationism; The Long War Against God; and Biblical Creationism. In 1970 he founded the Institute for Creation Research, which continues to be a leading creationist force, now headed by his sons, John and Henry III. In 1982 I debated the subject with him at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale in front of a sellout crowd of several thousand. He had emphasized in our initial contacts that the debate would be based on science, not religion, but when he opened his remarks with this same statement and the audience responded with loud cries of “Amen!” and “Praise Jesus!” I knew I was in for a long night. Both of us steered away from the biological arguments, I because I’m not a biologist and he presumably because the Biblical side of that is so evidently silly—if he had tried to describe how Noah brought two mosquitoes or two fleas aboard he might have got away with it, but the whole panoply of billions of species of submicroscopic creatures was obviously a problem. Instead he concentrated on the physical side, in particular on the age of the earth, and that was fine with me. As noted in the previous chapters, the earth’s age is central to Darwin’s argument. A strict interpretation of the Bible gives a limit of thousands of years, which is clearly not enough time for evolution to take place. Radioactive dating, on the other hand, gives Darwin his needed time span of billions of years, and so a cornerstone of the creationist argument is its necessary destruction. Morris was a wonderful motivational speaker, and spent a long introduction wandering through the Bible to show how wonderfully reasonable it is.

Dualism in Iranian and Christian Traditions

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
François de Blois
Keyword(s):  
Cosmological Models ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Indefinite Number ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Origin Of The Universe

Since the time when the human race first began to speculate about the origin of the universe there have been two cosmological models that have seemed particularly attractive to its imagination. One has been to derive everything in the world from a single primal origin, out of which the cosmos, in all its apparent complexity, evolves. The other has been to view the history of the universe as a battle between two opposing forces which contradict and undermine each other. The two views can be called monism and dualism. They are not the only possibilities. There have been systems that posit three, four or an indefinite number of principles, but most of these have also tended to assume one basic pair of opposites with one or more neutral or intermediate principles beside them; this too can be seen as a form of dualism.

On the Unity of Orphic and Milesian Thought

1986 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 321-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryeh Finkelberg
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Detailed Explanation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Primary Substance

In the first volume ofA History of Greek PhilosophyW. K. C. Guthrie points out that “the promulgators ofteletaiin the name of Orpheus were concerned in the religious sphere with the same problem of the relation between the One and the Many which in a different form was the problem of the Milesian philosophers.” Elsewhere Guthrie provides a more detailed explanation of the similarities and differences between the Orphic and the Milesian treatment of the One-Many problem:Sixth-century religious and philosophical thought … was dominated by one central problem, the problem of the One and the Many. This appeared in two forms, one referring to the macrocosm, the other to the microcosm. In its first form it was the problem of the Milesian natural philosophers, who asked: “What is the relation between the manifold variety of the world in which we live and the one primary substance out of which, as we are convinced, it must in the first place have arisen?” In its second form it was the problem of the religious minds of the age. Their question was: “What is the relation of each individual man to the divine, to which we feel we are akin, and how can we best realize and actualize the potential unity which underlies the two?”

scholarly journals Foki Szumejowego podróże do źródeł. Pępek ziemi w ujęciu Stanisława Vincenza

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Jakub Żmidziński
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

FOKA SZUMEJOWY'S JOURNEYS TO THE SOURCE. THE NAVEL OF THE EARTH AS PRESENTED BY STANISŁAW VINCENZContinuing Jacek Kolbuszewski’s exegesis of the spatial orders in Stanisław Vincenz’s Na wysokiej połoninie On the High Mountain Pastures, the author of the article attempts to recreate the “philosophy of space” as formulated by the Homer of the Hutsuls. He carries out a detailed analysis of two fragments of the Hutsul epic: Maksym the seer’s story of a rock church from Barwinkowy wianek Periwinkle Wreath and Foka Szumejowy’s expedition to the navel of the earth described in Zwada Squabble. In both case inspirations from Dante’s Divine Comedy can be seen primarily in the expansion of space: on the one hand to include the world of the dead and on the other — the universe understood in Platonic terms. Both journeys also have many characteristics testifying to their initiation-related nature. Particularly important in this respect is the expedition undertaken by Foka and his friends to the source of the Cheremosh River deep inside the Palenica Mountain, on top of which Wincenty Pol placed the point where the borders of three countries — Poland, Hungary and Romania — met. Although in the light of modern research such a location of the old border between the three states is wrong, this is precisely where Vincenz places the navel of the earth. It appear as a distant echo of the omphalos stone from Delphi; a mystical place marked by extraordinarily dense symbolism: centre of the world, bringing together the heavenly and the earthly orders, the living and the dead, and annihilating the temporal dimension. The interpretation of the symbolism of Vincenz’s navel of the world is complemented by Klucz Key, which opens Zwada and in which the author suggests a universal dimension of the history of culture, and, at the same time, mystery-like nature of art, especially literature.]]>

All Ears

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Szendy
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The world of international politics has been recently rocked by a seemingly endless series of scandals that are all tied to various practices of auditory surveillance: the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping, Edward Snowden’s revelations, and the “News of the World” scandal are just the most sensational examples of what appears to be a universal practice today. What is the source of this unceasing battle of different forms of listening? Whence this generalized principle of eavesdropping? Peter Szendy’s All Ears: The Aesthetics of Espionage answers these questions by tracing the long history of moles from the Bible, through Jeremy Bentham’s “panacoustic” project, all the way to the intelligence gathering network called “Echelon.” This archeology of auditory surveillance runs parallel with the analysis of its representations in literature (Sophocles, Shakespeare, Joyce, Kafka, Borges), opera (Monteverdi, Mozart, Berg), and film (Lang, Hitchcock, Coppola, De Palma). Following in the footsteps of Orpheus, the book proposes a new concept of “overhearing” that connects the act of spying to an excessive intensification of listening. Relying on the works of Freud, Deleuze, Foucault, Adorno, and Derrida, Szendy’s work attempts to locate at the heart of listening the ear of the Other that manifests itself as the originary division of a “split-hearing” that turns the drive for mastery and surveillance into the death drive.

The World after the End of the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
End Of The World

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.

Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Confidence Man ◽  
Ugly Duckling ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

Devotional Emerson

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gurley
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Modes Of Action ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe

AbstractAgainst anti-realist readings of the Emersonian self, perhaps most influentially Cavell’s reading, this essay argues that Emerson is a devotional writer. Emerson’s notion of subjectivity is based in two complementary modes of action - one receptive and the other expressive - as one works to “align” oneself with the larger forces that constitute and order the universe. How the world is and how we humans make our way through it are not the same and must not be confused. Such confusion is the decisive mistake the anti-realist critic of Emerson makes. The Emersonian subject must experience the laws of reality directly, on one’s own, rather than “secondhand.” Emerson is a dramatist telling the story of how we come to ideas and learn to judge and to act: of how, that is, we come to have experience. Emerson seeks an unshifting ground through a moment of receptivity and a moment of activity. That he often rarely achieves insight does not make him an anti-realist. This essay demonstrates how, by showing - albeit briefly - that Emersonian experience is fundamentally religious: a work of devotion rather than aversion.

scholarly journals CULTURAL REPRESENTATION OF POWER AND THE COURT DURING THE PERSONAL REIGN OF CHARLES I STUART

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-110
Author(s):  
L. I. Ivonina
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The World ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The article analyzes the main features of the Caroline era in the history of Britain, which were reflected in the cultural representation of the power of King Charles I Stuart and the court’s daily life in the 1630s. The author shows that, on the one hand, the cult of peace and the greatness of the monarch were the cultural product of the Caroline court against the background of the Thirty Years' War in continental Europe. On the other hand, there was a spread of various forms of escapism, the departure into the world of illusions. On the whole, the representation of the power of Charles Stuart and the court’s daily life were in line with the general trend of the time. At the same time, the court of Charles I reflected his personality. Thinly sensing and even determining the artistic tastes of his era, the English king abstracted from its political and social context.

scholarly journals Synet på natur og historie hos Grundtvig og Løgstrup

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Hans Henningsen
Keyword(s):  
Sense Perception ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Historical Life

The View of Nature and History in Grundtvig and LøgstrupBy Hans HenningsenGrundtvig’s and K.E. Løgstrup’s thoughts move in two different dimensions, but with the same intention of demonstrating that it was not the capacity of man to create culture that first gave significance to the world. But where Grundtvig speaks about history, Løgstrup speaks about »phenomena«, »nature«, and »universe«.While Grundtvig was largely unaffected by Kant, the latter - with his concepts of the selfexistent subject and the idea of the faculty of cognition as productive - became a challenge to Løgstrup. Kant heralds an era whose relationship with the universe is characterized as a »marginal existence«. Our culture became an emancipatory culture which was all to the good, but the era lost its sense of the .pre-cultural. structures in which life is »encased«.The era has also emancipated itself from Grundtvig’s historical view. But a history on the premisses of relativism is no history. Or, in Løgstrup’s words, there is no other history than the history of what is essential in life. Therefore, in reality, Løgstrup’s phenomenological and philosophical endeavours become a defence of history. Grundtvig’s view of nature was determined by his radical prioritization of history. He prefers to view nature as part of the historical life of man, which again determines his use of nature images. In Grundtvig there is no religious interpretation of any experience or perception of nature in spite of the fact that everything in the Creation is to be understood as images of the eternal.In Løgstrup there is no such cautions attitude towards nature. Here nature and sense perception are liberating, but as is the case with Grundtvig, nature is seen as the foundation of man’s life, as immediate experience.Grundtvig’s radical prioritization of history colours his view of art. The Creation itself is the greatest work of art; part of it is the upbringing through which all history must be the object of the individual’s own experience. Among the art forms, poetry ranks highest, with the song above all other forms, while Grundtvig only uses disparaging words about painting and sculpture because these art forms are wordless and preclude changes. Løgstrup, however, attaches much greater importance to sense perception and self-recognition through art.These contrasts may be regarded as what Løgstrup calls uniting opposites; it must be remembered, however, that such disparities cannot be harmonized so as to disappear, but are uniting precisely by virtue of the tension that exists between them. The actual existence of the contrasts does not preclude the possibility that in a wider sense the two views may be contained within the same framework and express a common intention.

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