Ennian Historiography in Lucretius

Ennius Noster ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197517697.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 77-114

Author(s):

Jason S. Nethercut

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Universal History

This chapter meets the Annales on its own narrative terms, arguing that Lucretius responds to the Annales’ conceptualization of history and time in a comprehensively revisionist way. Lucretius alludes repeatedly to historical episodes and personalities from Ennius’ Annales that would appear to valorize Roman hegemony and exemplarity, only to remove whatever value they may have had in their Ennian context. This procedure is, of course, tendentious, because Lucretius both suggests what value these elements had in the Annales and then strips them of it. Lucretius implies that the Annales presents universal history as diachronic and teleological and that individual historical episodes like the wars with Pyrrhus of Epirus and the Carthaginians all build cumulatively to Rome’s imperium sine fine over the cosmos itself. The Epicurean explanations of natural history in the DRN regularly reject this implied Ennian perspective.

Download Full-text

History of Religion as Critique of Religion?

The Power of the Sacred ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190933272.003.0002 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 10-30

Author(s):

Hans Joas

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Natural History ◽

David Hume ◽

Religious Texts ◽

History Of Religion ◽

Universal History ◽

The Bible ◽

Literary Character ◽

History Of

The Scottish eighteenth-century philosopher and historian David Hume can be considered a pioneer of the “natural history of religion” in the sense of a universal history of religion that is not based on theological presuppositions. This chapter offers a characterization of his methodological achievements and a reevaluation of his empirical claims concerning monotheism, polytheism, religion and tolerance. It also interprets the German reception of Hume in Herder and other eighteenth-century thinkers as a serious critical continuation that is free from Hume’s anti-Christian motives. This continuation opens the perspective of a serious study of the literary character of religious texts, in this case of the Bible. All simple contrasts between Enlightenment and religion are overcome as soon as we take this interaction of thinkers into account.

Download Full-text

How is the moral stance related to the intentional stance and group thinking?

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19002413 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

Author(s):

Hannes Rakoczy

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Intentional Stance ◽

Cognitive Capacities ◽

Shared Intentionality ◽

History Of ◽

Group Thinking ◽

Moral Stance

Abstract The natural history of our moral stance told here in this commentary reveals the close nexus of morality and basic social-cognitive capacities. Big mysteries about morality thus transform into smaller and more manageable ones. Here, I raise questions regarding the conceptual, ontogenetic, and evolutionary relations of the moral stance to the intentional and group stances and to shared intentionality.

Download Full-text

On the assembly and structural modulation of lens fiber junctions

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100110805 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

pp. 110-113

Author(s):

E.L. Benedetti ◽

I. Dunia ◽

Do Ngoc Lien ◽

O. Vallon ◽

D. Louvard ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Molecular Weight ◽

Natural History ◽

Intercellular Junctions ◽

Eye Lens ◽

Membrane Domains ◽

Functional Polymorphism ◽

Lens Fiber ◽

The Past ◽

Structural Modulation ◽

Biochemical Difference

In the eye lens emerging molecular and structural patterns apparently cohabit with the remnants of the past. The lens in a rather puzzling fashion sums up its own natural history and even transient steps of the differentiation are memorized. A prototype of this situation is well outlined by the study of the lenticular intercellular junctions. These membrane domains exhibit structural, biochemical and perhaps functional polymorphism reflecting throughout life the multiple steps of the differentiation of the epithelium into fibers and of the ageing process of the lenticular cells.The most striking biochemical difference between the membrane derived from the epithelium and from the fibers respectively, concerns the presence of the 26,000 molecular weight polypeptide (MP26) in the latter membranes.

Download Full-text