The Spectacle of Appearances

2021 ◽  
pp. 102-174
Author(s):  
Gianpiero Rosati

Ovid thematizes the gap between appearance and reality, which also is represented on the linguistic level through an insistent, systematic discordance between the literal meaning of the language and the figurative one. The metamorphic and spectacular nature of language therefore becomes a mirror of the whole reality, which is subject to the law of continuous change, and gives rise to the game of illusions and deceptions in which humans are involved and often overwhelmed. Ovid’s verbal pyrotechnics, long dismissed as a fatuous rhetorical exercise, is actually a highly conscious key to representing reality with its paradoxes; and the distinctive visual, ekphrastic style of his poem (destined to become the ‘Bible of painters’) is the mark of Ovid’s continuous intense reflection on his own representational strategies.

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Dariusz Konrad Sikorski

Summary After 1946, ie. after embracing Christianity, Roman Brandstaetter would often point to the Biblical Jonah as a role model for both his life and his artistic endeavour. In the interwar period, when he was a columnist of Nowy Głos, a New York Polish-Jewish periodical, he used the penname Romanus. The ‘Roman’ Jew appears to have treated his columns as a form of an artistic and civic ‘investigation’ into scandalous cases of breaking the law, destruction of cultural values and violation of social norms. Although it his was hardly ‘a new voice’ with the potential to change the course of history, he did become an intransigent defender of free speech. Brought up on the Bible and the best traditions of Polish literature and culture, Brandstaetter, the self-appointed disciple of Adam Mickiewicz, could not but stand up to the challenge of anti-Semitic aggression.


Author(s):  
Lisbeth S. Fried

Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras are the books of the Bible that describe the return to Judah under the Persians, so it is important to understand what in their portrayal is accurate, and what can be assigned to the imagination of the writers. Text-critical, historical-critical, and archaeological methods enable us to disentangle these elements. They confirm returns to Judah under Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes I, a temple rebuilt under Cyrus and Darius, and a rebuilt wall around Jerusalem under Artaxerxes. We may confirm as well that a man named Ezra was an official in the Persian Empire who served as the “eyes and ears of the King,” but that he did not bring either the Torah or Torah-law to Judah, and there was no law-reading ceremony. The law-reading ceremony, currently described in Nehemiah 8, was written in the Maccabean period, perhaps to emphasize to their Seleucid overlords that even the Persians had supported Judean traditions.


Author(s):  
Krystyna Szczepanowska-Kozłowska

AbstractOne form of industrial property right infringement is stocking for the purpose of offering or marketing. This form of infringement appears both in EU legal acts on trademarks or designs, as well as in national regulations, including those concerning patents. What is specific to stocking when compared to other activities comprising the stipulated exclusivity of the holder of industrial property rights is the fact that the literal meaning of “stocking” does not explain whether the infringing party or the warehouse keeper is the entity that places the goods in storage. The structure of industrial property rights as absolute rights would theoretically permit the view that the law is violated by both the entity that accepts the goods for storage and the entity that places such goods in storage. To determine if there is an infringement, it must be established what the goods being stocked are further intended for. It is not without significance that the finding of an infringement of industrial property rights does not depend on fault or awareness. From the point of view of the industrial property law regime, it is difficult to find arguments against this understanding of infringement by stocking. Since the offeror of goods infringing industrial property rights may be held liable even if the goods have not yet been manufactured, it is conceivable that the entity accepting such goods for stocking is also liable. This interpretation of the concept of stocking would certainly correspond to the absolute nature of liability for infringement.In a recent judgment the CJEU confirmed that the warehouse keeper who, on behalf of a third party, stores goods which infringe trademark rights only creates the technical conditions for trademark use by this third party provided that the warehouse keeper is not aware of that infringement. The CJEU also confirmed that only the person who decides about the purpose of storing the goods can be treated as an infringer. However, the CJEU did not respond to the question regarding whether the warehouse keeper could be treated as an infringer if it pursues the aims of storing the goods at the request of the entity that put the goods into storage.


Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich

Hobbes’s Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations extends a position first explained in The Two Gods of Leviathan (1992). Hobbes presented what he believed would be a science of politics, a set of timeless truths grounded in definitions. In chapters on the laws of nature, authorization and representation, sovereignty by acquisition, and others, the author explains this science of politics. In addition to the timeless science, Hobbes had two timebound projects: (1) to eliminate the apparent conflict between the new science of Copernicus and Galileo and traditional Christian doctrine, and (2) to show that Christianity, correctly understood, is not politically destabilizing. The strategy for accomplishing (1) was to distinguish science from religion and to understand Christianity as essentially belief in the literal meaning of the Bible. The strategy for accomplishing (2) was to appeal to biblical teachings such as “Servants, obey your masters,” and “All authority comes from God.” Criticisms of the author’s interpretations are the occasion for (a) fleshing out Hobbes’s historical context and (b) describing the nature of interpretation in dialogue with opposing interpretations by scholars such as Jeffrey Collins, Edwin Curley, John Deigh, and Quentin Skinner. Interpretation is updating one’s network of beliefs in order to re-establish an equilibrium upset by a text. Interpretations may be judged according to prima facie properties of good interpretations such as completeness, consistency, simplicity, generality, palpability, and defensibility.


Author(s):  
Anne C. Dailey

The law generally takes people at their word. For example, contracts are interpreted based on the objective meaning of the written terms rather than by reference to the parties’ subjective intent. In contrast, psychoanalysis rarely trades in literalisms, instead examining words for their hidden associations, connotations, implications, and ambiguities. This chapter explains how a psychoanalytic perspective on the meaning of words reworks the law’s presumption of transparency. The discussion focuses on the law governing violent threats communicated to therapists but directed at third parties, the so-called Tarasoff rule. Under this rule, when a patient says to her therapist, “I am going to kill him,” the law requires that the therapist take the patient at her word. But while the Tarasoff rule may protect some potential victims, a psychoanalytic perspective suggests that the rule may do more harm than good, in particular by discouraging those individuals who struggle with violent thoughts to seek treatment, thus raising the risk of their resorting to violence. Psychoanalytic insights into interpretive opacity, transference, regression, and acting out illuminate how the law’s pragmatic reliance on the literal meaning of words can undermine the law’s own goals to protect individuals from harm to themselves and others.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Rubyantara Jalu Permana ◽  
Sonny Eli Zaluchu

The literal differences found in the text of Exodus 34 verses 1 and 28 can trigger accusations of Bible inconsistency. In fact, in the Christian view, the Bible is a book that cannot be wrong or inner. Evangelical Christian beliefs assert that the Bible contains God's word and God's word itself. If there are differences and inconsistencies in the Bible, is that an indicator to deduce the low credibility of truth in the Christian scriptures? This study aims to answer that question through a hermeneutic and theological analysis of the differences in texts in Exodus 34 or 1 and verse 28, about who actually wrote the two new tablets. God as referred to verse 1 or Moses as read in verse 28. In addition to conducting text analysis, the author also uses the source approach and theological concepts. As a result, verse 28 actually legitimizes verse 1 that God himself wrote the law. This perspective also confirms that the search for the meaning of texts in context does not merely involve a grammatical approach.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Janusz Lemański

Deut 22:5 marks the single instance of a prohibition of transvestitism in the Bible, and in its whole cultural milieu. The context in which it is situated suggests that it may have been inserted there as an addition, after the Babylonian captivity. That helps to narrow down the range of speculations as to the original Sitz im Leben of the law, and enables us to read it most of all within the canonical framework of the entirety of the Pentateuch. Hence, the precept pertains mainly to the principle of division of the human nature into the two sexes (Gen 1–2), the principle of retaining the order of creation (by not mixing kinds; Lev 19:19; Deut 22:9–11), and of keeping the procreational power, referred to here predominantly to masculinity (Gen 5:1–3; cf. Gen 1:28; 9:1.7).


John Selden ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Jason P. Rosenblatt

This draws conclusions based on John Selden’s acceptance of the Talmud as an authoritative source. His many references to Jewish ancestral custom and opinion reveal his understanding that ancient Talmudic traditions exist independent of the Bible, and of course these include the Adamic/Noachide laws. Despite its dubious historicity, Selden accepts the tradition of a seamless transmission of judicial authority in both sacred and civil issues from Moses to the time of the synedrion, which he regards as a model for Parliament. He regards the sages of the Talmud as legal scholars rather than as religious figures. In the fierce debates in the Westminster Assembly over Deuteronomy 17:8–10, the Presbyterians read the text literally, which gave priority in adjudication to the clergy, while Erastians like Selden followed the rabbinic interpretation, which favored those who were skilled in the law. The conclusion tries to explain why both Selden and Milton (at least in his divorce treatises and in the middle books of Paradise Lost) relied on simile and analogy rather than metaphor and typology. Milton would have found everything he needed to create the laws of paradise in Selden’s De Jure Naturali et Gentium, with its thousands of marginal references and its method of giving a fair hearing to all opinions.


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