Greek Philosophy in the Twenty-first Century

Author(s):  
Sara Brill

This article addresses contemporary efforts to understand how the earliest practitioners of philosophy conceived of the philosophic life. It argues that, for Plato, the concept of bios was a central, animating, and structuring object of philosophic inquiry. Concentration on the imagery Plato employed to draw bios into the purview of philosophic contemplation and choice points to interpretative avenues that further the aim of treating the dialogues as complex, integrated wholes, and offers a new approach to the question of the status of image-making in them. The article concludes with thoughts on how an exploration of bios might extend beyond Plato to Aristotle, via an examination of his treatment of the range of human and animal bioi, suggesting that such an examination clarifies the relationship between his analysis of the polis-dwelling animal and his broader investigation of living beings as such.

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-291
Author(s):  
Johannes Wolf

This article takes a new approach to the conflicts represented in the thirteenth- century saints’ lives of the Katherine Group. Identifying saints and idols as contrasting poles in these conflicts, it argues that the category of sentience is a key distinguisher that is consistently employed to denigrate idols and idolators. Pagan antagonists are systematically identified as nonagential and material; by contrast, the saints communicate divine truth unimpeded and resist attempts to disrupt their highly integrated performances. The category of sentience is shuttled to-and-fro between parties as various antagonists attempt to reduce the saint to the status of an object. While superficially victorious, the saints finally fall prey to the binary logic of hagiography: to triumph over interrogation, torture, and death, the saint ultimately sacrifices her own sentience. This analysis reveals the investments of a medieval theory of sentience with implications for both hagiography at large and the twenty-first-century material turn.


Author(s):  
Matteo Marenco

Abstract This article reviews three books that offer thought-provoking insights on a central political science question, namely the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. First, ‘Democracy and Prosperity’ by Iversen and Soskice posits a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and democracy. Advanced capital thrives on nationally rooted institutions, hence it needs democratic politics. A majority of voters ask for pro-advanced-capital reforms, hence democratic politics needs advanced capital. Second, ‘Capitalism, Alone’ by Milanovic depicts a troubled coexistence between capitalism and democracy. The former's tendency to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few is the main reason why democratic politics is under pressure. Third, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ by Zuboff suggests a negative relationship between digital capitalism and democracy. Surveillance capitalism increasingly acts as a control means of individuals' behaviour, which undermines democracy at its roots. The last section brings the three contributions together. It maintains that a mutually beneficial coexistence between capitalism and democracy currently faces both internal (from within) and external (from without) challenges. In line with Milanovic and Zuboff, it argues that the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few is the most apparent from-within challenge. Drawing on Milanovic, it contends that rise of China as a global power combining capitalism with non-democracy challenges the relationship between capitalism and democracy from without. Finally, it contends that the environmental question and the pandemic represent two windows of opportunity for democracy to recover lost ground and re-establish a more balanced relationship with capitalism.


2013 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Pritchard

AbstractThis article examines a range of writings on the status of musical interpretation in Austria and Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century, and argues their relevance to current debates. While the division outlined by recent research between popular-critical hermeneutics and analytical ‘energetics’ at this time remains important, hitherto neglected contemporary reflections by Paul Bekker and Kurt Westphal demonstrate that the success of energetics was not due to any straightforward intellectual victory. Rather, the images of force and motion promoted by 1920s analysis were carried by historical currents in the philosophy, educational theory and arts of the time, revealing a culturally situated source for twenty-first-century analysis's preoccupations with motion and embodiment. The cultural relativization of such images may serve as a retrospective counteraction to the analytical rationalizing processes that culminated specifically in Heinrich Schenker's later work, and more generally in the privileging of graphic and notational imagery over poetic paraphrase.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Louise D’Arcens

Abstract This essay focuses on the Polish film Cold War and the oeuvre of the French nationalist black metal band Peste Noire, examining them as twenty-first-century texts that disclose music’s capacity to solicit emotion in the service of ideology. Despite their aesthetic and ideological differences, each text demonstrates the importance of temporal emotions – that is, emotions that register a heightened sense of the relationship between present, past and future. Each text portrays these emotions’ ideological significance when attached to ideas of a national past. Dwelling on Peste Noire’s racist-nationalist use of the medieval past, the essay explores music as a medium for emotional performances in which white people appear to convey vulnerability while actually reconfirming white supremacy. Peste Noire’s idiosyncratic performance of aggressive vulnerability is a temporal emotion that self-consciously lays claim to a long emotional tradition reaching back to the French Middle Ages.


Author(s):  
Robert B. Perks

For decades, oral historians and their tape recorders have been inseparable, but it has also been an uneasy marriage of convenience. The recorder is both our “tool of trade” and also that part of the interview with which historians are least comfortable. Oral historians' relationship with archivists has been an uneasy one. From the very beginnings of the modern oral history movement in the 1940s, archivists have played an important role. The arrival of “artifact-free” digital audio recorders and mass access via the Internet has transformed the relationship between the historian and the source. Accomplished twenty-first-century oral history practitioners are now expected to acquire advanced technological skills to capture, preserve, analyze, edit, and present their data to ever larger audiences. The development of oral history in many parts of the world was influenced by the involvement of sound archivists and librarians. Digital revolution in the present century continues to influence oral history.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Haiman Liu

<p>The images of maidens in Italian opera and German lieder from the period 1800-1850 are vivid. In the plots of the operas and the scenes and stories of the lieder almost invariably these characters focus enthusiastically on heartfelt love. This exegesis explores the relationship between the expression of love by unmarried women in selected lieder and opera of the first half of the nineteenth century and performance of these works by the young soprano in the twenty-first century. In the period when these songs and operas were written, performers of lieder would often have been of a similar age to the maiden characters portrayed in the songs, and in the case of Italian opera at the time, the singers who created such roles were usually in their twenties or early thirties. As a young soprano myself, in my study I consider some questions which are relevant for twenty-first century female singers who choose to perform these nineteenth-century portrayals of virgin characters. The figures in the works I have selected to study display a wide variety of personalities, moods and emotions, from the tenacious wild rose in Schubert’s ‘Heidenröslein’, to his passionate Gretchen and the melancholic Amina in Bellini’s La Sonnambula. I consider how the soprano may express the different emotions involved and approach performing young maiden characters such as these, whose experiences of life and status in society may be substantially removed from twenty-first century experiences.   In order to address these questions, I examine the selected song and aria texts in terms of the relationship between the content of the stories and the characters, as well as analyzing the vocal skills that can be used and vocal effects that may be applied when shaping these roles according to the music as written. In addition, I combine the background to the story and the plot with the musical markings in selected phrases to explore the emotional variety of the characters so as to interpret the deeper significance in the compositions. Through learning and performing these particular pieces I have explored the vocal techniques which are required in singing them from a practical perspective and this enables me to contribute insights I have gained to the general understanding of the skills required for this particular area of the repertoire. Having chosen repertoire for this study which combines Italian opera arias and lieder, and I also consider how the differences I have found in the vocal works may reflect their respective genres and distinguish the skills required for each. Through writing about my own research into the performance of these works, I provide new insights and ideas about these maiden characters which may be applicable to any young sopranos who sing repertoire from this period, and useful for their own vocal perfo</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Mahlamäki ◽  
Tomas Mansikka

This article discusses the relationship between Western esotericism and literature. As an example of a secular author who uses and benefits from esoteric texts, ideas and thoughts as resources in creating a literary artwork, the article analyses Laura Lindstedt’s novel Oneiron. A Fantasy About the Seconds After Death (2015). It contextualises the novel within the frames of Western esotericism and literature, focusing on Emanuel Swedenborg’s impact on discourses of the afterlife in literature. Laura Lindstedt’s postmodern novel indicates various ways that esoteric ideas, themes, and texts can work as resources for authors of fiction in twenty-first century Finland. Since the late eighteenth century Swedenborg’s influence has been evident in literature and among artists, especially in providing resources for other-worldly imagery. Oneiron proves that the ideas of Swedenborg are still part of the memory of Western culture and literature.


2014 ◽  
pp. 106-124
Author(s):  
Konrad Sebastian Morawski

Status of the newspaper “Politika” in Karađorđevićs’ Yugoslavia (1918-1941)The newspaper Politika was founded on 25 January 1904 by Vladislav F. Ribnikar. Since that time the Serbian Press market has begun to develop, and the Politika permanently has taken the important role up to this day. The newspaper witnessed important events in the Balkans in the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century but at the same time it was also under strong influence of Serbian centers of political authority. One example of such an influence was the status of the Politika in the period during the reign of Karađorđević dynasty in Yugoslavia, in 1918-1941. The newspaper then served a propaganda function for the royal court, particularly in 1929-1934. Then king Aleksander ruled in an authoritarian way and Politika played an important part in the country. The mechanism of functioning of the newspaper in the period of the royal authoritarianism, as well as in the remaining years of the interwar Yugoslavia was thus discussed in the article to help clarify the status of Politika under the rule of Karađorđevićs. Status gazety „Politika” w Jugosławii Karađorđeviciów (1918–1941)Gazeta pod nazwą „Politika” została założona 25 stycznia 1904 roku przez Vladislava F. Ribnikara. Od tego czasu zaczął kształtować się serbski rynek prasowy, w którym „Politika” trwale zajmuje istotne miejsce do dzisiejszego dnia. Gazeta była świadkiem ważnych i doniosłych wydarzeń na Bałkanach w XX wieku i na początku XXI wieku, ale zarazem znajdowała się również w strefie ścisłych wpływów politycznych serbskich ośrodków władzy. Jednym z przykładów takiego wpływu był status „Politiki” w okresie panowania dynastii Karađorđeviciów w Jugosławii w latach 1918–1941. Gazeta pełniła wtedy funkcję propagandową dworu królewskiego, co dało się szczególnie zauważyć w latach 1929–1934. Wtedy bowiem król Aleksander I sprawował autorytarne rządy w państwie, których ważną częścią stała się „Politika”. Mechanizm funkcjonowania gazety zarówno w okresie autorytaryzmu królewskiego, jak i w pozostałych latach międzywojennej Jugosławii został więc poddany omówieniu, które umożliwiło wyjaśnienie statusu „Politiki” pod panowaniem Karađorđeviciów.


Author(s):  
Roger T. Ames

Perhaps the most important international relationship in the twenty-first century is that between America and China. Given the often delicate and sometimes underproductive history of the relationship between America and China broadly, this chapter argues that American pragmatism might serve as a vocabulary to promote a positive dialogue between these cultures at a moment in history when such a conversation is imperative. These commonalities provide a language introducing Confucian philosophy to the Western academy and also an external perspective from which to examine the presuppositions of our own worldview and common sense. The chapter compares the central Confucian notion of relationally constituted persons (ren 仁)— or human “becomings”—with Dewey’s technical term, “individuality.” It explores the centrality of moral imagination in Confucian role ethics and in Deweyan ethics and also concludes that these two traditions share the idea of a human-centered religiousness.


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