‘To be or not to be’: Hamlet’s Humanistic Quaestio

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (296) ◽  
pp. 640-658
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lim

Abstract Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech has long been the subject of intense scholarly attention. By situating the speech against the backdrop of classical and Renaissance rhetorical theory, this essay demonstrates that there is still much more to be said about it. The speech ostensibly examines a quaestio infinita or a thesis, and follows the rhetorical rule that the right way to do so is by the invocation of commonplaces. This reading of Hamlet’s speech is not only consistent with Shakespeare’s characterization of the university-educated prince, who frequently invokes commonplaces, but also has significant implications for our understanding of the play and Shakespeare’s own practice as a writer. The book that Hamlet is reading could well be his own commonplace collection, and it is perhaps in looking up his entries under the heading of ‘Death’ that Hamlet finds what he needs in order to examine his quaestio.

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-94
Author(s):  
Nadiia BONDARENKO-ZELINSKA ◽  
Maryna BORYSLAVSKA ◽  
Oksana TRACH

The article explores certain problems of law enforcement practice in recognizing inheritance as escheat. The subject of scientific analysis is the subject composition of these procedural relations. Applicants in this category of cases can be conditionally divided into two groups: 1) persons obliged to submit an application to the court for recognition of the inheritance as escheat, and 2) persons who have the right to do so. The persons who are obliged to apply to the court for recognition of the inheritance as escheat are territorial communities. On the basis of an analysis of the legislation, it was established that in the case where a united territorial community was formed in a certain territory, it is authorized to apply to the court for recognition of the inheritance as escheat. On behalf of the local self-government body as a representative of the territorial community (united territorial community), a lawsuit may be initiated to recognize the inheritance as escheat: 1)by its headman or 2) another person authorized to do so according to the law, statute, regulation, employment contract. That is, there can be both self-representation and representation on the basis of a special assignment. It received additional justification for the ability of the prosecutor’s office to submit an application for recognition of the inheritance as escheat in the absence of a territorial community. In such a case, the public prosecutor's office shall represent the legitimate interests of the State in court, in accordance with article 56 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as a body or person entitled to defend the rights, freedoms and interests of others (human rights defender). The possibility of participating not only as an applicant but also as a human rights defender is justified. The possibility of self-representation of local self-governments in cases of recognition of inheritance as escheat by a headman is proposed. It is further argued that such a possibility should be provided for in the Headman’s Regulations, which are approved by the relevant local councils. The peculiarities of initiation of production by subjects for whom the application to the court for recognition of the inheritance as escheat is a right, not an obligation (creditors of the testator, owners and/or users of adjacent land plots) are analyzed. If an applicant in cases of recognition of the inheritance as escheat is a creditor, documents confirming the existing obligations in relation to the debtor-testator should be attached to the application. Recommendations are made on a list of documents that can confirm the status of an applicant-related land user to apply to the court for recognition of the inheritance as escheat. It is proposed to amend Art. 335 CPC of Ukraine on the necessity to provide the originals of written evidence together with a statement on the recognition of the inheritance as escheat. The role of a notary in cases of recognition of inheritance as escheat has been investigated. It is proposed to provide in the legislation the right of a notary to submit to the court an application for recognition of the inheritance as escheat. It is proposed to improve the way of informing the public about the discovery of an inheritance that has no heirs.


Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 430-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfons Nehring

Treatises de modis significandi are known to have been a favorite genre of scholastic literature. One of them, by Martinus de Dacia, has lately been made the subject of a thorough study by Father Heinrich Roos, S.J., and will be briefly discussed in these pages. The text of this treatise, and commentaries on it, are found in a fairly large number of manuscripts, of which Fr. Roos presents a list, and which he endeavors to determine in their mutual relation in order to lay the groundwork for a future edition, apparently — as much as any one not himself familiar with the manuscripts can judge — with thoroughness and reliablity (chs. I, II). In some of the manuscripts and in certain other sources the treatise is ascribed to one Martinus de Dacia (Denmark). Very convincingly Fr. Roos demonstrates (ch. III) that this bit of information is correct and that the author was identical with a high-ranking Danish cleric of that name, who at one time was the chancellor of King Eric VI Menved. It is likely that Martinus composed his treatise while he was a professor in the Liberal Arts Faculty of the University of Paris, probably around 1250. The treatise seems to have enjoyed a great reputation, which would be accounted for if Fr. Roos is right in assuming that Martinus set the model for the entire type. In the last two chapters (IV, V) Fr. Roos describes the character and basic ideas of the tractate against the background of the development of scholarship and higher education during the Middle Ages. This historical outline is very interesting and instructive indeed. Nevertheless it provokes criticism regarding two interrelated points, namely, the characterization of scholastic grammar and its position in the history of linguistic studies.


2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-698
Author(s):  
Marie Choquette

Legal rights protected under sections 8, 9 and 10 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are the subject of this article. Section 8 affords protection against unreasonable search or seizure; there was no similar provision under the Canadian Bill of Rights. Authorized searches and seizures by warrant will be considered unreasonable whenever minimal standards laid down in section 443 of the Criminal Code have not been respected. Furthermore, searches or seizures without warrant will be judged unreasonable if they do not conform to the legal provisions under which they are authorized. Section 9 protects against arbitrary detention or imprisonment. Some judges deem detention to be arbitrary if it is not authorized under statute, while others feel that detention is arbitrary whether authorized by statute or not if it be capricious or unreasonable. Finally, section 10 provides for certain rights to a person who is arrested or detained, such as the right to be informed of the reasons for arrest or detention, the right to be informed of his or her right to retain and instruct counsel and the right to do so, and the right to have the validity of the detention ascertained.


Author(s):  
Hilde Daland

One of Agder University Librarys goals is to support teaching and research at the University of Agder (UoA). To do so, the library should be involved in research projects and offer the right products at the right time. The spring of 2012 a survey was conducted among researchers (academic staff and Ph.D.-students) at the faculty of humanities and education at UoA as well as the library staff. Aditional interviews was made with the library´s research librarians and two of the Ph.D.-students. The surveys and interviews made it clear that researchers and librarians have a different conception on what research support is and should be. While librarians focus mostly on library resources, the researchers focus more generally on practical, economical and administrative help to make research possible. However, the majority answered yes to the question on the library being an important part of research support.Working closely with the researchers can help to offer the right library resources at the right time. Ph.D.-students are less likely to be set in their ways in regards to information behaviour and will often be positive to try new approaches. Also, the Ph.D.-students can be used as a reference group for developing library resources for researchers, for example subject guides. The outside perspective on the library can help to find new ways of approaching research support to make it more useful to researchers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-241
Author(s):  
Hemin Majeed Hasan ◽  
Baqir Dawd Hussein ◽  
Kamil Omar Sleman

This research deals with the subject of the Kurdish media in relation to the right of self-determination, which the Kurds prepare for its central cause and struggle for it. The importance of this research comes from the importance of its basic components represented by the Kurdish media and the right to self-determination, where they combine the equation of influence and influence, which is the operator of the formative relations of things and designed in all human groups, including the community of the region, in addition to being one of the few Kurdish studies in this field, To cast its positive on the operators of the terms of reference.The aim of this research is to realize the levels of interest of the Kurdish media in the concept of the right to self-determination and its role in conveying its meanings and implications to the Kurdish individual, as well as to identify the mechanisms used by this media to convince the individual mentioned this right and activate his tendencies toward him.The research depends on the university teachers, in addition to their field dimension, because they are the most appropriate and the right to express opinions about such strategic issues and their details and implications, because of their knowledge, scientific, specialized and other structural participants, as well as their structural representation of various social components in the Kurdistan Region.


2010 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 705-710
Author(s):  
Michael A. Gillespie

Martin Heidegger observed in his inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg in 1929 that the profundity of all fundamental questions lies in the fact that they call into question not merely the subject of the inquiry but also both the questioner and the act of questioning itself. To put this another way, any comprehensive explanation must be able in principle to account for the one who is giving the explanation and for the explanation itself, and any account that cannot do this disproves itself in the very act of its narration. Thus, if any such account does not make clear the nature of the narrator and the narration, it is suspect on these grounds and readers may reasonably ask for an explanation. Since I did not discuss or try to justify the methodology or the nature of the narrative that I employ in my book, it is not surprising that all three of my critics either explicitly or implicitly raise this as a question. Kirstie McClure perhaps poses it in the most straightforward fashion by asking about the character of my narrative, suggesting quite plausibly that it might be read as an account of the adventures of the divine predicate. Less directly, Tim Fuller seems to make a similar claim with his characterization of my position as middle Hegelian. Since I argue that in modernity the divine, as Tim Fuller eloquently puts it, is “absorbed” by the individual, it is certainly reasonable to ask what kind of account I imagine I am giving. Or to put it a bit more maliciously than my three interlocutors do, one might reasonably ask who I think I am. It seems to me that this is not only a fair question, but also a very penetrating one, and one that I must try to answer. I imagined my own goals to accord more with Tom Merrill's characterization of my thought as an attempt to bring about an encounter with the fundamental questions that underlie the basic assumptions we make about ourselves and our world. But to give no more explanation than this would hardly be satisfying. Moreover, since I complain at the beginning and the end of the book that we moderns need to pay a great deal more attention to the example of Oedipus and not forget who we are and where we come from, it is incumbent on me to explain myself and what I think I am doing more fully. I will try to do this after first attempting to clarify my argument and responding to several other questions my critics raise.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Kelly ◽  
Deborah Dempsey ◽  
Jennifer Power ◽  
Kate Bourne ◽  
Karin Hammarberg ◽  
...  

Abstract In June 2015, the state of Victoria, Australia retrospectively opened its sperm and egg donors’ records, becoming only the second jurisdiction in the world to do so and the first where substantial pre-legislative records are available and stored in a central register. The new legislation gave donor-conceived adults and donors who were conceived or donated under conditions of anonymity (ie prior to 1988) the right to apply to the state’s Central Register for each other’s identifying information, which is released to them if the subject of the application consents. Between the introduction of the law and its further amendment in March 2017, more than 100 applications were made. Through a thematic analysis of donor-conceived adults’ and donors’ Statements of Reasons – a written document applicants were required to complete when they applied – the article explores applicants’ motivations for applying, the information they sought, and their goals with regard to contact. The study found that most applicants were driven by curiosity and a desire for personal information about the other party. They also expressed a strong desire to meet and have an ongoing relationship with the subject of their application. The study also revealed an unanticipated desire on the part of previously anonymous donors for information about their offspring, suggesting future research could explore the emotional needs of donors in greater depth.


Tempo ◽  
1944 ◽  
pp. 132-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béla Bartók

There is much talk these days, mostly for political reasons, about the purity and impurity of the human race, the usual implication being that purity of race should be preserved, even by means of prohibitive laws. Those who champion this or that issue of the question have probably studied the subject thoroughly (at least, they should have done so) spending many years examining the available published material or gathering data by personal investigation. Not having done that, perhaps I cannot support either side, may even lack the right to do so. But I have spent many years studying a phenomenon of human life considered more or less important by some dreamers commonly called students of folk music. This manifestation is the spontaneous music of the lower classes, peasants especially. In the present period of controversy over racial problems, it may be timely to examine the question: Is racial impurity favourable to folk (i.e., peasant music) or not? (I apply the word racial here to the music itself, and not to the individuals creating, preserving or performing the music.)


Oersted´s discovery in 1820 of the magnetic field that surrounds a conductor during the passage of an electric current, aroused a wave of interest among men of science in England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. The apparatus required to verify his results was easily put together, and anyone who cared to do so could see for himself the nature of the indissoluble connexion between electricity and magnetism, which, though long suspected and vaguely adumbrated, was now precisely defined and made a permanent portion of the corpus of science. As one subsequent discovery after another was announced from various places, the recognition became widespread that a large and unexploited field for investigations and applications had been opened up. Only one week after word of Oersted’s experiment reached Paris, Ampere discovered that two parallel wires that carry parallel currents attract each other. Less than two months after Oersted’s publication, J. S. C. Schweigger (1779-1857), at the University of Halle, reasoned that if the current in a single wire held above the compass needle would deflect the needle to the right, while the same wire placed beneath the needle would deflect it to the left, one turn of wire, placed around the needle in the plane of the magnetic meridian, would exert twice the deflecting force of a single wire; and a coil made of ten turns of insulated wire would exert twenty times the force.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Charles Capper ◽  
Anthony La Vopa

Roughly eight years ago we met in Manhattan with Nick Phillipson to plan a new journal to be launched by Cambridge University Press. Two Americans who knew each and had worked together well, and who were largely in agreement about what MIH should accomplish. We were well aware of the quality of Nick's scholarship, of course, and had heard through the transatlantic grapevine that he was a great colleague. Still, we were more than a little apprehensive. What if Nick had a totally different idea of the journal? What if the personal chemistry didn't work? Within an hour of our discussion we knew that we had “lucked out” on both counts. Readers familiar with Nick's work will surely agree that he has one of the sharpest and most imaginative minds in the discipline, and that he had been combining intellectual history with social and cultural history well before historians started making such a fuss about it. Manhattan was the right place to meet. An urban gentleman (in the best of senses), Nick is a gourmet of awesome range (everything from haute cuisine to deli food) and a sparkling conversationalist and raconteur. Lunch or dinner with him is an event. No one takes more care, or pleasure, in ordering a good bottle of wine. The subject of conversation need not be history; he is a lover of art and music, and has been very active in the cultural and civic life of Edinburgh, where he was a celebrated teacher at the university from 1965 to 2004.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document