Degrees of Separation in the Phaedo

Phronesis ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pakaluk

AbstractIt can be shown that, if we assume 'substance dualism', or the real distinctness of the soul from the body, then the standard objections to the Cyclical Argument in the Phaedo fail. So charity would presumably require that we take substance dualism to be presupposed by that argument. To do so would not beg any question, since substance dualism is a significantly weaker thesis than the immortality of the soul. Moreover, there is good textual evidence in favor of this presumption. A closer look at the immediately preceding passage, viz. "Socrates' Defense", reveals an argument for a real distinction between soul and body, not unlike Descartes' famous argument, based on the identification of an activity in which the soul can in principle engage on its own, without assistance from the body. The argumentative project of the Phaedo, on this reading, becomes: given that the soul is really distinct, show that it is immortal. And Plato aims to do this in two stages. The three initial arguments are meant to establish merely the minimal claim that the continued existence of the soul across cycles of reincarnation is the most plausible view to take, given substance dualism; and it is left to the Final Argument to argue for something that we might regard as immortality, that is, the imperishability of the soul, come what may.

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (03) ◽  
pp. 92-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Neumann ◽  
H. Baas ◽  
R. Hefner ◽  
G. Hör

The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease often begin on one side of the body and continue to do so as the disease progresses. First SPECT results in 4 patients with hemiparkinsonism using 99mTc-HMPAO as perfusion marker are reported. Three patients exhibited reduced tracer uptake in the contralateral basal ganglia One patient who was under therapy for 1 year, showed a different perfusion pattern with reduced uptake in both basal ganglia. These results might indicate reduced perfusion secondary to reduced striatal neuronal activity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110259
Author(s):  
Caroline D. Laurent

In recent Franco-Vietnamese literature written by descendants of immigrants, the liminality of exile is portrayed in all its complexity through migrant bodies – that of parents’ bodies – and through political and social bodies – linked to History and the Việt Kiều’s positionality in French society. The experience of external movement becomes an internal one, creating porosity between the outside and the body, self and others, places and times. This article argues that, in Minh Tran Huy’s Voyageur malgré lui and Doan Bui’s Le Silence de mon père, by representing their family’s migration, both authors present the silenced histories of the Vietnamese community in France. In order to do so, Tran Huy and Bui first focus on uncovering and writing the stories of their silent fathers: through their embodiment of exilic history, the fathers transmit the wound of their immigrant condition to their daughters. Consequently, daughters come to manifest similar bodily expressions of traumas they have not experienced and know little about. The fathers’ histories are eventually voiced and re-invested by the second generation. This shows how the unearthing of their fathers’ life stories is also about reappropriating a dual identity as well as making Asian diasporic perspectives and histories visible, notably to create new avenues of representation for French individuals of Asian descent.


Crustaceana ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 86 (13-14) ◽  
pp. 1695-1710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Allen ◽  
A. G. Lewis

Locomotor appendage-body relationships were used to examine whether swimming or reduction in sinking rate is the more important function in the second nauplius and copepodid stages of Lepeophtheirus salmonis (Krøyer, 1837). Except for the similarity in swimming appendage surface areas without setae, the appendages of the two stages are morphologically distinct. Although the nauplius is smaller than the copepodid it has long slender appendages that, with setae, provide greater total surface area than the paddle-shaped copepodid thoracic legs. Copepodid thoracic legs are more similar to those used for swimming by planktonic copepods although with more limited propulsion capability. Naupliar appendages project from the body while copepodid appendages can be folded against the ventral surface, improving hydrodynamic flow as well as body position after attachment to a host. Both copepodid and naupliar appendages are of sufficient size that they should provide escape velocities of more than 100 mm ⋅ s−1. The nature and display of the naupliar appendages suggest they could be used to reduce sinking rate by as much as 64%, reducing the need to swim to maintain a suitable location in the water. Although copepodid thoracic legs could reduce sinking rate by over 40%, their position on the ventral surface and the nature of other appendages suggests a more important use, for orientation and attachment once a host is located.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.


Traditio ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 308-317
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Thibodeau

In a recent article on the medieval dogma of transubstantiation, Gary Macy builds upon the works of Hans Jorissen and James F. McCue to question the validity of Jaroslav Pelikan's claim that “at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist achieved its definitive formulation in the dogma of transubstantiation.” Macy demonstrates that through most of the thirteenth century, the majority of theologians did not, in fact, consider Lateran IV's decree the final word on eucharistic theology. The debate over precisely how the real presence of Christ occurred in the eucharist was far from closed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 295-307
Author(s):  
Will McNeill ◽  

Heidegger’s 1936 essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” is notoriously dense and difficult. In part this is because it appears to come almost from nowhere, given that Heidegger has relatively little to say about art in his earlier work. Yet the essay can only be adequately understood, I would argue, in concert with Heidegger’s essay on Hölderlin from the same year, “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetizing.” Without the Hölderlin essay, for instance, the central claim of “The Origin of the Work of Art” to the effect that all art is in essence poetizing, Dichtung, can hardly be appreciated in its philosophical significance without the discussions of both essence and poetizing that appear in the Hölderlin essay. This is true of other concepts also. The central concept of the rift (Riß)—the fissure or tear—that appears in “The Origin of the Work of Art” might readily be assumed to be adopted from Albrecht Dürer, whose use of the term Heidegger cites at a key point in the 1936 essay. Here, however, I argue that the real source of the concept for Heidegger is Hölderlin, and that the Riß is, moreover—quite literally—an inscription of originary, ekstatic temporality; that is, of temporality as the “origin” of Being and as the poetic or poetizing essence of art. I do so, first, by briefly considering Heidegger’s references to Dürer in “The Origin of the Work of Art” and other texts from the period, as well as his understanding of the Riß and of the tearing of the Riß in that essay and in its two earlier versions. I then turn to Heidegger’s 1936 Rome lecture “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetizing,” in order to show the Hölderlinian origins of this concept for Heidegger.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-360
Author(s):  
Julien Labia

A migrant camp is a ‘non-place’ where personal identity is put at risk. Music is a means of personal adaptation in camps, even if it means allowing little place for the real reasons for displacement of the very people shaping these new hybridizations of music. The present power of music in such a place is to create strong relationships, ‘shortcutting’ both narration and the longer time needed in order to create relationships. The kind of personal advantage it is for someone to be a musician is a topic surprisingly forgotten, obscured by theoretical habits of seeing music essentially as an expressive activity directed to an audience, or as being a communicative activity. Music has a performative power different from language, as a non-verbal art having a strong and direct relationship to the body. Musical interactions on the field give migrants the ability to balance their problematic situation of refugees, shaping a real present.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 195-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Sazima ◽  
Cristina Sazima

Several bird species feed on a variety of external parasites and epibionts, organic debris, dead and wounded tissue, clots and blood, and secretions from the body of other vertebrates (hosts or clients). We present an overview of so called cleaner birds from the Neotropics based on field records, literature, and photo survey. We found that 33 bird species in 16 families practice cleaning even if some of them do so very occasionally. The birds range from the Galápagos ground finch Geospiza fuliginosa to the widespread black vulture Coragyps atratus. Clients mostly are large herbivores such as capybaras, deer, and livestock, but also include medium-sized herbivores such as iguanas and tortoises, and carnivores such as boobies and seals - a few bird species associate with these latter marine mammals. No carnivorous terrestrial mammal client is recorded to date except for a domestic dog, from whose hair black vultures picked organic debris. Some clients adopt particular inviting postures while being cleaned, whereas others are indifferent or even disturbed by the activity of cleaner birds. Capybaras, giant tortoises, and iguanas are among the inviting clients, whereas boobies try to dislodge the 'vampire' finch Geospiza difficilis. Most of the Neotropical cleaner birds may be lumped in one broad category (omnivores that dwell in open areas and associate with large to medium-sized herbivores). A second, restricted category accommodates some species from Patagonia and the Galápagos Islands (omnivores that dwell in open areas and associate with carnivorous marine mammals, or seabirds and marine reptiles). Two still more restricted categories accommodate the following: 1) forest-dwelling cleaner birds; and 2) marine coastal cleaners. Additional records of Neotropical cleaner birds will mostly fall in the broad category.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-191
Author(s):  
Nicholas Xenos

David McNally styles this book as beginning in a polemic and ending in a “materialist approach to language” much indebted to the German critic Walter Benjamin. The charge is that “postmodernist theory, whether it calls itself poststructuralism, deconstruction or post-Marxism, is constituted by a radical attempt to banish the real human body—the sensate, biocultural, laboring body—from the sphere of language and social life” (p. 1). By treating language as an abstraction, McNally argues, postmodernism constitutes a form of idealism. More than that, it succumbs to and perpetuates the fetishism of commodities disclosed by Marx insofar as it treats the products of human laboring bodies as entities independently of them. Clearly irritated by the claims to radicalism made by those he labels postmodern, McNally thinks he has found their Achilles' heel: “The extra-discursive body, the body that exceeds language and discourse, is the ‘other’ of the new idealism, the entity it seeks to efface in order to bestow absolute sovereignty on language. To acknowledge the centrality of the sensate body to language and society is thus to threaten the whole edifice of postmodernist theory” (p. 2).


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Xingcheng Li ◽  
Shuangbiao Zhang

To solve the real-time problem of attitude algorithm for high dynamic bodies, a real-time structure of attitude algorithm is developed by analyzing the conventional structure that has two stages, and a flow diagram of a real-time structure for a Matlab program is provided in detail. During the update of the attitude matrix, the real-time structure saves every element of attitude matrix in minor loop in real time and updates the next attitude matrix based on the previous matrix every subsample time. Thus, the real-time structure avoids lowering updating frequency, though the multisubsample algorithms are used. Simulation and analysis show that the real-time structure of attitude algorithm is better than the conventional structure due to short update time of attitude matrix and small drifting error, and it is more appropriate for high dynamic bodies.


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