FROM IRON AGE MYTH TO IDEALIZED NATIONAL LANDSCAPE: HUMAN-NATURE RELATIONSHIPS AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM IN FRITZ LANG'S DIE NIBELUNGEN

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Susan Power Bratton
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Richard Wagner ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Human Lineage ◽  
Adolf Hitler ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Living Nature

AbstractFrom the Iron Age to the modern period, authors have repeatedly restructured the ecomythology of the Siegfried saga. Fritz Lang's Weimar film production (released in 1924-1925) of Die Nibelungen presents an ascendant humanist Siegfried, who dominates over nature in his dragon slaying. Lang removes the strong family relationships typical of earlier versions, and portrays Siegfried as a son of the German landscape rather than of an aristocratic, human lineage. Unlike The Saga of the Volsungs, which casts the dwarf Andvari as a shape-shifting fish, and thereby indistinguishable from productive, living nature, both Richard Wagner and Lang create dwarves who live in subterranean or inorganic habitats, and use environmental ideals to convey anti-Semitic images, including negative contrasts between Jewish stereotypes and healthy or organic nature. Lang's Siegfried is a technocrat, who, rather than receiving a magic sword from mystic sources, begins the film by fashioning his own. Admired by Adolf Hitler, Die Nibelungen idealizes the material and the organic in a way that allows the modern ''hero'' to romanticize himself and, without the aid of deities, to become superhuman.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Saint John ◽  
Pauline Theology

The introductory chapter argues that, during the early modern period in England, the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle of Saint John the Evangelist were as influential as Pauline theology and, in many respects, more influential than the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The chapter outlines several features of a distinctive, post-Reformed, English Johannine devotionalism: a high Christology that emphasizes the divine rather than human nature of Christ; the belief that salvation is achieved more through revelation than objective atonement and expiatory sin; a realized eschatology according to which eternal life has been achieved and the end-time has already partially arrived; a robust doctrine of assurance and comfort, usually tied to Johannine eschatology and pneumatology; and a stylistic and rhetorical approach to representing these theological features that often emulates John’s mode of discipleship misunderstanding and irony not found to a comparable degree in the Synoptic writings.

Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Anthropology ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Modern Period

Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature (De Natura Hominis) is the first Christian anthropology. Written in Greek, circa 390 CE, it was read in half a dozen languages—from Baghdad to Oxford—well into the early modern period. Nemesius’ text circulated in two Latin versions in the centuries that saw the rise of European universities, shaping scholastic theories of human nature. During the Renaissance, it saw a flurry of print editions, helping to inspire a new discourse of human dignity. This is the first monograph in English on Nemesius’ treatise. On the interpretation offered here, the Syrian bishop seeks to define the human qua human. His early Christian anthropology is cosmopolitan. ‘Things that are natural’, he writes, ‘are the same for all’. In his pages, a host of texts and discourses—biblical and medical, legal and philosophical—are made to converge upon a decisive tenet of Christian late antiquity: humans’ natural freedom. For Nemesius, reason and choice are a divine double-strand of powers. Since he believes that both are a natural human inheritance, he concludes that much is ‘in our power’. Nemesius defines humans as the only living beings who are at once ruler (intellect) and ruled (body). Because of this, the human is a ‘little world’, binding the rationality of angels to the flux of elements, the tranquillity of plants, and the impulsiveness of animals. This book traces Nemesius’ reasoning through the whole of On Human Nature, as he seeks to give a long-influential image of humankind both philosophical and anatomical proof.

scholarly journals KERAMIČKI NALAZI S LOKALITETA GLAVICE – STARA POVLJANA U KONTEKSTU PRAPOVIJESNIH NASELJA NA OTOKU PAGU

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morana Vuković ◽  
Zrinka Serventi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Arable Field ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
Prehistoric Settlements ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Numerous remains of ceramic vessels were discovered during the archaeological excavations carried out in 2012 at the site of Glavice near Stara Povljana on the island of Pag. Some of these finds can be attributed to the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (indicated also by the finds of Venetian coins), and others are clearly dated to the prehistoric period, predominantly Iron Age. The aforementioned remains were discovered around and even within the heavily damaged dry stone structures, which, although they cannot be precisely dated to either prehistoric or later periods, indicate the longevity of use of this site for habitation. Due to the context of these finds it is highly possible that the prehistoric settlement was organized on the plateau below the nearby hill and adjacent to the arable field, which is considered to be atypical for the area and indicates a possible change in settlement placement patterns. Therefore, in this paper we shall analyse fragments of prehistoric vessels, their consistency, typology and decorations, and place them in the context of prehistoric finds in the wider territory as well as evaluate the importance of this site in the overall distribution of prehistoric settlements on the island of Pag.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Human Lineage ◽  
World War ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Second World

This introductory chapter offers a quick glimpse into the historical milieu during which this volume is set. Between the Second World War and the 1970s, this chapter shows that scientists from a wide range of disciplines crafted a historical trajectory for humanity that was self-consciously anti-eugenic. The best of humanity had not degenerated from living in the artificial constructs of civilization, would not dissolve because of the overbreeding of the lower classes, and could not be corrupted through miscegenation. Instead, these evolutionists argued that our common past provided evidence of our continued remarkable success as a species. In essence, so these scientists reasoned, our present human nature resulted from the synergy of biology and culture, both in dynamic flux throughout our development as a species. We had become the most recent manifestation of a human lineage destined for even greater things in the future. Through their work, an evolutionary perspective wended its way into each discipline perched at the intersection of the natural and social sciences.

John Locke, Edward Stillingfleet and the Quarrel over Consensus

Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Daniel Carey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Innate Ideas ◽  
Moral Insight

Philosophical antagonism and dispute — by no means confined to the early modern period — nonetheless enjoyed a moment of particular ferment as new methods and orientations on questions of epistemology and ethics developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Locke played a key part in them with controversies initiated by the Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690). This essay develops a wider typology of modes of philosophical quarrelling by focusing on a key debate — the issue of whether human nature came pre-endowed with innate ideas and principles, resulting in a moral consensus across mankind, or remained, on the contrary, dependent on reason to achieve moral insight, and, in practice, divided by diverse and irreconcilable cultural practices as a result of the force of custom and the limited purchase of reason. The essay ultimately concludes on the idea that we should not only attend to the genealogy of disputes but also to the morphology of disputation as a practice.

Descartes and the Dutch: Botanical Experimentation in the Early Modern Period

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 657-683
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Baldassarri
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Experimental Knowledge ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Living Nature ◽  
The Way

Early modern study of plants blossomed in a network of observation, exchanges, collaborations, and epistolary discussions. Following Baconian methodology, Dutch scholars combined the labor of listing and describing plants with botanical experimentation. This empirical approach was a suitable context for Descartes, who exchanged information and performed observations on plants in collaboration with Dutch experimenters. In this article, I focus on (1) the reception of a few botanical experiments of Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum in Huygens and Reneri, with whom Descartes was in contact, and (2) Descartes’ collaboration with Reneri. While performing observations on plants together, Reneri acquired Descartes’ theoretical framework (as it arises in his disputations) and influenced the latter with a Baconian approach to the study of living nature. This combination of experimental knowledge and a theoretical framework shaped a Cartesian study of plants, as it later surfaced in Regius and ultimately paved the way to a modern science of plants.

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