Three Levs Nikolaevich: Tolstoy, Myshkin, Odoevtsev: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot in Light of Andrei Bitov’s Pushkin House

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-149
Author(s):  
Maxwell Parlin

Abstract Exploring the connection between Dostoevsky’s Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, Bitov’s Lev Nikolaevich Odoevtsev, and Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, this article interprets The Idiot through the prism of Pushkin House. The overarching claim is that Bitov’s novel and hero provide deep insight into Dostoevsky’s. Specifically, Pushkin House illuminates a dynamic left cryptic in The Idiot: how sentimental scripting (narratology) interrelates with humanism (theology), and how sentimental humanism, despite the good intentions of its practitioners, is counterproductive. In brief, sensitivity, a positive trait, unchecked by the sobering notion of sin, easily tips into sentimentality, prone to idolize the other. Idolatry of other, paradoxically, turns out to be idolatry of self. Apparently innocuous and sympathetic, sentimental scripting nevertheless contains the seeds of tragedy and tyranny, as Bitov’s novel makes explicit, linking this dynamic ultimately with Stalinism. The antidote to endless fear and manipulation of others, Pushkin House suggests, is a personal relationship with God.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 79-108
Author(s):  
Prokop Sousedík ◽  

The author shows that Aquinas’s treatise on the Trinity can be viewed in two ways. According to the first, now prevailing opinion, the thoughts of the Angelic Doctor are too speculative and in essence they harm our personal relationship with God. He aims to show that the main source of inspiration for this approach are those currents in modern and contemporary philosophy according to which any metaphysics is impossible. Adherents of the other view do not reject metaphysics, and so they are also sympathetic towards Aquinas’s connecting speculation with the Trinity doctrine. They see a great advantage in this connexion, as it allows us to understand more deeply the mysteries of faith and so to demonstrate the uniqueness of the Christian message. The author aims to show that both approaches are justified and one should not be sacrificed for the other. He believes that a philosophical framework allowing the old and the new Trinitarian theologies to coexist is provided by Wittgenstein’s conception of speech games.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawei Ma ◽  
Hongchao Fan ◽  
Wenwen Li ◽  
Xuan Ding

As the world’s largest crowdsourcing-based street view platform, Mapillary has received considerable attention in both research and practical applications. By February 2019, more than 20,000 users worldwide contributed approximately 6.3 million kilometers of streetscape sequences. In this study, we attempted to get a deep insight into the Mapillary project through an exploratory analysis from the perspective of contributors, including the development of users, the spatiotemporal analysis of active users, the contribution modes (walking, cycling, and driving), and the devices used to contribute. It shows that inequality exists in the distribution of contributed users, similar to that in other volunteered geographic information (VGI) projects. However, the inequality in Mapillary contribution is less than in OpenStreetMap (OSM). Compared to OSM, the other main difference is that the data collection demonstrated obvious seasonal variation because contributions to OSM can be accomplished on a computer, whereas images have to be captured on the streets for Mapillary, and this is considerably affected by seasonal weather.


Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Taylor

This book examines the dialectical role of semantic analysis within metaphysical inquiry. It argues that semantic analysis ought to be modest in its metaphysical pretensions in the sense that linguistic and conceptual analysis should not be expected to yield deep insight into either what exists or the nature of what exists. The argument turns on distinctions among narrowly linguistic semantics in the generative tradition and two varieties of broadly philosophical semantics which correspond to broad approaches to semantically infused metaphysical inquiry. In particular it distinguishes ideational semantics and metaphysical inquiry via the way of ideas, on the one hand, from referential semantics and metaphysical inquiry via the way of reference, on the other. It is argued that foundational assumptions of the generative framework are insufficient on their own to support the drawing of metaphysically immodest conclusions from the narrowly semantic premises. But it is shown that if we are determined to bridge the gap between narrowly semantic premise and metaphysical conclusion, we must augment our semantics with additional metasemantic premises. Such additional premises may come either from ideationalist or referentialist metasemantics. A number of arguments for preferring referential metasemantics over ideational metasemantics are offered. It is argued pursuing referentialist metasemantics as opposed to ideationalist metasemantics yields a semantics that is metaphysically modest. Finally it is argued that metaphysically modest should regarded as a feature rather than a bug of a semantic theory, one that serves to bring semantics into closer alignment with the special sciences generally.


Author(s):  
Stefan Scherbaum ◽  
Simon Frisch ◽  
Maja Dshemuchadse

Abstract. Folk wisdom tells us that additional time to make a decision helps us to refrain from the first impulse to take the bird in the hand. However, the question why the time to decide plays an important role is still unanswered. Here we distinguish two explanations, one based on a bias in value accumulation that has to be overcome with time, the other based on cognitive control processes that need time to set in. In an intertemporal decision task, we use mouse tracking to study participants’ responses to options’ values and delays which were presented sequentially. We find that the information about options’ delays does indeed lead to an immediate bias that is controlled afterwards, matching the prediction of control processes needed to counter initial impulses. Hence, by using a dynamic measure, we provide insight into the processes underlying short-term oriented choices in intertemporal decision making.


Nature ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 581 (7809) ◽  
pp. 385-386
Author(s):  
Deanna M. Church
Keyword(s):  

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 283-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy R. Brick ◽  
Steven M. Boker

Among the qualities that distinguish dance from other types of human behavior and interaction are the creation and breaking of synchrony and symmetry. The combination of symmetry and synchrony can provide complex interactions. For example, two dancers might make very different movements, slowing each time the other sped up: a mirror symmetry of velocity. Examining patterns of synchrony and symmetry can provide insight into both the artistic nature of the dance, and the nature of the perceptions and responses of the dancers. However, such complex symmetries are often difficult to quantify. This paper presents three methods – Generalized Local Linear Approximation, Time-lagged Autocorrelation, and Windowed Cross-correlation – for the exploration of symmetry and synchrony in motion-capture data as is it applied to dance and illustrate these with examples from a study of free-form dance. Combined, these techniques provide powerful tools for the examination of the structure of symmetry and synchrony in dance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-126
Author(s):  
Kathryn Crim
Keyword(s):  
The One ◽  

Karl Marx’s comments on silk manufacture in “The Working Day” chapter of Capital, volume 1, demonstrate how “quality”—usually associated with “use value”—has been mobilized by capital to naturalize industrialized labor. Putting his insight into conversation with a recent multimedia poetic project, Jen Bervin’s Silk Poems (2016–17), this essay examines the homology between, on the one hand, poetry’s avowed task of fitting form to content and, on the other, the ideology of labor that fits specific bodies to certain materials and tasks.


Author(s):  
Viola Kita

Raymond Carver’s work provides the opportunity for a spiritual reading. The article that offers the greatest insight into spirituality is William Stull’s “Beyond Hopelessville: Another Side of Raymond Carver.” In it we can notice the darkness which is dominant in Carver’s early works with the optimism that is an essential part of Carver’s work “Cathedral”. A careful reading of “A Small Good Thing” and “The Bath” can give the idea that they are based on the allegory of spiritual rebirth which can be interpreted as a “symbol of Resurrection”. Despite Stull’s insisting in Carver’s stories allusions based on the Bible, it cannot be proved that the writer has made use of Christian imagery. Therefore, it can be concluded that spirituality in Carver’s work is one of the most confusing topics so far in the literary world because on one hand literary critics find a lot of biblical elements and on the other hand Carver himself refuses to be analyzed as a Christian writer.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Kym Maclaren

“To consent to love or be loved,” said Merleau-Ponty, “is to consent also to influence someone else, to decide to a certain extent on behalf of the other.” This essay explicates that idea through a meditation on intimacy. I propose, first, that, on Merleau-Ponty’s account, we are always transgressing into each other’s experience, whether we are strangers or familiars; I call this “ontological intimacy.” Concrete experiences of intimacy are based upon this ontological intimacy, and can take place at two levels: (1) at-this-moment (such that we can experience intimacy even with strangers, by sharing a momentary but extra-ordinary mutual recognition) and (2) in shared interpersonal institutions, or habitual, enduring, and co-enacted visions of who we are, how to live, and what matters. Through particular examples of dynamics within these layers of intimacy (drawing upon work by Berne and by Russon), I claim that we are always, inevitably, imposing an “unfreedom” upon our intimate others. Freedom, then, can only develop from within and by virtue of this “unfreedom.” Thus, what distinguishes empowering or emancipating relationships from oppressive ones is not the removal of transgressive normative social forces; it is rather the particular character of those transgressive forces. Some transgressions upon others’ experience—some forms of “unfreedom”—will tend to promote freedom; others will tend to hinder it. This amounts to a call for promoting agency and freedom not only through critical analysis of public institutions, practices and discourses, but also through critical insight into and transformation of our most private and intimate relationships.


Author(s):  
Zoran Vrucinic

The future of medicine belongs to immunology and alergology. I tried to not be too wide in description, but on the other hand to mention the most important concepts of alergology to make access to these diseases more understandable, logical and more useful for our patients, that without complex pathophysiology and mechanism of immune reaction,we gain some basic insight into immunological principles. The name allergy to medicine was introduced by Pirquet in 1906, and is of Greek origin (allos-other + ergon-act; different reaction), essentially representing the reaction of an organism to a substance that has already been in contact with it, and manifested as a specific response thatmanifests as either a heightened reaction, a hypersensitivity, or as a reduced reaction immunity. Synonyms for hypersensitivity are: altered reactivity, reaction, hypersensitivity. The word sensitization comes from the Latin (sensibilitas, atis, f.), which means sensibility,sensitivity, and has retained that meaning in medical vocabulary, while in immunology and allergology this term implies the creation of hypersensitivity to an antigen. Antigen comes from the Greek words, anti-anti + genos-genus, the opposite, anti-substance substance that causes the body to produce antibodies.


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