scholarly journals Crime and Testament: Enemy Direct Speech in Inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-151
Author(s):  
Eva Miller

AbstractNeo-Assyrian royal inscriptions are always narrated in the first-person voice of the king. Within this framing narrative, the device that we would call ‘direct speech’ is used only rarely, and judiciously. The texts that make the greatest use of this literary device both come from a period of particular innovation and experimentation in royal text forms: Esarhaddon’s Nineveh A and Ashurbanipal’s narratives about his campaign against Elamite king Teumman. In these examples, and in other texts of the time including Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty, the words of enemies stand out as particularly threatening – and yet also particularly useful, as a literary device employed to further Assyrian agendas. Royal narratives use enemy speech for one of two purposes: either to document criminality, or to show enemies, in defeat and despair, testifying to the might and rightness of their Assyrian conquerors. Looking at all examples of speech – from enemies, gods, and the Assyrian king – I distinguish between ‘direct speech’ (as a literary device) and ‘quotation’ (as a practice). Most, though not all, direct speech in the sources considered here is also quotation, in that it seeks to document and preserve speech made in some other prior form (a verbal statement, a letter, an omen on an animal’s liver). Quotations demonstrate royal legitimacy and enemy culpability, while literary invention allows enemy voices to be turned to new purposes, as forced testament to Assyrian supremacy.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
João Carlos Brum Torres

O artigo tem por objeto o exame de três registros de gritantes e distintos paradoxos na Doutrina do Direito de Kant. Registros feitos em tempos e contextos históricos diferentes por Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek atribuiu a Kant a mais paradoxal das proposições jamais enunciadas por qualquer autor, a de que a mera ideia de soberania deve obrigar-nos a obedecer como a nosso inquestionável senhor a quem quer que se haja estabelecido como tal, sem que caiba indagar quem lhe deu o direito de comandar-nos. Willaschek aponta a incompatibilidade de duas teses centrais da doutrina kantiana: a do caráter externo dos vínculos jurídicos e a da incondicionalidade obrigacional do direito positivo, pois não é possível entender como é possível termo-nos como obrigados por imperativos jurídicos e, ao mesmo, vermo-nos internamente isentados do dever de obedecê-los. O ponto crítico de Balthazar é alegar que não pode haver na filosofia kantiana uma crítica da razão político e jurídica, simplesmente porque o conceito de imputação, base da normatividade própria dessas esferas, pressupõe uma pluralidade de agentes livres que, justamente, só pode ser uma pressuposição, pois nosso acesso à normatividade prática só pode ter lugar em primeira pessoa. No exame a que o artigo submete essas alegações, o artigo argumenta, em objeção à tese de Balthazar, que o caráter universal e categórico da força que vincula o sujeito quando confrontado com a lei moral em primeira pessoa necessariamente se desvaneceria se, ao mesmo tempo, ele não fosse tomado pela evidência de que a realidade objetiva dos princípios morais é não só instanciável, mas assegurada pela múltipla instanciação. Com relação às dificuldades levantadas por Willaschek e Bouterwek, o artigo argumenta que o princípio exeundum e statu naturali, enquanto norma metapositiva, anterior à divisão do domínio prático entre doutrina do direito e doutrina da virtude, permite ao mesmo tempo compreender a exigência de obediência ao poder constituído e a restrição das obrigações jurídico-políticas exclusivamente ao foro externo.AbstractThe object of the article is to examine three claims about three distinct and allegedly blatant paradoxes in Kant's Doctrine of Right. These three critical points had been made in distinct times and contexts by Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek attributed to Kant the most paradoxical of all paradoxical propositions, the statement that by the mere idea of sovereignty we are obliged to obey as our lord who has imposed himself upon us, without questioning from where he got such right. Willaschek points out the incompatibility of two main theses of Kantian doctrine of right: the claims that the legal bounds are of external character and that they are the source of unconditional obligations, since it seems impossible to understand how it would be possible to be obliged by juridical norms and decisions and at the same time to be exempted of the internal duty of compliance. The radical objection of Professor Balthazar is the claim that in the context of Kantian Philosophy it is impossible to admit a critique of the juridical and political reason because the concept of imputation, ground of the normativity in these domains, requires not only the presupposition of free agents, but a true and secure epistemic access to them, which is, according to him, impossible considering that the moral law and the other practical principles are accessible for us only in the first person. In the course of the appraisal of such claims, the article contest that objection arguing that the universal and categorical force of the normative bound experienced by the subject when confronted with the moral law in the first person would ineluctably vanish if, at the same time, he had not been taken by the evidence that the objective reality of the moral principles is secured by multiple instancing. Regarding the difficulties raised by Willaschek and Bouterwek, the article argues that the principle exeundum e statu naturali, as a norm of meta-positive character, prior to the division of practical domains between the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue, is the cue both to the understanding of the requirement of unquestioning obedience to the constituted power and to the restriction of the validity of this requirement only in foro externo.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sackris

I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating (internalism) or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation (externalism), may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Koppen ◽  
Mirjam Ernestus ◽  
Margot van Mulken

AbstractAn important dimension of linguistic variation is formality. This study investigates the role of social distance between interlocutors. Twenty-five native Dutch speakers retold eight short films to confederates, who acted either formally or informally. Speakers were familiarized with the informal confederates, whereas the formal confederates remained strangers. Results show that the two types of interlocutors elicited different versions of the same stories. Formal interlocutors (i. e. large social distance) elicited lower articulation rates, and more nouns and prepositions, both indicators of explicit information. Speakers addressing the informal interlocutors, to whom social distance was small, however, provided more explicit information with an involved character (i. e. adjectives with subjective meanings). They also used the wordandmore often as a gap filler or as a way to keep the floor. Furthermore, a small social distance elicited more laughter, interjections, first-person pronouns and direct speech, which are all indicators of involvement, empathy and subjectivity.


1968 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 207-222

MS 4 consists of eight foolscap folios, five written on both sides, one partly written on one side only, and two blank. It was originally folded, and the endorsement on the back of f. 8 would have been on the outside of the packet so formed. It is the first half of a detailed and circumstantial account of the report made to a joint committee of both Whole Houses by the Duke of Buckingham and Prince Charles on 24 February 1624. The subject of the report was the recent failure of the negotiations for a Spanish marriage, which had been dragging on for about ten years. So great was the interest of members in this report that special precautions were ordered to ensure that no one who was not a bona fide member of parliament should be admitted, and these precautions are hinted at in the opening sentences. Because this meeting was not a formal session of either house, report of the proceedings had to be made in both the Lords and the Commons. The Lord Keeper's report, delivered on Friday, 27 February, is fully recorded in the Lords Journal, The substance is naturally much the same as the contents of this document, but the style is completely different. As befitted a formal relation, the Lord Keeper omitted the circumstantial details which make this account vivid and interesting; the direct speech, and the Prince's interjections and comments. The House of Commons received a similar report on the same day from Sir Richard Weston and Sir Francis Cottington, both of whom had been personally involved in the negotiations. The version of this report printed in the Commons Journal is very sketchy and disjointed, being taken from the hasty jottings of MS Tanner 392.


1977 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bauckham

In the continuing discussion of the possible role of Christian prophets in the formation of the tradition of the words of Jesus, reference continues to be made to the relevance or irrelevance of the words of the exalted Christ transmitted by the prophet John in the Apocalypse. They remain the only un-disputed example from the first century of prophetic utterances made in the name of Christ in the first person, and for advocates of the creative activity of the Christian prophets they are therefore invaluable evidence that such utterances could be made. Their use as evidence for the role of prophecy in the formation of the Synoptic tradition involves, admittedly, additional assumptions not easily demonstrable. We must suppose that John's prophecy is typical of the content of early Christian prophecy in general, and also that this late first-century work is faithfully representative of the earlier prophets whom alone we can suppose to have been responsible for originating logia which actually entered the Synoptic tradition. The uniqueness of John's prophetic status vis-à-vis that of the church prophets has been cogently argued by D. Hill, and it seems that at least we cannot infer otherwise un-attested characteristics of early Christian prophecy in general from the contents of the Apocalypse alone. In any case the Apocalypse is surely untypical in being a lengthy and closely integrated literary composition, with its own distinctive stylistic traits. Partly for this reason the words of Christ reported in it are for the most part quite unsuitable for transference to the lips of the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, at least without substantial adaptation.


Author(s):  
Andrew Norris

This chapter evaluates Cavell’s reception of Austin’s ordinary language philosophy, showing it to be more critical than it has been understood to be. For Austin, the ordinary language philosopher speaks in the first-person plural to remind other philosophers of “what we say when” so as to correct the mistakes those philosophers have made in writing about ethics, epistemology, etc. But Austin cannot give a compelling explanation of why those other philosophers require such reminders: how can they have been wrong about their language and its implications, since they too are one of us who speak the language? On Cavell’s account, we forget what we say when—or, what comes to the same thing, fail to mean what we say—because we evade ourselves. Ordinary language philosophy does not correct mistakes but addresses the uncanny nature of the ordinary, that it is not yet what it is.


1985 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-515
Author(s):  
Dr A. Van Den Beld

Romans 7: 14 if. has traditionally been one of the most frequently discussed passages in the whole of the Pauline Corpus. Nevertheless, this pericope has attracted attention more because it is consistently regarded as a crucial part of Paul's theology, than because of its intrinsic exegetical problems. The main issue is whether the ‘split personality’ and the weakness of will (to which explicit reference is made in verse 19: ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’) should be regarded as essential to the life of the believing Christian; or, rather, as characteristic for those who are not ‘in Christ’ and therefore beyond the power of his Spirit. For the systematic theologian, the question of whether the first person singular in these verses should be understood in an autobiographical sense is a subordinate one. However this particular question is answered, we are still confronted by the main issue.


Author(s):  
Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

Corpus Tibullianum 3.8–18 have often been considered a self-contained unit. Gruppe (1838) attributed poems 14–18, written in the first person, to Sulpicia, and poems 8–13 to the so-called amicus Sulpiciae (8, 10, 12 are in the third person; 9, 11, 13 in the first). This division was widely accepted until Parker (1994) argued that all the poems in the first person were by Sulpicia. This chapter supports Parker’s view, examining [Tib.] 3.9 as a case study for discussions of authorial identity across Sulpicia’s oeuvre. After examining the intertextual references made in [Tib.] 3.9 to Virgil, Tibullus and Propertius, and variations on these poets’ themes, it is suggested that the poem’s author is Sulpicia, since the stylistic features that appear to be specific to poem 9 are common to poems 13 and 18 as well.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Zsombor J. Földi ◽  
Gábor Zólyomi

AbstractThis paper publishes a praise poem of Warad-Sîn, king of Larsa. The manuscript, a one-column tablet, comes from a private collection and is unprovenanced. The text might be an excerpt from a longer composition. Its 20 lines long text praises first Nippur, the city of Enlil, then Warad-Sîn speaks in the first person about the commission given to him by Enlil, about his deeds to the city, and about their permanence. The author of this text appears to be familiar both with the literary corpus and the royal inscriptions of the early Old Babylonian period.


1950 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 771-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Firth ◽  
H. J. F. Adam

Since the early ‘thirties we have found it necessary constantly and independently to review the sort of abstractions usually made in descriptive linguistics, and in making new ones to refer them to a schematic framework of levels, at each one of which some component of meaning could be handled by a system of constructs and stated.Professor Panconcelli-Calzia seems only recently to have awakened to the idea that four-fifths of linguistics, including even experimental phonetics, is invention rather than discovery. The work of the English school of phonetics since the time of the Bells has been rich in invention, and earned the inadequate description of being “practical”. In the best sense of the word, descriptive linguistics must be practical, since its abstractions, fictions, inventions, call them what you will, are designed to handle instances of speech, spoken or written, and make statements of the meaning of what may be called typical speech events. All these fictions, whether made by machines or by direct verbal statement may perhaps be figuratively described as “asymptotic”.If we are constantly mindful of the different levels of abstraction and the nature of the fictions set up, the inventions of kymography and palatography and the inventions of phonology or other branches of linguistics may be brought into relation and used to justify one another mutually.The purpose of the present article is to give an illustration of the pressure of “invention” at the levels of phonology and even of general linguistic theory, which has led to ancillary “inventions” in the laboratory.


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