scholarly journals The Christian Roots of Critique. How Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh Sheds New Light on the Concept of Freedom and the Genealogy of the Modern Critical Attitude

Le foucaldien ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Schubert
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 550-559
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Yu. Samarin

The article introduces a previously unpublished speech of the outstanding Russian scientist-physicist, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, which was delivered by him at the anniversary meeting held on June 5, 1949, at the monument to Alexander Pushkin in Moscow in connection with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the great Russian poet’s birth. S.I. Vavilov was a great connoisseur of Pushkin’s poetry and literature about him. In the second half of the 1940s, Vavilov actively participated in projects to prepare the anniversary celebrations dedicated to Alexander Pushkin and perpetuate the memory of the poet. Analysis of S.I. Vavilov’s speech, which, unlike his other “Pushkin speeches”, was not intended for the press, shows that in evaluating the great poet’s work, along with the use of cliches, traditional for the epoch, the scientist also took certain liberties. In particular, he did not utter the ritual words praising Stalin, the Communist Party and the Soviet State. The poet Ya.P. Polonsky quoted by Vavilov was not among the classics recognized by Soviet literary criticism, and the selected quote from him could be interpreted as a hint of condemnation of the surrounding Stalinist reality. Numerous fragments of the scientist’s personal diaries indicate his critical attitude towards the latter, in particular.


Author(s):  
Svetlana Morozova ◽  
Dmitrij Zhatkin

The article is devoted to the perception of K.I. Chukovsky’s works by a famous English writer G.K. Chesterton. K.I. Chukovsky was one of the first to point out the ambiguity of the literary works by the English writer and called his journalistic activity more convincing. Describing G.K. Chesterton’s essays, K.I. Chukovsky believed that the writer is second to none in this genre. He praised G.K. Chesterton’s journalistic talent in responding to all the phenomena of contemporary social life. K.I. Chukovsky considered it obligatory for the Russian readers to familiarize themselves with the critical works of the English author. In the essay «Gilbert Chesterton. Manalive» (1924) K.I. Chukovsky substantiated why, for all the variety of genre forms that G.K. Chesterton used, Russian readers were familiar with only a few of his works. K.I. Chukovsky’s critical attitude to the novel «Manalive» is explained by his rejection of G.K. Chesterton’s utopian attitude to the social situation in England at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. In G.K. Chesterton’s works K.I. Chukovsky saw a simulation of revolutionary pathos that did not solve pressing issues of social disorder.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125

Three phases in Foucault’s examination of authorship and free speech were essential to him throughout his life. They can be linked to such texts as the three lectures “What is an Author?” (first phase), “What is Critique?,” and “What is Revolution?” (second phase), and the two lecture courses, “Fearless Speech,” and “The Courage of Truth” (third phase). Initially, Foucault merely describes the founders of discursivity (hence, “superauthors”), among whom he reckoned only Marx and Freud, as the sole alternative to his own conceptualization of the author function, which is exhibited en masse in contemporary society. He then modifies his views on superauthorship by making Kant the paradigm and by linking his own concept of free speech to a Kan-tian critical attitude. However, Foucault claims only the half of Kant’s philosophical legacy that is related to the study of the ontology of the self.The article advances the hypothesis that the sovereign power of speech, which can be found in Marx and Heidegger and in generally in the concept of “superauthorship,” becomes unacceptable for Foucault. During the third phase, the danger of a tyrannical use of free speech compels Foucault to make a number of fruitful but questionable choices in his work. He focuses on a single aspect of free speech in which a speaker is in a weaker position and therefore has to overcome his fear in order to tell the truth. Foucault associates this kind of free speech with the ancient Greek notion of parrhesia, which according to his interpretation means “fearless speech”; however, this reading is not always supported by the ancient Greek sources. Foucault’s deliberations bring him to the radical conclusion that free speech transforms into performative “aesthetics of existence.” Foucault’s main motivation for pursuing this line of thought all through his life was to investigate his own abilities and powers as an author


BMJ ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 287 (6409) ◽  
pp. 1919-1923 ◽  
Author(s):  
N McIntyre ◽  
K Popper
Keyword(s):  

1994 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller

Just as political theorists have long argued that democracy is viable only in communities of certain sizes and shapes, perhaps epistemologists should also entertain the idea that knowledge is possible only within certain social parameters-ones which today's world may have exceeded. This is what I mean by the "postepistemic" society. I understand an "epistemic society" in Popperian terms as an environment that fosters the spirit of conjectures and refutations. After castigating analytic philosophers for their failure to see this point, I show how Rousseau and Feyerabend occupy analogous positions as critics of, respectively, the nation-state and Big Science. Rather than endorsing the disestablishment of the state, however, I offer a proposal for reinjecting the critical attitude into Big Science. It involves heightening the sporting character of scientific disputes, perhaps even to the point of enabling the public to bet on their outcomes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-177
Author(s):  
Bożena Kucała

Abstract This paper analyses Richard Flanagan’s novel Wanting (2008) as a narrative informed by a revisionary and critical attitude to nineteenth-century ideologies, which is common to, and, indeed, stereotypical in much neo-Victorian fiction. Drawing on the biographies of two eminent Victorians: Charles Dickens and Sir John Franklin, Flanagan constructs their fictional counterparts as split between a respectable, public persona and a dark, inner self. While all the Victorian characters are represented as “other” than their public image, the focus in the novel, and in this paper, is on Dickens’s struggle to reconcile social propriety with his personal discontent. Flanagan represents this conflict through Dickens’s response to the allegations that starving survivors of Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition resorted to cannibalism. The zeal with which the Victorian writer refuted such reports reveals his own difficulty in living up to social and moral norms. The paper argues that the main link between the different narrative strands in the novel is the challenge they collectively pose to the distinction between the notions of civilization and savagery.


Literary Fact ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Veronika B. Zuseva-Özkan

The article considers the unpublished play by Maria Levberg, a little known female writer of the Silver Age. Aleksandr Blok praised this drama entitled Danton; thanks to his efforts, it was performed in the Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1919. Danton is discussed in several articles by Blok (Bolshoi Drama Theater in the Next Season, of 19 May 1919, Tribune (Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus)) and in his correspondence; it is also mentioned in Blok’s notebooks. The author of the article analyzes all these mentions, reconstructs the history of interactions between Blok and Levberg. Some of her letters to the poet are published here for the first time. Blok’s notes on the typed copy of Danton, preserved at the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature in Saint Petersburg, are described. The relationship between this version of the play and the version, preserved at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts in Moscow, is revealed. The author analyzes the plot and the system of characters, characterizes the concept of history expressed in Danton, and proposes the hypothesis why this play turned out to be so dear to Blok. Blok’s reviews on Danton are compared to those written by A.M. Remizov (who also welcomed the play, as well as other dramas by Levberg — Stones of Death and The Chevalier’s Epee) and by M.A. Kuzmin who displayed a more critical attitude. Finally, the place of this drama among Levberg’s works and her main themes and ideas are considered.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana-Luisa Fernandes-Gonçalves

The present article is about the presence of the tv in the society, in general, and its potential as an important agent, such as the family and the school, on the children’s and young people’s development and education. Nowadays we live in a complex world of images with sound, the most of them transmitted by the tv, the cinema and the internet. The infantile universe is full of those images. This way we structured this article in four parts, refering some of the contents related with this subject. The first part describes the presence of the television in the children's daylife and their relationship with the magic box, even the identification that they make with its favourites characters, in order to understand the space that the TV occupies in their lives. The second part presents the different messages transmitted by the television. It is important to analyze the main risks and advantages of television, that is to say, in spite of some programs show bad values, foment the excessive consumption, expose the children to an atmosphere of violence and pornography, also entertains, accompanies, educates, informs, favours the access to the culture and allows to unite the family around a program. At last the third part, this one outlines the necessity to put the tele as a curricular resource in the school, to teaches the students how to analyze, how to criticize and to think about the texts and the news of the world today. The television, considered a powerful tool, is decisive in the communication, such in the formation of values and ideas as in the culture transmission. The function of the school is not to remain far from this factor, but to try to meditate, to understand and to decide its impact, in a better way, on the development of the children and youngs. As conclusion we can add that we’ve tried to aim some strategies that educators and parents will be able to work, united to the children and the youngs, so they could have a new look of the Tv’s world and that they could know how to make their own selection and how to have a critical attitude before the watched product.La presente comunicación se refiere a la presencia de la tele en la sociedad en general y a su potencial como agente importante de formación y educación, junto con la escuela y la familia, en la vida de los niños y de los jóvenes. Actualmente vivimos inmersos en un mundo complejo de imágenes con sonido, que recibimos muy especialmente a través de la tele, del cine y de Internet, los cuales hacen parte del cotidiano del universo infantil. Así, a fin de organizar algunos de los contenidos desde los que es posible enfocar el tema, estructuramos este artículo en cuatro partes. La primera parte describe la presencia de la tele a diario de los niños y su relación con la caja mágica, incluso la identificación que hacen de sus personajes favoritos, a fin de comprender el espacio que ocupa la tele en su cotidianidad. La segunda parte presenta los distintos mensajes transmitidos por la tele. Es importante analizar las principales riesgos y ventajes de la televisión, o sea, a pesar de algunos programas muestran antivalores de la tele: fomentar excesivamente el consumo, exponer a los niños a un ambiente de violencia y pornografía también entretiene, acompaña, educa, informa, favorece el acceso a la cultura y permite unir a la familia en torno a un programa. Cuanto a la tercera parte, plantea la necesidad de incorporar la tele como recurso curricular en la escuela, para que enseñe a los alumnos a analizar crítica y reflexivamente los textos mediáticos. La televisión es considerada como una herramienta poderosa, determinante en la comunicación, tanto en la formación de valores e ideas, como en la transmisión de cultura; la función de la escuela no es permanecer ajena a este factor, pero procurar reflexionar para comprender y decidir mejor su impacto en el desarrollo de los niños y jóvenes. Como conclusión podemos añadir que hemos tratado de apuntar algunas estrategias que educadores y padres podrán trabajar junto con los niños y los jóvenes, para que éstes tengan una nueva mirada del mundo de la tele y para que sepan hacer su propia selección y tener una actitud crítica ante el producto visionado.


2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Beedholm ◽  
Kirsten Lomborg ◽  
Kirsten Frederiksen

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