scholarly journals Never on Sunday: Feminist questioning of dominant epistemology and philosophical tradition

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-185
Author(s):  
Lada Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
Beautiful Woman ◽  
Cultural Colonialism

Through the interpretation of the movie Never on Sunday (1960) by Jules Dassin, this paper opens some important epistemological questions from the feminist perspective. Namely, the film is set in the contemporary Greece, while the main characters are a prostitute Ilia and an American tourist Homer, who is at the same time disappointed in Greece and in the beautiful woman he meets. His inability to understand people and social context in which he finds himself, as well as his effort to educate Ilia and impose her his own values and ideas about ancient Greece reveal much of chauvinism and cultural colonialism, opening questions crucial for feminist and other critical epistemologies which are: who produces knowledge, for whom and how to approach it critically. Finally, through the interpretation of Ilia?s attitude to knowledge, I will turn also to the feminist notion of embodied feminist subject. Apart from that, I will deal with hegemonic attitude of the West towards ancient Greek past.

scholarly journals Eastern naturalness versus western artificiality: Rimsky Korsakov's influence on Manoles Kalomoires' early operas

Muzikologija ◽  
2005 ◽  
pp. 101-117
Author(s):  
Aikaterini Romanou
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
First Time ◽  
Language Question

In this article the writer investigates the relations between perceptions of the East and the West in nineteenth century Greece, their connection to national identity, to the language question and to political tendencies. The composer Manoles Kalomoires was influenced by a group of progressive intellectuals striving to liberate Greek literature and language from its dependence on Ancient Greek legacy, a dependence motivated by Western idealists (who saw in the Greek Revolution of 1821 a renaissance of Ancient Greece). Most were educated in the West, but promoted an oriental image of Greeks. Kalomoires' musical expression of this image was inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade and the Golden Cockerel. In 1909-910 he wrote an unfinished opera, Mavrianos and the King, on the model of the Golden Cockerel. He later used this music in his best known opera, The Mother's Ring (1917). In the present article the similarities in the three works are for the first time shown. An essential influence from Rimsky-Korsakov's work is the contrast between the world of freedom, nature and fantasy and that of oppression.

Are We the Greeks? Understanding Antiquity and Ourselves in Television Documentaries

2018 ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
Fiona Hobden
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
North America ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Direct Investigation

The notion that the West has its cultural and political roots in ancient Greece has long been a mainstay of discourses on national identity in Britain, as in other countries (primarily in Europe and North America) that imagine themselves as belonging to ‘the West’. This chapter examines how this supposition of a ‘Greek legacy’ or ‘Greek inheritance’ has been mediated through British television documentaries. Whether the legacy is used as a framing device for wider assessments of ancient Greek society, or is the focus of direct investigation, the notion of a legacy is sustained. However, at every turn the proposition is undercut. Assertions of similarity between ‘us’ and ‘them’ coexist alongside demonstrations of difference; or the legacy is a modern invention that serves social, political and psychological needs; or it can be problematic and undesirable. At the same time as its existence is maintained, the ‘Greek legacy’ is revealed to be a fiction, or even a fetish: a fantasy that hides its own lack. In a Britain (and Europe) marked by cultural diversity and political division, television exposes the untenability of an ideology that elides such differences by making us all ancient Greeks, whilst continuing to ascribe it power.

Ever-Expanding Circles

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Chris Bleakley
Keyword(s):  
Signal Analysis ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West

Chapter 2 looks at the development of algorithms for estimating the value of Pi and analysing waveforms. Early estimates for Pi – the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter – were produced in Babylonia. The ancient Greek mathematian, Archimedes, produced improved estimates by means of a clever algorithm which used polygons to approximate the dimensions of a circle. Later, the Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi and his son used a similar method to produce an estimate that would stand as the most accurate for 900 years. With the decline of ancient Greece, Persia took on the mantel of leadership in mathematics from the 8th to 11th centuries. Al-Khawrzmi’s texts ultimately propagated knowledge of algorithms to the West. In 18th century France, Joseph Fourier proposed that waveforms could be decomposed into their constituent simple harmonics. The resulting algorithm became the key to signal analysis in today’s electronic communication systems.

Virtue and Asceticism

Philosophy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-138
Author(s):  
Brian Besong
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
The Core

AbstractAlthough one can find a robust philosophical tradition supporting asceticism in the West, from ancient Greece to at least early modernity, very little attention has been paid to what motivated this broad support. Instead, following criticism from figures such as Hume, Voltaire, Bentham, and Nietzsche, asceticism has been largely disregarded as either eccentric or uniquely religious. In this paper, I provide what I take to be the core moral argument that motivated many philosophical ascetics. In brief, acts of deliberate self-denial are practice in an important part of acting ethically and are thus practically rational as a means to acquiring virtue. And if this argument has been a core motivation for asceticism in the West then arguably philosophical ascetics have been on to something, especially given contemporary empirical research on self-control.

FORGOTTEN UNITY OF BODY AND SOUL AND THE NEED FOR A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SPORT

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2523-2529
Author(s):  
Slobodan Marković ◽  
Zoran Momčilović ◽  
Vladimir Momčilović
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Sport ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Present Text

This text is an attempt to see sport in different ways in the light of ancient philosophical themes. Philosophy of sports gets less attention than other areas of the discipline that examine the other major components of contemporary society: philosophy of religion, political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of science. Talking about sports is often cheap, but it does not have to be that way. One of the reasons for this is insufficiently paid attention to the relation between sport and philosophy in Greek. That is it's important to talk about sports, just as important as we are talking about religion, politics, art and science. The argument of the present text is that we can try to get a handle philosophically on sports by examining it in light of several key idea from ancient Greek philosophy. The ancient Greeks, tended to be hylomorphists who gloried in both physical and mental achievement. Тhe key concepts from Greek philosophy that will provide the support to the present text are the following: arete, sophrosyne, dynamis and kalokagathia. These ideals never were parts of a realized utopia in the ancient world, but rather provided a horizon of meaning. We will claim that these ideals still provide worthy standards that can facilitate in us a better understanding of what sports is and what it could be. How can a constructive dialogue be developed which would discuss differences in understanding of sport in Ancient Greece and today? In this paper, the authors will try to answer this question from a historical and philosophical point of view. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section of the paper presents two principally different forms or models of focus in sport competitions – focus on physical excellence or focus on game. The dialectic discourse regarding these two approaches to physical activity is even more interesting due to the fact that these two models take precedence over one another depending on context. In the second section of the paper, the focus shifts to theendemic phenomenon of the Ancient Greek Olympic Games, where the topic is discussed from the perspective of philosophy with frequent historical reflections on the necessary specifics, which observeman as a physical-psychological-social-spiritual being. In the third section of this paper, the authors choose to use the thoughts and sayings of the great philosopher Plato to indicate how much this philosopher wasactually interested in the relationship between soul and body, mostly through physical exercise and sport, because it seems that philosophers who came after him have not seriously dealt with this topic in Plato’s way, although they could.

Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
First Millennium

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.

scholarly journals Modeling Syntactic Change under Contact: The Case of Italiot Greek

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Cristina Guardiano ◽  
Melita Stavrou
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Potential Source ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Structures

In this paper, we investigate patterns of persistence and change affecting the syntax of nominal structures in Italiot Greek in comparison to Modern (and Ancient) Greek, and we explore the role of Southern Italo-Romance as a potential source of interference. Our aim is to highlight the dynamics that favor syntactic contact in this domain: we provide an overview of the social context where these dynamics have taken place and of the linguistic structures involved.

scholarly journals Religion without doctrine or clergy: the case of Ancient Greece

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
George Tridimas
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Distinct Class ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Moral Behaviour ◽  
Mass Participation

Abstract The paper examines doctrinal and political reasons to explain why the Ancient Greek religion did not feature a distinct class of professional priests as suppliers of religious goods. Doctrinal reasons relate to worshiping a multitude of powerful anthropomorphic gods with flawed characters; absence of a founder of religion and of a scripture; lack of religious doctrine and of a code of moral behaviour and piety manifested as mass participation in rituals. These factors denied religious suppliers the opportunity to form a monopoly acting as an autonomous intermediary between humans and gods. Political reasons relate to the supremacy of the demos which watchfully guarded its decision-making powers and prevented other actors like a priestly interest group to challenge its authority.

scholarly journals GEI. Greek Economic Inscriptions (online)

Axon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Erdas ◽  
Anna Magnetto
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Technical Information ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Critical Editions ◽  
Greek Economy ◽  
Selection Of

In recent years the attention of modern scholars to ancient Greek economy has received impetus from a series of newly published documents of undisputed significance. The results have been a deeply renewed examination of consolidated theoretical positions, and a detailed analysis of specific aspects of the economic life of the polis. Within this framework the GEI project aims at providing an online collection of epigraphic documents related to the economy of ancient Greece. Some of these documents, already known or newly discovered, have never been collected in a selection of this kind. The project covers a period from the archaic age to 1st century BC. The selected texts are representative of the different areas of ancient Greek economy, and are marked-up using the EpiDoc encoding conventions. For each document all technical information has been provided along with existing critical editions, bibliography, a critical apparatus, an English translation and a commentary.

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