“Haiti, I Can See Your Halo!”

Author(s):  
Carole Boyce Davies

This chapter uses the logic of the halo not in the way it appears in Christian iconography, but in the way the halo of what Haiti means radiates as a series of spatial principles across the African diaspora. The contradictory history of Haiti that produced today's American hemisphere's poorest country runs up against a history of glory and transcendence. Thus, in many ways, Haiti becomes an important and extreme representation of the black condition: on the one hand, a past of dignity and legendary greatness; on the other, the starkness created by the initial history of dispossession, subsequent economic difficulty, brought on sometimes by horrendous leadership, often in collusion with external actors, environment, climate, location, but through it all, an amazing resistance of its people matched by an outstanding creativity.

Author(s):  
Michael Naas

The aim of this essay is to understand the underlying motivation behind Derrida’s initial objections to Foucault in his 1963 “Cogito and the History of Madness” and the way these objections anticipate so much of Derrida’s subsequent work. Beyond a disagreement over how to read a crucial moment in Descartes’ Meditations regarding the Cogito’s relation to madness, the “Cogito” essay provides a full-fledged theory of the relationship between history, language, and reason, on the one hand, and madness, silence, and death, on the other. Only through understanding this configuration is it possible to understand why Derrida would call Foucault’s The History of Madness not just a mistaken or misguided text but a “totalitarian” one. After outlining the reasons for Derrida’s strident critique of Foucault’s work on the basis of this underlying opposition between history and madness or reason and silence, Naas demonstrate how this same configuration is at work in early texts such as “Violence and Metaphysics,” right up through Derrida’s final seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign and, especially, The Death Penalty. Naas concludes by pointing out that while Derrida’s theoretical questions were always very different than Foucault’s, both thinkers ended up, curiously, on the same side in their critique of today’s carceral system and its forms of punishment. Only by taking into account both the similarities and the differences between Derrida and Foucault, in both their political positions and their philosophical texts, can we today really “do justice” to the history of their infamous debate.


Inter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-111
Author(s):  
Irina Iukina

This article examines the development of Russian women's citizenship from the standpoint of the theory of citizenship and describes the main directions and milestones of its formation on the historical material. The article proves that the main subjects of the setting up of women's citizenship on the one hand are the women's, feminist, suffragist movement, which put the problems of its social (gender) group before the authorities and sought their solution. On the other hand, there are ‘broad masses of women’, i.e. women of various classes and social groups, who, by changing their daily practices, actually expanded their civil rights and duties. The History of Russian Women as a historical discipline in recent years has accumulated significant factual material about various aspects of the life of Russian women, which made possible such a historical and sociological analysis of the phenomenon of women's citizenship in Russia.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Gábor Szécsi

The aim of this article is to indicate how a version of intentionalist theory of linguistic communication can be adapted as a part of a contextualist methodology of the history of ideas. In other words, we attempt to clear up the way of harmonizing the theory that communication takes place when a hearer/reader grasps an utterer’s intention with the methodological conception according to which a historian of ideas must concentrate his attention on the context in which in his past author was writing. This article argues that a plausible solution to this problem is suggested in some influential methodological essays by Quentin Skinner. Therefore we shall discuss, on the one hand, the place of an intentionalist model of communication in Skinner’s methodology by providing a brief outline of the main theses of contextualism and intentionalism. On the other hand, we deal with some epistemological problems raised by the application of contextualist method. In particular, we consider the questions that can be raised about the manner in which a historian can grasp an author’s intention.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Matthias Dreyer

Taking into account the intertwining of the theory of tragedy on the one hand and theatrical work on ancient tragic texts on the other, the paper explores the way in which tragedy poses the question of history. This is especially the case in conceptions of tragedy as an interruption in a continuum. Hölderlin’s idea of caesura, its reflection in Benjamin’s understanding of tragedy as a revision of myth are in the center of a critical dramaturgy of this kind. By analysing Brecht’s work on Antigone as well as the stagings of critical theatre makers that came after Brecht (Einar Schleef, Dimiter Gotscheff), the paper shows the consequences of the concept ‘tragedy as caesura‘ on the level of the aesthetics of the theatre, unclosing in a radical way the temporality of the tragic process. From this point of view, tragedy is understood as a site of encounter with the persisting powers of the past; as reflexive rupture in the transition between times, that undermines the established order, but without, however, arriving at a new one. Although in the history of theatre and thought tragedy has been too often associated with the universal and timeless, how is it possible to think of historicity in a way negating submission under the universal without losing the genre of tragedy itself?


Author(s):  
José M.C. Belo

Resumo De que falamos quando pretendemos falar da história da ciência no ensino? Falamos do ensino da(s) ciência(s)? Falamos do ensino da história da ciência? Falamos de ambos? Se falamos do ensino de história da ciência, então poderíamos falar de todas as disciplinas (unidades curriculares) que constituem o currículo porque, de algum modo, a ciência – a sua história – é transversal a todas. Por outro lado, se falamos da história da ciência como adjuvante do ensino das ciências - do lugar que a história da ciência deve ocupar no quadro do ensino das ciências - então estaremos a falar de algo bem diferente que tem merecidamente ocupado muitos dos que se preocupam com estas questões. Pela nossa parte, na necessariamente breve reflexão que vamos efetuar, tentaremos pôr em relevo, por um lado, a importância do conhecimento do desenvolvimento histórico da atividade científica como elemento agregador e motivador para todos os estudantes de ciências, ao mesmo tempo que evidenciaremos o modo como o discurso didático está carregado de elementos causadores de ruído no processo de comunicação didática. Palavras-chave: história da ciência; comunicação didática; paradigmas Abstract What do we talk about when we want to talk about the history of science in education? Are we talking about science(s) teaching? Are we talking about the teaching of the history of science? Are we talking about both? If we talk about the teaching of the history of science, then we could speak of all the disciplines (curricular units) that constitute the curriculum because, in some way, science - its history - is transversal to all of them. On the other hand, if we speak of the history of science as an adjunct to science teaching - the place that history of science must occupy in science teaching - then we are talking about something quite different that has deservedly occupied many of those who care about these issues. On our part, in the necessarily brief reflection that we are going to make, we will try to highlight, on the one hand, the importance of the knowledge of the historical development of scientific activity as an aggregator and motivator for all students of science, and, at the same time, we will try to show the way as the didactic discourse is loaded with elements that cause noise in the process of didactic communication. Keywords: history of science; didactic communication; paradigms


This chapter explores the construction of the Terror as a difficult past after 9 Thermidor. It addresses a curious tension in the sources. On the one hand, there were recurring proclamations that the Terror was over, that the violence of Year II was a thing of the past. On the other hand, there was an awareness that this past could not be laid to rest so easily, that the traces of revolutionary violence were everywhere, in the landscape and in the minds of people. The chapter relates this tension in the sources to changes in the way Europeans processed and responded to catastrophic events and to the new relationship between violence and the social order, which was inaugurated by the French Revolution. Special attention is devoted to Louis-Marie Prudhomme’s history of revolutionary violence, published in 1796.


2021 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 04007
Author(s):  
Marina Alexandrovna Kindzerskaya ◽  
Tatyana Ivanovna Marmazova ◽  
Stanislav Alexandrovich Ruzanov ◽  
Pyotr Alekseevich Kostin ◽  
Ilona Vladislavovna Tarasova

The article deals with the problem of a person’s conscious choice between happiness and suffering. At first glance, happiness and suffering are two different paths, and one should choose which road to take. On the one hand, suffering is an obstacle on the way to oneself, to a happy existence. On the other hand, one chooses suffering and happiness willingly, happiness is proportionate to suffering. One should not forget that existence has no meaning if it brings merely pain and dissatisfaction, so it is very important to strive to be happy. Throughout the entire history of humanity, the problem of happiness and the search for the best way to be released from suffering is a pressing issue. The relevance of the problem is determined by the particular significance of the concepts under study, because every person’s natural desire, regardless of the era and area of residence, is to be happy and free. The concepts of “happiness” and “suffering” are not only philosophical but also sociocultural phenomena that expound the axiological and spiritual and moral aspects of human existence. The study features quotes from thinkers of different ages and cultures that to an extent engaged in interpreting the content of the phenomena of happiness and suffering. The purpose of the study is to expound the sociocultural content of the phenomena of “happiness” and “suffering”, their causes, and the conditions for coexistence. The main methods of the study are the method of systemic analysis, the comparative method, and the typological method. The novelty of the study consists in the fact that the authors examine the phenomena of “happiness” and “suffering” together for the first time. Although the phenomena are an integral part of human activity.


Numen ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan A. Andrews

AbstractThis study attempts to broaden the usual understanding of the Chinese and Japanese Pure Land traditions by delineating two orientations toward Pure Land devotionalism: A lay orientation which is usually considered the whole of Pure Land devotionalism, and a monastic orientation which is often excluded from the history of Pure Land piety. This distinction makes clear not only the greater breadth of the Pure Land movement, but the way in which its growth was influenced by cross-currents between its two wings. In part one of the paper, the two orientations are typologically differentiated by considerations of (1) their views of history and of the human condition, (2) the types of buddha-reflection (nienjolnembutsu) they taught, and (3) their soteriologies. In part two we then sketch the history of these two forms of Pure Land devotionalism in China and Japan down to the twelfth century. We propose four stages of development: (1) A stage of initial formulation of the principals and styles of the monastic and the lay oriented traditions by Lu-shan Hui-yuan [334-416] and T'an-luan [c. 488-554], respectively; (2) a stage of clear differentiation of the two traditions represented by Chih-i [538-97] on the one hand, and by Shan-tao [613-81] on the other; (3) a stage of integration of the two forms, in China by Tz'u-min hui-jih [680-748], and in Japan by Genshin [942-1017]; and (4) a stage of radical re-differentiation of these by Hônen [1133-1212] in Japan.


Dialogue ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52
Author(s):  
Golfo Maggini

AbstractThis paper focuses on Heidegger's 1937 lecture course on the Nietzschean doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Heidegger interprets the motive of recurrence in Nietzsche as the Moment (Augenblick) of the Eternal Recurrence. Through this key motive of the moment, we try then to examine the double function of the doctrine which, on the one hand, refers us back to some essential themes of the existential analytics, whereas, on the other hand, it paves the way for the new confrontation with metaphysics in the Beiträge zur Philosophie. We hold that the turning away from the existential conception of the moment toward its “aletheiological” understanding in terms of a “site of the Moment” (die Augenblicksstätte) takes place in the context of this very lecture course. This transition is even more critical as it constitutes the very heart of Heidegger's critique of subjectivity in the new perspective opened by the history of Being: Nietzsche's doctrine of time provides the basis for this questioning.


Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson

In his somewhat controversial book Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben makes brief reference to Theodor Adorno’s apparently contradictory remarks on perceptions of death post-Auschwitz, positions that Adorno had taken concerning Nazi genocidal actions that had seemed also to reflect something horribly errant in the history of thought itself. There was within such murderous acts, he had claimed, a particular degradation of death itself, a perpetration of our humanity bound in some way to affect our perception of reason itself. The contradictions regarding Auschwitz that Agamben senses to be latent within Adorno’s remarks involve the intuition ‘on the one hand, of having realized the unconditional triumph of death against life; on the other, of having degraded and debased death. Neither of these charges – perhaps like every charge, which is always a genuinely legal gesture – succeed in exhausting Auschwitz’s offense, in defining its case in point’ (RA 81). And this is the stance that Agamben wishes to hammer home quite emphatically vis-à-vis Adorno’s limitations, ones that, I would only add, seem to linger within Agamben’s own formulations in ways that he has still not come to reckon with entirely: ‘This oscillation’, he affirms, ‘betrays reason’s incapacity to identify the specific crime of Auschwitz with certainty’ (RA 81).


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