Last Days

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-174
Author(s):  
Tom Vandeputte
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

“The subject of this book,” Benjamin writes in the last exposé of his Arcades Project, “is an illusion expressed by Schopenhauer in the following formula: for the one who wants to seize the essence of history, it suffices to compare Herodotus and the morning newspaper.” In this chapter, I examine the place of journalism in Benjamin’s philosophical reflections on time and history through a close reading of his great essay on Karl Kraus, the Viennese writer who, for him, embodied journalism’s “most paradoxical form.” In his physiognomies of Kraus, Benjamin develops a critique of modern journalism as the expression of a wholly reified experience of history while also trying to retrieve the elements for a different kind of journalism: a writing that rids itself from a belief in progress and instead strives after an “actuality” (Aktualität) that is both close to and infinitely distant from the novelty of the newspapers.

scholarly journals Three contrasting colors in the kaleidoscope of Taras Shevchenko’s diary: “Radiant,” “Hardly-forgettable” and “Liubitsa”

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
Dmytro Yesypenko
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Positive Image ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Architectural Development ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The One ◽  
Alternative Reading

The subject of this paper is Taras Shevchenko’s attitude towards the key personalities – Mykhailo Shchepkin, Nicholas I, and Yekaterina Piunova – as reflected in his diary (also called “The Journal”). The goal is to focus on the author’s characteristics of these people, those that illuminate his own personality too. Although there are a number of studies on the poet’s contacts with them, quite a few important details still remain unclear and unexplained. Another pertinent issue is dubious theses and interpretations, which have become widespread in academic discourse. Thus, the article proposes possible answers to a number of problematic issues in the studies of Shevchenko’s biography. It covers the formation of an almost entirely positive image of Shchepkin, the expressions of the author’s respect and affection to him, that were misunderstood by researchers. The paper also emphasizes Shevchenko’s authorship of the bright expression “neudobozabyvaemyi Tormoz” [hardly-forgettable brake/slowpoke], the one attached to the most negative character of the diary, Tsar Nicholas I. It explains the accuracy of the author’s notes about the monarch’s influence on the architectural development of the cities in the Russian Empire. Particular attention is paid to the prospects of research of those events and plots that, for various reasons, were virtually never mentioned in “The Journal.” I propose an explanation for the fact why Shevchenko did not provide lengthier feedback on his train ride, this new experience for him. The article also talks about the most controversial figure in the diary, namely Piunova. I suggest an alternative reading and etymology for one of the epithets addressed to her, that speaks in favor of the poet’s linguistic competencies and creativity. The emerging result of the research is the clarification of a few episodes of the poet’s biography and his relationship with the mentioned persons. The article demonstrates the productivity of a comprehensive examination of the text both at its macro- and micro-levels. This novel approach combining “distant” and “close” reading can be successfully used for investigation of other Shevchenko contacts and personalities mentioned in his diary.

Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796, John Barrell, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-208
Author(s):  
Danny Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One

Abstract This review essay has two divisions. In its first division it sets out a brief overview of recent Marxist research in the field of ‘Romanticism’, identifying two major lines of inquiry. On the one hand, the attempt to expand our sense of what might constitute a ruthless critique of social relations; on the other, an attempt to develop a materialist account of aesthetic disengagement. This first division concludes with an extended summary of John Barrell’s account of the treason trials of the middle 1790s, as set out in his book Imagining the King’s Death. It argues that Barrell’s book is the most significant recent work belonging to the second line of inquiry. In its second division the review responds to Barrell’s concluding discussion, in which the aesthetic consequences of the treason trials are established by means of a close reading of some of the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The division finishes with some more general remarks on the subject of a materialist aesthetics of disengagement.

On the Primacy of Matter: Neoplatonism Right-Side Up

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Tritten
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
After Effect ◽  
The One

This chapter provides a close reading of Schelling’s early commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and then contrasts this reading with Neoplatonism’s, particularly Proclus’, understanding of this same text. While Neoplatonism views being according to a hierarchy of degradation or descent, with matter at the bottom, Schelling affirms that being potentiates itself into higher and greater degrees of order such that matter is not the last but the first. He is able to do this, however, only by rejecting the Platonic notion of participation. For Schelling, the participating acquires an independence from the participated so that an effect can be greater than its cause and, moreover, the effect exerts a retroactive after effect on the cause. The identity of a cause or antecedent is only constituted in and through its consequents. If matter is said to process from the One, then matter, in turn, is the consequent condition of the identity of the One as one rather than as many.

“Channeling” the powers of God’s Word

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea E. Schulz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Border Zone ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
New Materials ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Starting with the controversial esoteric employment of audio recordings by followers of the charismatic Muslim preacher Sharif Haidara in Mali, the article explores the dynamics emerging at the interface of different technologies and techniques employed by those engaging the realm of the Divine. I focus attention on the “border zone” between, on the one hand, techniques for appropriating scriptures based on long-standing religious conventions, and, on the other, audio recording technologies, whose adoption not yet established authoritative and standardized forms of practice, thereby generating insecurities and becoming the subject of heated debate. I argue that “recyclage” aptly describes the dynamics of this “border zone” because it captures the ways conventional techniques of accessing the Divine are reassessed and reemployed, by integrating new materials and rituals. Historically, appropriations of the Qur’an for esoteric purposes have been widespread in Muslim West Africa. These esoteric appropriations are at the basis of the considerable continuities, overlaps and crossovers, between scripture-related esoteric practices on one side, and the treatment by Sharif Haidara’s followers of audio taped sermons as vessels of his spiritual power, on the other.

PHILOSOPHICAL PROPAEDEUTICS IN THE SYSTEM OF PRESCHOOL EDUCATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Preschool Education ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Training

Today, worldview, spiritual and moral problems that have always been reflected in education and upbringing come to the fore in society. In this situation, there is a demand for philosophical categories. One of the priority goals of education in modern conditions is the formation of a reasonable, reflexive person who is able to analyze their actions and the actions of other people. Modern science is characterized by an understanding of the absolute value and significance of childhood in the development of the individual, which implies the need for its multilateral study. In the conditions of democratization of all spheres of life, the child ceases to be a passive object of education and training, and becomes an active carrier of their own meanings of being and the subject of world creation. One of the realities of childhood is philosophizing, so it is extremely timely to address the identification of its place and role in the world of childhood. Children's philosophizing is extremely poorly studied, although the need for its analysis is becoming more obvious. Children's philosophizing is one of the forms of philosophical reflection, which has its own qualitative specificity, on the one hand, and commonality with all other forms of philosophizing, on the other. The social relevance of the proposed research lies in the fact that children's philosophizing can be considered as an intellectual indicator of a child's socialization, since the process of reflection involves the adoption and development of culture. Modern society, in contrast to the traditional one, is ready to "accept" a philosophizing child, which means that it is necessary to determine the main characteristics and conditions of children's philosophizing.

The problem of woman’s emansipation in the feuilleton “Amazonia: a very inept story” by Mykola Chirsky

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-76
Author(s):  
Iryna Rusnak
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Artistic Heritage

The author of the article analyses the problem of the female emancipation in the little-known feuilleton “Amazonia: A Very Inept Story” (1924) by Mykola Chirsky. The author determines the genre affiliation of the work and examines its compositional structure. Three parts are distinguished in the architectonics of associative feuilleton: associative conception; deployment of a “small” topic; conclusion. The author of the article clarifies the role of intertextual elements and the method of constantly switching the tone from serious to comic to reveal the thematic direction of the work. Mykola Chirsky’s interest in the problem of female emancipation is corresponded to the general mood of the era. The subject of ridicule in provocative feuilleton is the woman’s radical metamorphoses, since repulsive manifestations of emancipation becomes commonplace. At the same time, the writer shows respect for the woman, appreciates her femininity, internal and external beauty, personality. He associates the positive in women with the functions of a faithful wife, a caring mother, and a skilled housewife. In feuilleton, the writer does not bypass the problem of the modern man role in a family, but analyses the value and moral and ethical guidelines of his character. The husband’s bad habits receive a caricatured interpretation in the strange behaviour of relatives. On the one hand, the writer does not perceive the extremes brought by female emancipation, and on the other, he mercilessly criticises the male “virtues” of contemporaries far from the standard. The artistic heritage of Mykola Chirsky remains little studied. The urgent task of modern literary studies is the introduction of Mykola Chirsky’s unknown works into the scientific circulation and their thorough scientific understanding.

TARP DVIEJŲ KOLONŲ: XVIII A. PABAIGOS – XIX A. PRADŽIOS VILNIAUS MASONŲ KASDIENYBĖ SIMBOLIKOJE

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-163
Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Secular World ◽  
National Characteristics ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Craft Guilds

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.

Quantum Tunneling

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank S. Levin
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Tunneling ◽  
Alpha Particles ◽  
Attractive Potential ◽  
Scanning Tunneling ◽  
Finite Width ◽  
Potential Well ◽  
Surface Molecules ◽  
Repulsive Coulomb ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Quantum tunneling, wherein a quanject has a non-zero probability of tunneling into and then exiting a barrier of finite width and height, is the subject of Chapter 13. The description for the one-dimensional case is extended to the barrier being inverted, which forms an attractive potential well. The first application of this analysis is to the emission of alpha particles from the decay of radioactive nuclei, where the alpha-nucleus attraction is modeled by a potential well and the barrier is the repulsive Coulomb potential. Excellent results are obtained. Ditto for the similar analysis of proton burning in stars and yet a different analysis that explains tunneling through a Josephson junction, the connector between two superconductors. The final application is to the scanning tunneling microscope, a device that allows the microscopic surfaces of solids to be mapped via electrons from the surface molecules tunneling into the tip of the STM probe.

Democracy and Political Culture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social System ◽  
Political System ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.

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