Eros

The Adventure ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Agamben
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter seeks to define the experience of Eros. It first dismisses the modern conceptions of adventure, which run the risk of obstructing our access to the original meaning of the term. The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age in fact coincide with an obscuration and devaluation of adventure. The chapter argues that such a line of thinking is a misunderstanding of the medieval intention: not only does adventure never remain external to the knight who is living it, but, even with respect to the poet, it turns out to be so far from contingent that it instead penetrates his heart and is identified with the very text he is writing.

The Meaning of ‘carruca’ in the ‘Leges Barbarorum’

Traditio ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 297-300
Author(s):  
Theodore John Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

The term carruca (or carruga), like many other terms in medieval Latin, acquired a new and different meaning in the Middle Ages in place of its original classical meaning. There is no confusion over the meaning of carruca in Roman historical and literary sources: it clearly means a four-wheeled wagon or carriage. However, its original meaning was modified during the medieval period so that by the early ninth century carruca denoted a wheeled plow. Although the medieval plow is often called a carruca (whereas the Roman plow is called an aratrum), one should not infer that all references to carruca in medieval sources signify a plow, particularly if these sources are datable to that transitional period during which the classical meaning of the word was beginning to be transformed into its medieval one. Characteristic of the sources which fall within this period are the Germanic tribal laws (leges barbarorum), and of these, three individual laws in particular are of interest: the Pactus legis Salicae 38.1, Lex Ribuaria 47.2, and Lex Alamannorum 93.2.

The Four Paradoxes of Nuclear Strategy

1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Morgenthau
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Middle Ages

The nuclear age has ushered in a novel period of history, as distinct from the age that preceded it as the modern age has been from the Middle Ages or the Middle Ages have been from antiquity. Yet while our conditions of life have drastically changed under the impact of the nuclear age, we still live in our thoughts and act through our institutions in an age that has passed. There exists, then, a gap between what we think about our social, political, and philosophic problems and the objective conditions which the nuclear age has created.This contradiction between our modes of thought and action, belonging to an age that has passed, and the objective conditions of our existence has engendered four paradoxes in our nuclear strategy: the commitment to the use of force, nuclear or otherwise, paralyzed by the fear of having to use it; the search for a nuclear strategy which would avoid the predictable consequences of nuclear war; the pursuit of a nuclear armaments race joined with attempts to stop it; the pursuit of an alliance policy which the availability of nuclear weapons has rendered obsolete. All these paradoxes result from the contrast between traditional attitudes and the possibility of nuclear war and from the fruitless attempts to reconcile the two.

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