Book Review: Emmanuel Alloa, Frank Chouraqui, and Rajiv Kaushik (eds.), Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2019)

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy is an ambitious collected volume of fourteen chapters, accompanied by an epilogue by Jean-Luc Nancy, in which current Merleau-Ponty scholars together aim to demonstrate the urgent relevance of Merleau-Ponty to contemporary philosophy across a range of fields including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art. Divided into four thematic sections, namely, “Legacies”, “Mind and Nature”, “Politics, Power, and Institution” and “Art and Aesthetics”, this collected volume provides a rich resource for Merleau-Ponty scholars who are interested in novel applications and understudied aspects of his thought. It also opens up Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre to the general reader, presenting many possible entry-ways into the diversity of his work. In my review of Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, I suggest that each of its thematic sections could have been the subject of a separate volume themselves, and that the volume would then perhaps have not suffered from a number of poorly developed lines of argumentation. But I consider that the inclusion of all these thematically diverse sections in a single volume nonetheless presents a forceful display of the wide-ranging relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to contemporary philosophy.

The Main Results of the Technical Re-Equipment of the Red Army Artillery in the Pre-War Years and During the Great Patriotic War

The article presents a generalized experience of technical re-equipment of the Red Army artillery on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War. Attention is focused on the role and significance of scientific artillery schools in the technical re-equipment of scientific artillery schools, new facts and documents little-known to the general reader are presented, an assessment of Soviet artillery by the allies and its enemies is given. The authors come to the conclusion that this experience has not lost its significance in modern conditions, especially when the bodies of state power and military administration solve problems of further increasing the firepower and improving the missile forces and artillery of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, their rearmament with highly effective means of firepower. defeat and automated control systems for reconnaissance. In preparing the material, historical-genetic, historical-comparative, historical-retrospective and other methods of historical research were used.

Indíbil, Mandonio, Lérida, ilerdita, ilergetes y Segre en la literatura griega (I)

Este trabajo, partiendo de los datos suministrados por el TLG, quiere ofrecer todas las apariciones en la literatura griega de los términos Indíbil, Mandonio, Lérida, ilerdita, ilergetes y Segre, acompañadas de la traducción al español y las explicaciones filológicas pertinentes, con el propósito de serles de alguna utilidad a filólogos, geógrafos, historiadores, arqueólogos y otros estudiosos de la Antigüedad clásica, así como al lector general interesado por alguno de esos vocablos. This paper, by using the data provided by the TLG, offers all the appearances in Greek literature of the terms Indibilis, Mandonius, Ilerda, ilerdita, ilergetes and Segre, accompanied by the translation into Spanish and the pertinent philological explanations, with the purpose of being of some use to philologists, geographers, historians, archaeologists, and other scholars of classical antiquity, as well as to the general reader interested in any of these words.

The Cambridge Companion to International Arbitration

This Cambridge Companion explores the main senses of the term 'international arbitration'; including the arbitration of private commercial disputes, disputes between a State and a foreign investor, disputes between States and also between a State and its parts. It treats these various forms as being inter-related, if not always conceptually, then as a matter of history, rather than as collective victims of imprecise language. The book touches not only on current debates but also more foundational aspects, such as the tension between party autonomy and State authority, and the pacifist roots of modern international arbitration. Thus, it aims to offer a concise survey of the history, the main issues as well as the latest developments in a single, handy volume. It will be an invaluable introduction to the subject for students studying international arbitration, commercial law and international law, and also lawyers and the general reader.

Dante's Vita Nuova and the New Testament

Modelling knowledge as revelation and theology as poetry, this powerful new reading of the Vita nuova not only challenges Dante scholars to reconsider the book's speculative emphases but also offers the general reader an accessible yet penetrating exploration of some of the Western tradition's most far-reaching ideas surrounding love and knowledge. Dante's 'little book', included in full here in an original parallel translation, captures in its first emergence the same revolutionary ferment that would later become manifest both in the larger oeuvre of this great European writer and in the literature of the entire Western canon. William Franke demonstrates how Dante's youthful poetic autobiography disrupts sectarian thinking and reconciles the seeming contraries of divine revelation and human invention, while also providing the means for understanding religious revelation in the Bible. Ultimately, this revolutionary unification of Scripture and poetry shows the intimate working of love at the source of inspired knowing.

Labrador Emergencies and St. Anthony Institutional Care: Medical Cases of Donald McI. Johnson for the Grenfell Association, 1928–29

In contemporaneous and retrospective publications, British physician Donald McI. Johnson wrote about medical cases in 1928–29 for the organization founded by Wilfred Grenfell in Newfoundland and Labrador. The availability of one physician’s cases in published and institutional forms allows consideration of discursive representations of patients for general and clinical readers in the two decades of Johnson’s writing. This study places these cases within the context of Johnson’s medical background and his escape to rural practice in a remote locale, one that emphasized emergency operations in Labrador and hospital care in the organization’s main hospital in St. Anthony. In this way, it broadens knowledge of medical care provided by visiting physicians and considers ways in which such physicians represented local patients in publications for the general reader. Although it determines that Johnson was unique, it indicates the value of the fuller study of publications by other physicians associated with the Grenfell organization.

Ancient and High Crosses of Cornwall

An illustrated guide to one hundred of the finest early Cornish stone crosses, dating from around AD 900 to 1300. These characteristic features of the Cornish landscape are splendid examples of their type, exhibiting a wide geographical spread and a certain weather-beaten beauty. The medieval stone crosses of Cornwall have long been objects of curiosity both for residents and visitors. This is the first ever accessible volume on the subject, combining detailed description and discussion of the crosses with information on access, colour images and suggestions for further reading. An approachable but academically rigorous work, it includes analysis of the decorative designs and sculptural techniques, accompanied by high-quality photographs which illustrate the subtleties of each cross, often hard to discern in situ. Ancient and High Crosses of Cornwall offers an ideal introduction for the general reader but will also prove essential to local historians, landscape historians, archaeologists and anyone working in the area of Cornish studies or connected with the Cornish diaspora.

Objective / subjective information strategies in electronic German media

The article is devoted to the research of linguistic implementation of objective / subjective information strategies in the complex of electronic texts (article + comments) from modern German media. The material of the research was the primary texts of messages on topical issues from the newspaper ZEIT ONLINE and the magazine Focus Online as well as secondary texts of messages in the form of comments from the general reader. According to the analysis it is obvious that the strategic program in the studied discursive space is a complex multicomponent system due to both the intentional attitudes of the sender of the message and the special conditions of interaction in the Internet space. The topicality of the research is determined by consideration of verbal organization and implementation of the information strategies chosen for analysis and sorted on the objectivity subjectivity scale. The author emphasizes the use of means of different levels of the German language in the process of overlapping and intentional change of strategies. The emphasis is made on the fact that the strategic program of the message sender in the electronic environment can be guessed by the recipient, but there is no further continuation in the comments. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that in electronic German media a commentator, choosing suitable strategies of his own can turn the polemics based on what he read in the article into a new direction. In the course of the language analysis, it is noticed that for an electronic article, strategies of objective information are the most typically ones (detail strategy, information and interpretation strategy, logical persuasion strategy and evasion of the truth strategy), and for an electronic comment, it is more common the choice of subjective information strategy (control over the topic strategy, feelings appeal strategies and evaluation strategies).

Nikolay Ulyanov's historical and aesthetic position in the context of “DP literature”

Historians attribute the beginning of the scientific and literary activity of the second wave of emigration to the time of the camps for the DP (Displaced Persons).The concept of the “DP literatureˮ is often used as a synonym for the “second waveˮ of Russian emigrant literature. Most of the names of writers who were “displaced personsˮ are not often mentioned in the history of Russian literature and are known only to a narrow circle of specialists. The article examines the special historical and aesthetic position of a prominent representative of this group – Nikolay Ulyanov, justified by a short excursion into his dramatic fate and the history of scientific and literary creative work. Today, in his homeland, Nikolay Ulyanov is better known as a remarkable historian, the author of a few, but unique, scientific works and concepts. And although many of his literary works have also been reprinted and are available to the general reader, the special literary position of Nikolay Ulyanov, which distinguished him in the contradictory literature and science of the second wave, remains not fully studied. The article discusses Nikolay Ulyanov's positioning of himself and his like-minded people as successors and completers of the Russian culture of “Fin de siècleˮ. The disclosure of this provision, an attempt to explain its grounds and consequences for the surrounding Nikolay Ulyanov in a completely different context is undertaken in this article.

“And I woke up”: a new book about Leo Tolstoy

The review notes that Irina Luchenetskaya-Burdina presents a wide panorama of the Russian cultural and literary life of the second half of the 19th century, in the context of which the artistic and journalistic heritage of Leo Tolstoy has been examined. The structure of the monograph is analysed, the breadth of coverage of the material is emphasised, as well as scientific approach to the studied problem, attractive to the general reader and at the same time promising. The review describes the range of problems considered by Irina Luchenetskaya-Burdina, the successful and non-trivial observations of the author of the new book are noted.