Law and Legacy in Medical Jurisprudence

Graeme Laurie stepped down from the Chair in Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. This edited collection pays tribute to his extraordinary contributions to the field. Graeme often spoke about the importance of 'legacy' in academic work and forged a remarkable intellectual legacy of his own, notably through his work on genetic privacy, human tissue and information governance, and the regulatory salience of the concept of liminality. The essays in this volume animate the concept of legacy to analyse the study and practice of medical jurisprudence. In this light, legacy reveals characteristics of both benefit and burden, as both an encumbrance to and facilitator of the development of law, policy and regulation. The contributions reconcile the ideas of legacy and responsiveness and show that both dimensions are critical to achieve and sustain the health of medical jurisprudence itself as a dynamic, interdisciplinary and policy-engaged field of thinking.

A Review of Toyin Falọla. Cultural Modernity in a Colonized World: The Writings of Chief Isaac Oluwole Delanọ. Pan-African University Press, 2020, 739 pages. Toyin Falọla and Michael O. Afọlayan eds. Isaac O. Delanọ A Dictionary of Yoruba Monosyllabic Verbs Edited with an Introduction. Pan-African University Press, 2020, 538 pages. Toyin Falọla and Michael O. Afọlayan eds. Selected Works of Chief Isaac O. Delanọ on Yoruba Language Edited and Introduced. Pan-African University Press, 2020, 644 pages.

Yes, the Yoruba Studies Review has asked me to write a “comprehensive review of the three books released on Chief Isaac Delanọ.” However, because Toyin Falọla had already committed 739 pages for an unsurpassed chronicle and review of the times, life, works, and classics of Doctor Isaac Oluwọle Delanọ, it would be pretentious of me to claim any attempt to do a comprehensive review of the three books. What I will do is to make a modest introduction Book Review 296 Bola Dauda of Delanọ’s long buried or an unheralded intellectual legacy. While Samuel Ajayi Crowther laid the foundation for the transition of Yoruba culture from oral to written literatures, Delanọ provided the guideline manuals, the methodological rubrics, and the compass and roadmaps for the studies and development of modern Yoruba orthography, linguistics, anthropological historiography, literatures, spirituality, and nation building. He was the first Administrative Secretary of the Ẹgbẹ Ọmọ Oduduwa, a cultural organization that became a political party in Nigeria at the dawn of Nigeria’s independence in the 1950s.

Displacement of Manuscripts, Printing Revolution and Rediscovering Islamic Classics

Taking as the starting point, Ahmed El-Shamsy’s new book Rediscovering the Islamic Classics is a comprehensive introduction to trace the historical trajectory of Islamic intellectual legacy. In this engaging yet pleasantly thought-out book El Shamsy intends to offer a fresh conversation on the massive loss of manuscripts, role of colonialism and its role in strengthening the Orientalist enterprise in Muslim World including the drain of manuscripts into Europe. Bringing to light the agents and events of the Islamic print revolution, this work is also an absorbing examination of the central role printing and its advocates played in the intellectual history of the modern Arab world. This review essay offers a contextual perspective and a detailed rationale behind the loss of manuscripts and unpacks some of the important debates behind the decline and restoration of Islam’s intellectual legacy.

Abdalla Al-Nadeem, Pioneer of Patriotism and Civilization in the Modern Egyptian Thought

Abdullah Al-Nadim (1842-1896) is one of the most important intellectual and political figures in modern Egyptian history. He played a major role in all significant stages of the Egypt nineteenth century. He was called "the orator of the revolution." He left his mark on various aspects of Arab social, political, and cultural life and awareness. So now it is very important to study and analyze his intellectual legacy, especially in contemporary circumstances, in which we see the rise of the new barbarism of various primitive religious Salafism. Abdullah Al-Nadim was one of the fine examples of the free intellectual. He committed to issues of society, national Idea, freedom, and progress. This study aims to trace the emergence and development of political, social, and literary ideas of Abdullah Al-Nadim. In their outcome, these ideas were the outcome of the Egyptian social, political, and national struggle against Ottoman despotism and its ruined remnants in the historical existence at that time. In his research and positions, critical and satirical ideas, precise clarity, depth, and loyalty to the truth and the nation's supreme interests are united. His creativity was a model for critical vision and mockery of the remnants of a collapsing world. He sought in all his works for alternatives to development and social progress, calling for modern civilization and freedom. His defense of women, their rights, and freedom was among the most dramatic at that time. Abdullah Al-Nadim sacrificed himself for these endeavors and goals. But at the same time, he revealed the possibility of synthesizing the poetic spirit and truth in theoretical and practical creativity. They are the issues and aspects that form the focus of this research.

R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021) and the World Soundscape Project

This in memoriam tribute for Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer focuses on his seminal work in establishing soundscape studies and the World Soundscape Project. It discusses his intellectual legacy in terms of emphasising a perceptually based approach and the importance of soundscape design, along with critical responses to his ideas.

Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas

Lara Schrijver examines the work of Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas as intellectual legacy of the 1970s for architecture today. Particularly in the United States, this period focused on the autonomy of architecture as a correction to the social orientation of the 1960s. Yet, these two architects pioneered a more situated autonomy, initiating an intellectual discourse on architecture that was inherently design-based. Their work provides room for interpreting social conditions and disciplinary formal developments, thus constructing a `plausible' relationship between the two that allows the life within to flourish and adapt. In doing so, they provide a foundation for recalibrating architecture today.

Mary Anne Atwood and Her First Readers

This chapter shows how the earliest readers of the Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery perceived its mystical bent and distinguished it from other interpretations of alchemy that denied its laboratory operations. Initially, Mary Anne South closely managed the circulation of the few remaining copies of her work. After she was widowed as Mrs Atwood in 1885, she became more forthcoming and shared exemplars with several London-based occultists, most of them associated with the Theosophical Society. Early readers such as Arthur Edward Waite and Patience Sinnett esteemed the Suggestive Inquiry more highly than the moral interpretation of alchemy proposed by Ethan Allen Hitchcock in the United States and other alternatives. Isabelle de Steiger became Atwood’s closest friend and guardian of her intellectual legacy. To her dying day, Atwood herself insisted on the importance of the spiritual alchemy of rebirth.

Ernst Jünger and his Reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky

This contribution aims to present those aspects of the literary and intellectual legacy of F. M. Dostoevsky (1821–1881) that motivated Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) in formulating his own literary and essayistic work. Dostoevsky’s impact on Jünger has so far been researched only fragmentarily and sporadically. This builds on previous research and complements it with new findings. Ernst Jünger inquired into Dostoevsky’s works throughout his life. He perceived Dostoevsky as a foreteller of crises and disasters. Many of Jünger’s motifs, literary images, characters, and symbols were either influenced by or borrowed from Dostoevsky and developed further. Of great importance to Jünger are such phenomena as power, evil or misery, and pain. Dostoevsky also shaped Jünger’s approach to nihilism.