The Future of Winckelmann’s Classical Form

Winckelmann’s thought and writing are routinely acknowledged to have had a profound influence on the artistic practices of the half-century after his death, known under the label ‘Neoclassicism’. Standard accounts of modernism in the arts, however, assume that this influence came to an abrupt end around 1815. According to such accounts, the anti-classical reaction that followed the Battle of Waterloo and the demise of Neoclassicism was itself a motive force in the generation of modern art and modernism. This paper argues, on the contrary, that Winckelmann’s ideas not only remained relevant, but gained in power through the generations after the fall of Napoleon. Mediated by critics and artists among whom Walter Pater and Frederic Leighton serve as the principal examples, Winckelmann’s thought made a decisive contribution to twentieth-century modernism. In particular, the articulation in both criticism and artistic practice of ideas about classical form, indebted to Winckelmann, had a subtler and more complex impact on the modernist doctrine of ‘formalism’ than literary or art historians have acknowledged. A renewed attention to classical form will help future scholars to write a more nuanced account of modernism in the visual arts. More importantly, it will call attention to artistic projects that have been excluded from histories of modern art due to reductive assumptions that classicism and modernism are inherently contradictory. The paper concentrates on Frederic Leighton as a case study of an artist whose historical importance and aesthetic merit have been occluded by reductive thinking of this kind.

Playing and Fighting as an Electric Violinist

The violin is an instrument used in various musical genres. Besides preserving, elaborating, and valuating, the classical form of the instrument as well as the classical violin repertory, an electronic version of the instrument has entered the music business many decades ago. It allows the musician to produce sounds ranging from classical violin sounds to electric guitar or even electric bass sounds. Nora Kudrjawizki (‘Angelstrings’, “One Violin Orchestra”) is an electric violinist living in Berlin and using the instrument for as many different genres and occasions as possible: playing Nirvana songs or fighting with the violin bow as an improvised sword to “Pirates of the Caribbean” music as part of her performance. Her work will be presented as a case study and will be set into a bigger framework with further electric violinist statements generated from the literature. I focus on the differences in the instrumentalist–instrument relation when playing electric or acoustic. My aim is to prove that the electric violin is mostly used to play public and impress others and that there are also musically interesting aspects and individual experiences that should be valued.

Favouring for No Reason

‘Favouring for No Reason’ addresses two matters. First, it argues that some favourings (i.e. pro- or contra-attitudes) may not be reason-governed. Various examples, including some from Joseph Raz, suggest that neither the guise of the good nor the guise of reason thesis is true: some of our favourings are favourings for no reasons. Being motivated is often a matter of having a set of beliefs and desires whose content appears normative to the agent, but sometimes being motivated does not involve motivating reasons but is rather a matter merely of having the right sorts of belief and desire. A second issue concerns whether fitting-attitude analysis (FA) should require that the valuable object’s properties appear in the content of the fitting pro- or contra-attitude. The so-called dual-role approach to FA analysis affirms that the properties that make an object x valuable have a dual role: on the one hand, they provide reasons for favouring x, and on the other hand, they appear in the intentional content of the favouring. It is argued that the dual-role approach is preferable to the classical form of FA analysis. However, that does not mean that the classical FA analysis is incorrect. Dual-role FA analysis should be regarded as a specification of its classical forebear. The remaining sections of this chapter consider different cases that challenge the dual-role approach.

Could Virtual Currencies Replace Classic Money and Influence the Activities Of Banks?

This article analyses the concept of virtual currencies by examining the origin and evolution of money in its’ classical form, identifies why classic money needs to evolve and why virtual currencies could represent the next step in their evolution (Vlasov, 2017). With the emergence of Bitcoin, terms as ‘blockchain technology’ and ‘virtual currencies’ have gained great notoriety. One of the reasons virtual currencies became so popular is that people believe that they could be very promising and could be capable to replace money in their traditional form. This being considered, the article tries to achieve the following objectives: to provide an overview on the evolution of money; make a comparison between virtual currencies and classic money; analyse the potential of virtual currency to replace fiat money (Jumde & Cho, 2020). The focus of this article was to gain a holistic insight into the new technology and its power to revolutionise the financial system. The study was performed by comparing various sources and examining existing studies, official reports issued by the EU institutions, opinions of various experts and financial journals articles, in order to create knowledge on the topic, as well as the author’s interpretation of the research material.

Argumentacja ex auctoritate w uzasadnianiu twierdzeń w tekstach homilii

Each public speech (including the homily) should be associated with showing the right which serves as the basis for accepting the presented statements. This is one of the fundamental features of the correct construction of a statement. The theological content of a homily can be presented on the basis of the classical form of argumentum ex auctoritate. As an inductive structure, this argument may promote specific ways of organising the whole speech. Firstly, in the rhetorical inventio structure, it allows the author to control the semantic coherence of the text. Secondly, in the structure of dis­positio, the authority can make for an interesting use of rhetorical narrative in homily text. Thirdly, argumentum ex auctoritate can be used to build the ethos of the preacher. Thanks to the above proposals, it is possible to influence the processuality of the text, which may determine the recognition and assimilation of the different key elements, both of which are crucial for preaching.

The twilight of determinism and categorical openness of determination in the context of expounding the issue of freedom

While the classical form of determinism seems to be in regress as the thesis of physical indeterminism has now been justified, the deterministic model of scientific description of phenomena has not been devalued in science methodologies. However, the present disciplinary forms of determinisms do not represent an unambiguous, uniform, universal, absolute and directly determining pattern, appropriately typical for the classical concept of determinism. In the context of deliberations on the issue of freedom, that fact prompts thinking on the scope of contemporary deterministic elucidations as well as queries whether contemporary compatibilist explanations are still valid with regard to incoherent determinisms. Examining the category of determination will help, among others, to assess the adequacy of Nicolai Hartmann’s philosophy against the background of the on-going dispute over freedom. The thesis of determinative pluralism, rooted in the ontology of the real being, points to the axiological context as indispensable for explaining the problem of freedom, as it is going beyond its often narrowed framework.

DIAN-TU ARGENTINA

Alzheimer’s disease is, by far the first, cause of dementia and the more frequent neurodegenerative disease. Considered as a result of multifactorial causes, aging is the main risk factor for the classical form of the disease and because of global aging, a very significant increase in the prevalence is expected in the upcoming decades, especially in countries in development. Several drugs with different targets have been tried so far and, still with no success. Frenzied efforts seeking a new disease-modifying drug are constantly being pursued and innovative models of the clinical trials have emerged. The DIAN initiative studies individuals with known mutations in the deterministic genes of the disease. Autosomal Dominantly Alzheimer Disease (ADAD) showed to be a more predictable model in terms of whom and when will get the disease. This allows testing novel therapeutics agents by choosing the drug according to the biological moment of the disease. But ADAD is also a uniquely human story full of courage and hope. The DIAN trial has started in Argentina and a new anti-tau age has begun as well.

Tropes variations: the topic of particulars beyond Sellars’s myth of the given

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I would like to bring into the light the almost unexplored Sellars’s theory of particulars. Second, I would like to show its surprising degree of compatibility with the thesis supported by some contemporary tropists (Lowe, Gozzano and Orilia (eds), Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, Ontos Verlag, 2008; Moltmann, Mind 113:1–41, 2004 and Moltmann, Noûs 47:346–370, 2013). It is difficult to establish whether Sellars possessed an own theory of tropes, developed independently by the classical form it took in Williams 1953, but as a matter of fact the peculiar features of his “complex particulars” model it is very much like Williams’s theory. So much so that to all intents and purposes it represents a tropes variation. One of its strengths is that it is not part of a constituent ontology, since it is essentially developed from a linguistic and phenomenological point of view. It is for these reasons that this theory manages to avoid some of the classic objections to tropes and it shows to be compatible with the argument of Jonathan Lowe’s “proper visibility” as well as with Friederike Moltmann’s exquisitely linguistic interpretation of tropes.

The tongues of stones: diversity of interlocutions in Arabic alchemical writings

Dialogues and interlocutions in Arabic alchemical writings have already attracted the attention of several researchers. These previous studies mainly focused on dialogues composed in the classical form of alchemical writings, which are interlocutions between a master of alchemy and his disciple. The teaching dialogue between Zosimos and his disciple Theosebeia in the Muṣḥaf al-ṣuwar (“The Book of Pictures”) can be regarded as one of the most influential examples. This paper focuses instead on the diversity of interlocutions that appear in alchemical writings with regard to their literary construction as well as their characters and what they represent. For this research, extracts from different alchemical writings will serve as examples: Mufākharat al-aḥjār (“The Boasting of Stones”) and an excerpt from Kitāb al-Rawḍa (“The Book of the Garden”), both attributed in the manuscripts to the Andalusian mathematician Maslama al-Majrīṭī, in addition to an excerpt from Kitāb al-Aqālīm al-sabʿa (“The Book of the Seven Climes”) ascribed to al-Sīmāwī, and a poem of seventy verses – al-Qaṣīda al-sabʿīniyya – by an unknown author. This paper aims to explore how Arabic-writing alchemists made use of a versatile repertoire of literary and didactic methods to transfer their knowledge of alchemy to the subsequent generations.