Globalism before Globalism: the Alexander legend in medievalliterature (Priest Lambrecht’s account as a pathway to early global perspectives)

We certainly live in a world today determined by globalism, however we might want to define it. But it would be erroneous to assume that earlier centuries, and not even pre-modernity, were entirely ignorant about foreign worlds and did not have any interest in reaching out to, or in approaching foreign countries, peoples, and cultures either peacefully or militarily. The first part of this paper examines some of the misconceptions and then outlines many features that justify us in using the term ‘globalism’ already at that early stage, maybe free of much of the modern baggage brought upon by the colonialist attitude pursued by early modern Europeans. To illustrate the claim more specifically, this then leads over to a detailed examination of one of the many versions of the Alexander narratives in the Middle Ages, specifically of Priest Lambrecht’s Middle High German Alexanderlied. Although Alexander is presented as a conqueror of the Persian empire and the Indian kingdom, apart from many other countries, there is still a strong narrative strategy to open the perspective toward the East and to make it to an integrative part of the global worldview of the western European audiences. This and many other Alexander versions contribute in their own intriguing way to the process of “worldmaking,” as Nelson Goodman (1978) had called it. Although historic-fictional in his approach, Lambrecht facilitated in a path-breaking way, drawing on many classical sources, of course, the establishment of a global vision, at least in the mind of his medieval audiences.

Nelson Goodman’s Aesthetics—A Critique

Nelson Goodman (1906–1998) is one of the leading American philosophers of the twentieth century. His well-known book Languages of Art is considered a major contribution to analytical aesthetics. While his views on particular issues have often been criticized, on the whole, he is considered to be a leading figure in twentieth-century aesthetics. Contrary to such a stance, I intend to argue that Goodman’s overall contribution to aesthetics is not as outstanding and valuable as is often maintained. Rather, I will try to show that his aesthetic views are grounded on a distorted representation of the earlier aesthetic tradition, without which they lose the novelty and originality ascribed to them. Once that representation is corrected, some of Goodman’s proposals turn out to be derivative and redundant. Additionally, where they do actually diverge from the earlier tradition and might stake a claim to originality, they turn out to be simply erroneous and misconceived, and sometimes even logically flawed. To conclude, Goodman’s lofty reputation as an aesthetician certainly requires major revision.

C. I. Lewis

Clarence Irving Lewis (b. 1883–d. 1964) is arguably the most important philosopher bridging the pragmatism of the golden age of William James and Charles Sanders Peirce and the analytic quasi-pragmatism of philosophers like W. V. Quine, Nelson Goodman, Wilfrid Sellars, and Hilary Putnam (the first three of whom were taught by him). Lewis’s philosophy as a whole reveals a unified systematic development from his dissertation in 1910, his early work in logic, the development of his epistemology in the 1920s and 1930s, his account of value theory in the 1940s and 1950s, culminating in his work in ethics, which occupied him until his death. Along the way he offered a devastating critique of American absolute idealism and offered a rich epistemology grounded in a Peircean kind of pragmatism. Early in his career Lewis wrote the first the history of logic in English, and, critical of the paradoxes of material implication, he developed an account of strict implication and a set of successively stronger modal logics, the S systems becoming the father of modern modal logic. Lewis was the most influential American philosopher from the mid-1930s until after his retirement in the 1950s. His work helped shape American philosophy as an academic endeavor and contributor to the growing acceptance of rigorous philosophical analysis and European logical empiricism. Lewis spent practically his entire career at Harvard University, bridging the Harvard of James and Royce and the modern department of Quine and Goodman. During his career he wrote six books and a hundred or so papers and reviews. A student of Josiah Royce, William James, and Ralph Barton Perry, a contemporary of Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, and the logical empiricists of the 1930s and 1940s, and the teacher of Quine, William Frankena, Goodman, Roderick Chisholm, Roderick Firth, Sellars, and others, he played a pivotal role in shaping the marriage between pragmatism and empiricism that has come to dominate much of current analytic philosophy. Despite his significant contributions, his work soon became neglected and misinterpreted, lost in the influx of interest in Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language. Fortunately, this neglect has begun to wane.

Conexões com o mundo: verdade e representação na teoria política contemporânea

O objetivo geral deste ensaio consiste em investigar os elos existentes entre teorias do conhecimento e da política, ou, sendo mais específico, indicar os traços gerais de teorias políticas assentadas antes em representações, imagens e tropos do que em dogmas como os da realidade objetiva e das verdades autoevidentes da razão, que marcam o desenvolvimento da teoria e da prática política ocidental. Enquanto parcela considerável da reflexão sobre imagens e representações produzida no século XX focalizou aspectos relativos às artes, como atestam as obras de filósofos como Arthur Danto e Nelson Goodman, este artigo busca explorar as implicações latentes da “virada pictórica” estabelecida em diversas esferas da vida ao longo do século, sobre a teoria política contemporânea.

Response to Susan McClary: Subjectivities

This response to Susan McClary’s essay on music and subjectivities considers two possible understandings of “subjectivities.” In the first section, the response reviews musical subjectivities as personal and individual responses to music. Addressing arguments made by Peter Kivy and Nelson Goodman, it asks how is it possible that similar listeners hear literally different things in the same music? The second section turns to focus on shared and communal responses to music. What different factors are at play when many different listeners respond in the similar ways to the same performance? The main example in this section is Aretha Franklin’s performance at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration in 2009.

Noéli, a falta que ela nos faz

O presente artigo aborda a singularidade da atuação de Noéli Ramme em nosso meio de arte. Sua capacidade de conjugar a atividade acadêmica com as práticas artísticas reinterpretando conceitos filosóficos a partir da produção de artistas contemporâneos, dando-lhes uma nova significação e os atualizando. Utilizando conceitos da obra de Nelson Goodman e Arthur Danto, dois dos principais filósofos da estética analítica, ela ampliou as possibilidades de sua utilização ao conjuga-los com os conceitos artísticos de Tunga e Barrio, dois dos mais proeminentes artistas contemporâneos das artes brasileiras.