Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

A wide variety of sources, including the Huntington literature and popular mass media, show that Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” idea actually has very little value in understanding the current global political context. The central assumption of Huntington’s view, that cultural kinship ties influence loyalties and agreements on a global scale, has little to do with the daily lives of American citizens and little to do with the decisions made by the current presidential administration. The mass media evidence from the (...) United States shows that the most important “kinship” ties are not religious or cultural, but economic. The argument involves a deeper analysis of the current trend towards religious programs on American television, a timeline of events relating to the Halliburton – Cheney relationship, and views expressed by members of the United States military in Stars and Stripes. (shrink)

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on (...) a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

This article restores the peculiar ethical-cultural cartography from the philosophical fragments of Ancient Greek Cynicism. Namely, the fragments of Anthistenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Crates, Dio Chrysostom as well as of the ancient historians of philosophy are mainly analyzed and interpreted. The methods of comparative analysis as well of rational resto-ration are applied in this article. The authors of the article concentrate on the main characteristics of the above mentioned cartography, that is, the contradiction between maps of nature and civili-zation. The (...) article comes to the conclusion that the basis of this contradiction is the concept of the main value as well as virtue in the above mentioned cynicism, namely, natural radical temperance. According to ancient cynics, this virtue is absolutely incompatible with pleasure-driven civilization, as the latter annihilates the former. Therefore, cynics interpreted the whole territory of the world known at that time as divided between maps of nature and civilization that never overlap or even intersect. Moreover, according to ancient cynics, the territory covered by maps of civilization is considerably smaller than that enframed by the maps of nature. Moreover, the areas of nature are continuously being diminished, as civilization resolutely goes ahead. In such a situation that threatens survival of human nature the only possible way out is a return to the natural value of radical temperance. After cynics, the only effective strategy of achieving that challenging goal is askesis as excercises of temperance dedicated both to body and spirit. The authors of the article also give a certain SWOT analysis of the above mentioned cartography in the context of contemporary society. According to them, such a cartography possesses both strong and weak points. The main weak point is the contradiction itself between maps of culture and civilization. As a matter of fact, civilization does not annihilate the possibility of natural temperance, whereas a human being, according to his/her nature, is a creator of culture and civilization. On the other hand, the main positive aspect is an emphasis on virtue of temperance, which is actual, significant and relevant in any epoch, culture and civilization, and which is pretty much forgotten nowadays. (shrink)

The purpose of this investigation is to define the central issues of the current and future relations between the Western and Chinese civilizations through the evaluation of the myths and realities of these relations. The methodology is based on an interdisciplinary big-picture view of the world scene, driven by the global economy and civilization with an attempt to compare both civilizations according to key criteria. Among the findings are: Today China has become a “robot” of the West. Due to (...) its old culture and ability to invent important civilizational tools, China is becoming an independent developer of its own economic power, and it is very probable that it will surpass its master sooner or later. Due to its transformation to a global civilization, Western civilization has lost its Christian values and adopted new ones based on business. It is probable that the economic success of China will lead to a clash between civilizations, both grasping for access to the strategic resources. Practical implication: Society should elaborate the path to the development of wise civilization driven by a new political system, ecoism.Social implication: It is probable that if the “1%” won’t self-correct its misbehavior, a social revolution by the “99%” cannot be excluded from the current calendar ofWestern civilization. Originality: This investigation, by providing the interdisciplinary and civilizational approach, expands the scope of the traditional relevant approach. (shrink)

The purpose of this investigation is to define the central issues of the current and future relations between the Western and Chinese civilizations through the evaluation of the myths and realities of these relations. The methodology is based on an interdisciplinary big-picture view of the world scene, driven by the global economy and civilization with an attempt to compare both civilizations according to key criteria. Among the findings are: Today China has become a “robot” of the West. Due to (...) its old culture and ability to invent important civilizational tools, China is becoming an independent developer of its own economic power, and it is very probable that it will surpass its master sooner or later. Due to its transformation to a global civilization, Western civilization has lost its Christian values and adopted new ones based on business. It is probable that the economic success of China will lead to a clash between civilizations, both grasping for access to the strategic resources. Practical implication: Society should elaborate the path to the development of wise civilization driven by a new political system, ecoism.Social implication: It is probable that if the “1%” won’t self-correct its misbehavior, a social revolution by the “99%” cannot be excluded from the current calendar ofWestern civilization. Originality: This investigation, by providing the interdisciplinary and civilizational approach, expands the scope of the traditional relevant approach. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Preface -- I. WELCOME TO THE WAR -- Introduction -- The war of the worldviews -- Who will be God? -- II. WORLDVIEWS IN PHILOSOPHY -- Introduction -- Thomas Aquinas -- The first battle front -- René Descartes -- John Locke -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- Karl Marx -- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- The second battle front -- Jeremy Bentham -- Charles Darwin -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- John Dewey -- Jean-Paul Sartre -- III. WORLDVIEWS IN LITERATURE -- Introduction -- The (...) third battle front -- William Shakespeare -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Mark Twain -- Ernest Hemingway & John Steinbeck -- IV. WORLDVIEWS IN CULTURE -- Pandora's machine -- Glossary -- List of images. (shrink)

Writing in 1978, on the eve of Thatcherism’s political triumph, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (Hall et al., 2013, p. 193) claimed Britain was experiencing a ‘crisis of hegemony’; a political, e...

The volume's topic is a comparative analysis of the main authors and social groups who were engaged with the reception of hellenistic philosophy at Rome. It studies in which way their specific approach to philosophy can be explained by their Roman cultural and intellectual background. Thus the volume designs philosophical and cultural criteria to be common to the philosophical activities of Romans and make them discernible as specifically Roman.

It is claimed that Hegel denies the possibility of a modern epic and that his lectures on aesthetics demand the condemnation of all the art of his own time. I use the available student transcripts of his lectures on aesthetics, in conjunction with Lukács's views on the novel, to show that Hegel suggests that the novel might count as a modern epic and that it may perform a significant function in modern ethical life (Sittlichkeit) as presented in his own philosophy (...) of right. While Hegel raises questions concerning the possibility of a modern epic, he also presents the novel with a task that Lukács's interpretation of Balzac's Illusions perdues shows the novel is able to fulfill. This becomes evident when we consider Hegel's remarks on the novel in connection with his theory of civil society. (shrink)

This book argues that the negotiation of agency is central not only to the experience of war but also to its representation in cultural expressions, ranging from a notion of disablement, expressed in victimization, immobilization, traumatization, and death, to enablement, expressed in the perpetration of heroic, courageous, skillful, and powerful actions of assertion and dominance. In order to illustrate this thesis, it provides a comprehensive analysis of literary representations of the American War of Independence from 1775, the beginning of the (...) war, up until roughly 1860, when the Civil War marked a decisive historical turning point. As the first national war, it has an unquestionably exemplary status for the development of American conceptions of war. The in-depth study of exemplary texts from a variety of genres and by authors like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Sedgwick, William Gilmore Simms, and Herman Melville, demonstrates that the overall character of Revolutionary War literature presents the war as a forum in which collective and individual agency is expressed, defended, and cultivated. It uses the military environment in order to teach the values of discipline and self-subordination to a communal good, which are perceived as basic principles of a Republican virtue to guide the actions of the autonomous individual in a popular democracy. (shrink)

Patrick Fessenbecker is Assistant Professor in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara. Reading Ideas in Victorian Literature is his first monograph and constitutes a substantial development of the argument he introduced in ‘In Defense of Paraphrase’, the essay that won New Literary History’s Ralph W. Cohen Prize in 2013. The purpose of the book is twofold: to problematize the formalist approach that has achieved hegemony in contemporary literary studies and to offer an alternative way of approaching (...) literary theory and literary criticism, which can be conceived as ‘content formalism’ (p. 29). Fessenbecker provides a humorous but nonetheless accurate summary of his aim as defending the ‘meaning-mongers’ (Joshua Landy’s term) from the ‘form-fetishists’ (p. 17) in order to promote the marginalized tradition of ‘thoughtful reading’ (p. 18). The monograph consists of six chapters bookended by a long introduction and a short epilogue and although it is not divided into parts, two chapters each are devoted to a particular problem with the formalist hegemony in literary studies. The problems are framed in terms of three assumptions that the discipline takes for granted, presented as: form is what makes literature distinctive; the history relevant to literary criticism is the history of form; and aesthetic experience is a property of form. Fessenbecker addresses each of these assumptions by first providing a literary theoretical argument that promotes an alternative approach (Chapters 1, 3, and 5) and then exemplifying that approach by literary critical practice on the novels of Anthony Trollope (Chapter 2) and George Eliot (Chapter 4) and the poetry of Robert Browning and Augusta Webster (Chapter 6). (shrink)

Rawls’s notion of civil disobedience, which still dominates the literature on this subject, comprises at least these three characteristics: it involves breaking the law, is non-violent and public. But implicit in this notion is a certain tension: it shows pessisimism about the proper functioning of the public sphere as earlier normal appeals have failed, but it also displays a certain optimism about its proper functioning as it assumes that civil disobedience may be effective. In my paper I argue that (...) Rawls cannot explain how civil disobedience may be effective as a public appeal for social justice because he does not fully understand what it means for civil disobedience to be public in relation to the public sphere. His analysis would require an additional notion of publicity which, as I argue, is the notion of hermeneutical publicity. From a Bourdieusian perspective I then make a case for the claim that public spheres always suffer from hermeneutic invisibility. This may explain why non-violent appeals for social justice fail as dialogical practices. Finally I suggest how we nevertheless could understand that civil disobedience can be effective as a dialogical practice. (shrink)

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes (...) original scholarly contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

A prominent concern in the literature on the ethics of human enhancement is that unequal access to future technology will exacerbate existing societal inequalities. The philosopher Daniel Wikler has argued that a futuristic cognitively enhanced majority would be justified in restricting the civil liberties of the unenhanced minority population for their own good in the same way that, mutatis mutandis, the cognitively normal majority are now justified in restricting the civil liberties of those deemed to be cognitively incompetent. Contrary (...) to this argument, the author of this manuscript presents and defends The Liberal Argument to Protect Cognitive ‘Normals’. According to this argument, while classical liberalism authorizes the cognitively competent to paternalistically restrict the civil liberties of the cognitively incompetent, classical liberalism does not authorize the cognitively enhanced to paternalistically restrict the civil liberties of the cognitively normal. Two additional arguments are developed in support of The Liberal Argument to Protect Cognitive ‘Normals’. The author of this manuscript concludes by suggesting that classical liberalism could be valuable for protecting the civil liberties of disenfranchised groups in a future in which enhancement technology could exacerbate existing societal inequalities. (shrink)

Analysts of political culture within the "civil religion" tradition have generally assumed that discourse in civil society is structured by a single set of enduring codes based on liberal traditions that actors draw upon to resolve crises. Based on two case studies of national crises and debate in Brazil during its transition to democracy, I challenge this assumption by demonstrating that not only do actors draw upon two distinct but interrelated codes, they actively seek to impose one or another as (...) dominant. In Brazil this is manifest in actors who defend elements from the code of liberty and its valuation of the freestanding citizen, and those who defend the corporate code and its valuation of the collectivity over the individual. In an earlier debate on crime the corporate code was dominant, but in a later debate surrounding presidential improprieties, the liberal code became dominant. This analysis makes two contributions to the literature: it highlights the importance of nonindividualist cultural codes, such as the corporate code, in animating discourse in the public sphere in democratizing societies, raising attention to the importance of the symbolic contestation between actors seeking to establish one or another code during political transitions. Second, it offers a subtle commentary on the literature on democratization: changes in collective representations in the public sphere may not proceed apace of institutional changes and may be contingent on the kinds of crisis events and actors willing to contest previously dominant codes. (shrink)

Anthony Daniels tackles the complex relation between good and bad art on the one hand and good and bad ideas on the other. He contrasts authors or artists whom he considers good with those he considers bad, and tries to explain why his opinion is not merely a matter of individual taste but is based upon reason as well. He argues judgment and discrimination (between good and bad, beautiful and ugly) are intrinsic to any conceivable human existence, indeed to thought (...) itself, and that the pretense that they are avoidable, that one can indefinitely suspend judgment, are merely a means by which bad or false judgments are smuggled into public life. (shrink)

This investigation presents the Civilization Development Curriculum which should impact almost every kind of higher education and particularly should be practiced in educating leaders of world societies. The justification for this plan comes from a historic perspective of education, the state of education at the dawn of the 21st century, and synthesis of learning for work and life, both individually and socially. Then, the civilization approach to education is defined. An example of the civilization development curriculum is (...) offered as well as an octopus strategy for its implementation. (shrink)

Forest Ecosystem Services are widely recognised by the society nowadays. However, no study in the literature has analysed a ranking of FES after the pandemic. This paper investigated civil society’s perception and knowledge toward these services; in addition, the presence of attitudinal or behavioural patterns regarding individual’s preference, was assessed. A choice experiment was conducted using the Best-Worst Scaling method on a sample of 479 individuals intercepted in the Argentera Valley, in the Western Italian Alps. Results, showed a strong (...) interest in biodiversity, aesthetic landscape quality and psychophysical health and a lower interest in provisioning services. Based on the individual preferences, civil society was clustered into five groups for FES, named “Hedonistic,” “Individualist with cultural and health interests,” “Sensitive to regulatory and utilitarian functions,” “Climate change sensitive” and “Livelihood and hedonistic wellbeing.” In general, there was a growing appreciation by civil society for the intangible services offered by the forest, driven by modern lifestyles and an interest in learning more about the provided services. Based on these elements, we believe that similar research should be extended to other mountain contexts to validate the results or to find new insights, and that it is now necessary to study how to involve civil society in decision-making processes of forest planning and management at a local level. (shrink)

Although scholars have long been interested in the relationships among civil society, the state and the market in advanced industrial democracies, the implications of state disengagement from the affairs of private firms for civil society have yet to be explored in the contemporary literature. My purpose in this essay has been to address this issue by examining the effects of deregulation on Japanese consumer society, paying particular attention to how legislative and bureaucratic changes in the wake of regulatory reform (...) have affected consumer relations with business and, more significantly, state actors. (shrink)

This paper defines a quantitative model of civilization wisdom potential in terms of its wisdom capacity potential and wisdom activity potential. Four minds such as the Basic, Whole, Global, and Universal ones are defined and their wisdom potential is assessed for eight particular civilizations, such as Western, Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, and African. In conclusion the study states that civilization wisdom should be applied in almost every facet of civilization and its future depends on (...) class='Hi'>civilization wisdom. (shrink)

This article is a speculative review of psychology’s approach to the cultural and civilizational determinants of the development of human identity. It discusses the relation between human freedom and necessity as it is determined by culture and its alternative suggestions concerning normative human existence. As his point of departure the author adopted Feliks Koneczny’s quincunx philosophy of history together with its five basic categories of existence. One can try to transpose these categories into the factors which constitute human intra-psychic space (...) and also into measures of description of the mechanics of human behavior. Attention is drawn to the fact that, in this context, the axiological shortcomings of psychology are exposed, especially the deliberate refusal to evaluate behavior in terms of good and evil or the exclusion of ethics, moral obligations, conscience and responsibility from psychological discourse. (shrink)

This article is a speculative review of psychology’s approach to the cultural and civilizational determinants of the development of human identity. It discusses the relation between human freedom and necessity as it is determined by culture and its alternative suggestions concerning normative human existence. As his point of departure the author adopted Feliks Koneczny’s quincunx philosophy of history together with its five basic categories of existence. One can try to transpose these categories into the factors which constitute human intra-psychic space (...) and also into measures of description of the mechanics of human behavior. Attention is drawn to the fact that, in this context, the axiological shortcomings of psychology are exposed, especially the deliberate refusal to evaluate behavior in terms of good and evil or the exclusion of ethics, moral obligations, conscience and responsibility from psychological discourse. (shrink)

On the Horizon of World Literature compares literary texts from asynchronous periods of incipient literary modernity in different parts of the world: Romantic England and Republican China. These moments were oriented alike by "world literature" as a discursive framework of classifications that connected and re-organized local articulations of literary histories and literary modernities. World literature thus provided-and continues to provide-a condition of possibility for conversation between cultures as well as for their mutual provincialization. The book offers readings (...) of a selection of literary forms that serve also as textual sites for the enactment of new socio-political forms of life. The literary manifesto, the tale collection, the familiar essay, and the domestic novel function as testing grounds for questions of both literary-aesthetic and socio-political importance: What does it mean to attain a voice? What is a common reader? How does one dwell in the ordinary? What is a woman? In different languages and activating heterogeneous literary and philosophical traditions, works by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lu Xun, Charles and Mary Lamb, Lin Shu, Zhou Zuoren, Jane Austen, and Eileen Chang explore the far-from-settled problem of what it means to be modern in different lifeworlds. Sun's book brings to light the disciplinary-historical impact world literature has had in shaping literary traditions and practices around the world. The book renews the practice of close reading by offering the model of a deprovincialized close reading loosened from confinement within monocultural hermeneutic circles. By means of its own focus on England and China, the book provides methods useful for comparatists working between other Western and non-Western languages. It establishes the critical significance of Romanticism for the discipline of literary studies and opens up new paths of research in global Romanticism and global nineteenth-century studies. And it offers a new approach to analyzing the cosmopolitan character of the literary and cultural transformations of early twentieth-century China. (shrink)

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, Méré, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion of (...) 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general. (shrink)

The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization, Frederick M. Smith, 13 illus., pp. xxvii+701, $60.00/£35, ISBN: 0-231-13748-6.

This monograph considers the challenges of science globalization, new trends of development in global studies and globalistics boosted by application of the evolutionary approach. Evolutionary globalistics focuses on the study of development and co-evolution of global processes and systems, and on their synergistic systemic phenomenon - global development. The concept of evolutionary globalistics is defined in the context of the universal (global) evolutionism and in terms of transition to new safer forms of civilization development and of interaction of (...) class='Hi'>civilization with the nature of the Earth and Space. Special emphasis is placed on methods and approaches used in globalistics, as well as to spatio-temporal expansion of global studies. The evolution of globalistics itself is analyzed, including the development of such areas as political globalistics, legal globalistics, information globalistics, futuroglobalistics, nooglobalistics, cosmoglobalistics and other. Target audience: experts, lecturers, students, post-graduate students, a wide range of readers interested in the issues of globalistics and global studies. (shrink)

Fanny Bré was a volunteer nurse in the International Brigades, who fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) on the side of the democratically elected Republican government. The objective of this study is to understand the relationship between Bré's antifascist ideas, her conception of care and the activities she carried out in the Spanish hospitals of Casa Roja (Murcia), Villa Paz (Selices, Cuenca) and Vic (Barcelona). We use narrative biography to describe Bré's personal, political and professional trajectory. To do so, (...) we conducted a content analysis of primary sources archived in Spain, Russia and France and secondary sources that emerged from a thorough literature review. We identified three thematic axes: (1) a concept of nursing in the service of the antifascist struggle, (2) nursing activity for high‐quality care and (3) political action for improving hospital organisation and care. The interest of Bré's texts transcends the war in Spain because, in them, Bré questions the neutrality of care by revealing that care can itself be a political act. (shrink)

This study analyzes a series of complex, ambivalent literary responses to the decades of civil turmoil in seventeenth-century England that simultaneously demanded public commitment and prompted private withdrawal. From their various perspectives the Royalist writers raised in the humanist tradition are shown to appreciate anew the value of patient fortitude.

In this contribution, Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen’s Populism and Civil Society is confronted with current gender studies research on populism. This research mainly focuses on right-wing populism and highlights strong links between right-wing populists and the religious right, which are to a large degree organized by “anti-gender,” a stance both against social constructivist notions of gender and against basic gender rights, especially in the fields of reproduction and of LGBTIQ concerns. Against the backdrop of this literature, I argue (...) that in Populism and Civil Society, right-wing populist anti-gender politics are not addressed in a way that takes account of their full complexity; and that these politics furthermore suggest to treat right-wing populism and left-wing populism as phenomena that do not only differ in content, but also in form. (shrink)

Homo sapiens is a mammal of the order Primates. What most distinguishes primates from other mammals is their ability to cerebrate. Cerebration developed fastest among the Anthropoidea primates , and subsequently the hominids . The increase in brain mass only by Homo sapiens—and only over the past 10,000 years—possess superior Darwinian fitness: for the preceding 30 million years primates had played a rather marginal role in the world’s biological system.Homo sapiens’ success as the creator of developed civilization was possible (...) only thanks to his special adaptation capabilities, shaped by natural selection at the dawn of his existence.Primates first appeared in the Oligocene about 30 million years ago, and the first two-legged anthropoid, Australopithecus, about 6.5–5.7 million years ago. The transition from Australopithecus to the species we call Homo was in many ways an evolutionary milestone. Australopithecus was exclusively herbivorous and formed neither organized communities nor settlements. His successor, Homo erectus, on the other hand, possessed heretofore unknown skills like hunting and gathering, which considerably influenced both his lifestyle and his diet—he increasingly ate meat from cadavers or animals he had killed himself. Fossil remains of Homo erectus dating back two million years have been unearthed throughout Africa, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Europe.Homo sapiens derives from the rather small Homo erectus population in East Africa and has been the earth’s only hominid for a relatively short time about 10,000 years ago before he still shared his world with Neanderthal man and the diminutive Homo floresiensis.Despite racial differences there is surprisingly little variation in the human genome. We are all 99 percent genetically alike, moreover genome variations do not correlate to skin color.Homo sapiens’ hunter-gatherer lifestyle led him to seek solutions which today find application only in human communities. In time his biological capabilities were enriched by the skill of speech, this in turn helping to develop creativity, self-awareness, a sense of dignity, and group, ethnic and national loyalty, eventually leading to the emergence of religion as a path to life’s fundamental truths and an antidote to the everpresent fear of death.The Neolithic Revolution began about 10,000 years ago. Several thousand years later the evolution of farming and breeding led to the emergence of the first civilizations. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture changed radically not only economic and social structures but, as speech developed, helped form civilizations and cultures.Over the past 2000 years humanity has changed the global environment but has itself remained unchanged in heritability. The awareness that despite all racial, ethnic, cultural, or linguistic differences we belong to an exceptionally homogeneous species, can be an inspiration for humanity to strive towards a universal civilization in which all these differences could be contained. (shrink)

Through mystery, literature reveals to us the Great Unknown. While we are absorbed by the matters at hand with the present enactment of our life, groping for clues to handle them, it is through literature that we discover the hidden strings underlying their networks. Hence our fascination with literature. But there is more. The creative act of the human being, its proper focus, holds the key to the Sezam of life: to the great metaphysical/ontopoietic questions which (...) class='Hi'>literature may disclose. First, it leads us to the sublimal grounds of transformation in the human soul, source of the specifically human significance of life (Analecta Husserliana, Volume III, XIX, XXIII, XXVII) Second, it leads us to the unveiling of the hidden workings of life in the twilight of knowing in a dialectic between The Visible and the Invisible, (Volume LXXV, 2002, Analecta Husserliana) down to the ontopoietic truth. (Volume LXXVI, 2002, Analecta Husserliana) This prying into the unknown which provokes the human being as he or she attempts to conquer, step by step, a space of existence, finds its culmination in the phenomenon of mystery as the subject of the present collection. Its formulation brings us to the greatest question of all: the enigmatic solidarity -in-distinctiveness of human cognition and existence. Papers are written by: Tony E. Afejuku, Gary Backhaus, Paul G. Beidler, Matthew J. Duffy, Raffaela Giovagnoli, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Matti Itkonen, Lawrence Kimmel, Catherine Malloy, Vladimir L. Marchenkov, Nancy Mardas, Howard Pearce, Bernadette Prochaska, Victor Gerald Rivas, M.J. Sahlani, Dennis Skocz, Jadwiga S. Smith, Mara Stafecka, Max Statkiewicz, Mariola Sulkowska, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Leon U. Weinman, Tim Weiss. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.