The German term `Mitteleuropa' was coined to designate Central Europe at the time when the Habsburg monarchy exercised its domination over the Danube area and when the Eastern borders of the Reich proclaimed in 1871 were formed, thus from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the First World War. Mitteleuropa constitutes an ambivalent `lieu de mémoire', a notion in which Central Europe has invested its memory of the past and its identity: such a notion is negative (...) when it brings to mind the mental map of German imperialism both exploited and perverted in the Third Reich; it is positive when it is interpreted as a federative idea, opening supranational perspectives associating the countries of German culture with Slavic peoples — the Hungarians, the Romanians — and with the Jews. Since the formation of the `Habsburg myth' as a retrospective utopia of a defunct harmony of nationalities in the `third Europe' situated between Western Europe and the Russian world, the Austrian tradition has become the focus of the new notion of `Zentraleuropa', prefiguring Central European union. (shrink)

Is the sky open to us? -- A brief history of space ethics -- Icarus -- Cloud riders -- The spaceship Earth -- A threatening sky -- The greater Earth -- Exploration -- Invaders -- The place of humans.

Chemero's concept of sensorimotor empathy offers a relevant introduction to the study of human/non-human relationships. This article proposes an empirical characterization of this phenomenon occurring in human–horse interactions through the notion of 'contact', which is a core concept in the technical tradition of the equestrian world. According to the assumptions of 4E cognition, we approach the notion of contact with a broader meaning than how it is usually defined, i.e.as the connection of the rider's hand with the horse's mouth. We (...) state that contact involves the whole body and that it is not a passive touch but a dynamic one. Contact is intersubjective, meaning that its quality depends on the two agents of the interaction: the human and the horse. Within such an interaction, sensorimotor empathy allows the human and the horse to understand through the body and to fine-tune with each other to bring about 'good contact'. (shrink)

This guest column marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Jacques Derrida. The journal in which it appears, Common Knowledge, was not especially receptive to deconstruction during Derrida's lifetime, but Lesley Chamberlain in retrospect sees reasons to reconsider his role in intellectual history now. The delicacy of Derrida's mission, she argues, has been misunderstood. He is best placed in the company not of the “deconstructionists” who thought to follow in his footsteps but, rather, in the company of the (...) moralistic and theologically minded German philosophers and thinkers who inspired him, from Kant and Hegel to Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. A personal fear of being pinned down, coupled with his tragic Jewish witness to a philosophical quest for certainty gone astray, led the “Sad Rider,” one of many possible Derridas, to want to “erase” as much as he wanted to write — despite which, he was not spared being turned into an industry. (shrink)

"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty (...) years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

Technological innovation in general, and nanotechnology development in particular, happens often disconnected from people and places where these technologies eventually play out. Over the last decade, a diversity of approaches have been proposed and developed to engage people in the innovation process of nanotechnology much earlier than in their conventional role as consumers. Such “upstream” engagements are conducted at stages when nanotechnology products and services are still amenable to reframing and modification. These engagement efforts have enhanced technological literacy among stakeholders (...) and the general public. Yet, there is still potential for other types of impacts by leveraging links between nanotechnology and people’s everyday experiences. The present study explores a novel approach for participatory nanotechnology assessment and design, called Collaborative On-site Technology Exploration. The approach allows nanoscale scientists and engineers to explore nanotechnologies where they matter to people and places. We conducted a series of COTEs in the Gateway district in Phoenix addressing community challenges of renewable energy supply, water contamination, and public health issues. COTEs are proposed as a step toward bringing together nanoscale scientists and engineers and community stakeholders in need for solutions to urban challenges. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany texts in the Epicurean tradition mention gratitude but do not explicitly explain its function in Epicurean ethics. I review passages that mention or discuss gratitude and ingratitude a...

In the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read "Writing and Difference," the classic introduction.

"In this densely imbricated volume Derrida pursues his devoted, relentless dismantling of the philosophical tradition, the tradition of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger--each dealt with in one or more of the essays. There are essays too on linguistics (Saussure, Benveniste, Austin) and on the nature of metaphor ("White Mythology"), the latter with important implications for literary theory. Derrida is fully in control of a dazzling stylistic register in this book--a source of true illumination for those prepared to follow his (...) arduous path. Bass is a superb translator and annotator. His notes on the multilingual allusions and puns are a great service."--Alexander Gelley, Library Journal. (shrink)

AbeBooks.com: The Technological Society.

In Plato's Lysis, Socrates' conversation with Lysis features logical fallacies and questionable premises and closes with a blatantly eristic trick. I show how the form and content of these arguments make sense if we interpret them from the perspective of Socrates' pedagogical goals. Lysis is a competitive teenager who, along with his friend Menexenus, enjoys the game of eristic disputation. Socrates recognizes Lysis' predilections, and he constructs his arguments to engage Lysis' interests and loves, while also drawing the boy into (...) thinking philosophically about the issues that the arguments raise about love, freedom, and happiness. (shrink)

Georges Le Rider, Les deux monnaies macédoniennes des années 323-294/290 p. 491-500 Après la mort d'Alexandre en 323, deux monnaies furent émises parallèlement en Macédoine jusqu'en 294-290 : des alexandres et des philippes en or et en argent. On a expliqué ce double monnayage par des raisons commerciales (les peuples des Balkans auraient été très attachés aux philippes) ou par des raisons politiques (propagande en faveur de Philippe III). Dans cet article, l'accent est mis sur une explication de caractère fiscal. (...) Pour recueillir des revenus procurés normalement par la frappe d'un monnayage local, les autorités macédoniennes auraient émis des philippes (monnaie macédonienne par excellence, d'usage interne) parallèlement aux alexandres (monnaie internationale, réservée aux relations avec l'extérieur). (shrink)

These two lectures by Jacques Derrida, 'Foreigner Question: Come from Abroad' and 'Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality', derive from a series of seminars on 'hospitality' conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. 'Invitation' by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left clarifying and inflecting Derrida's 'response' on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the 'hospitality' under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching. The book also characteristically combines (...) careful readings of canonical texts and philosophical topics with attention to the most salient events in the contemporary world, using 'hospitality' as a means of rethinking a range of political and ethical situations. For example, Antigone is revisited in light of the question of impossible mourning; the trial of Socrates is brought into conjunction with the televised funeral of François Mitterrand. (shrink)

Ce livre est donc voué à la bizarrerie. Mais c'est qu'à accorder tout son soin à l'écriture, il la soumet à une réévaluation radicale. Et les voies sont nécessairement extravagantes lorsqu'il importe d'excéder, pour en penser la possibilité, ce qui se donne pour la logique elle-même - celle qui doit déterminer les rapports de la parole et de l'écriture en se rassurant dans l'évidence du sens commun, dans les catégories de 'représentation' ou 'd'image', dans l'opposition du dedans et du dehors, (...) du plus et du moins, de l'essence et de l'apparence, de l'originaire et du dérivé. Analysant les investissements dont notre culture a chargé le signe écrit, Jacques Derrida en démontre aussi les effets les plus actuels et parfois les plus inaperçus. Cela n'est possible que par un déplacement systématique des concepts - on ne saurait en effet répondre à la question 'qu'est-ce que l'écriture?' par un appel de style 'phénoménologique' à quelque expérience sauvage, immédiate, spontanée. L'interprétation occidentale de l'écriture commande tous les champs de l'expérience, de la pratique et du savoir, et jusqu'à la forme ultime de la question ('qu'est-ce que?') qu'on croit pouvoir libérer de cette prise. L'histoire de cette interprétation n'est pas celle d'un préjugé déterminé, d'une erreur localisée, d'une limite accidentelle. Elle forme une structure finie mais nécessaire dans le mouvement qui se trouve ici reconnu sous le nom de différance. (shrink)

II est proposé d'attribuer à Antiochos II et à l'atelier de Mylasa l'émission monétaire WSM 1468, qui avait été classée par E.T. Newell à Antiochos III et à l'atelier de Bargylia. Une indication chronologique est donnée par le trésor de Hija e Korbit, récemment découvert en Albanie. Quant au symbole d'Artémis Kindyas, qui avait entraîné l'attribution à Bargylia, les alexandres où il apparaît semblent être originaires de Mylasa.

Antiochos IV (175-164), dans la seconde partie de son règne, a diminué de moitié le poids du chalque, le portant à 4 g environ et instaurant entre l'argent monnayé et le bronze monnayé un rapport voisin de 1 à 50. Un peu plus tard Alexandre Bala (150-145), à Ecbatane, diminua de nouveau de moitié le poids du chalque, qui passa de 4 g à 2 g, si bien que le rapport argent monnayé/bronze monnayé s'établit autour de 1 à 25. J'ai (...) cherché à déterminer quelle pouvait être à cette époque la valeur commerciale du bronze (l'inscription d'Athènes IG³ 472 fournit à cet égard une précieuse indication), de façon à mieux apprécier la part de valeur fiduciaire qui entrait chez les Séleucides dans la valeur d'une monnaie de bronze. Je me suis interrogé aussi sur les raisons qui avaient pu inciter Antiochos IV à modifier le poids du chalque. (shrink)

Η απόδοση στα Μύλασα μιας έκδοσης τετραδράχμων και δραχμών, που έφεραν ως σύμβολο την εικόνα της Αρτέμιδας Κινδύας, βασίστηκε στην ταύτιση του συμβόλου αυτού με ανάλογο πάνω σε μια δραχμή του Αλεξάνδρου, σύμφωνα με πρόταση της M. Thompson. Όμως, επειδή οι φωτογραφίες δείχνουν ότι το σύμβολο της Αρτέμιδας Κινδύας δεν είναι πράγματι το ίδιο με εκείνο του εν λόγω νομίσματος, η υπόθεση για την απόδοση του στο μυλασιακό εργαστήριο παραμένει πιθανή, αλλά αναμένει την επιβεβαίωση της.

Cleomenes of Naucratis (d. ca. 322) never ceases to intrigue historians. Did he, under Alexander, usurp the functions of the satrap of Egypt? Was he a financial genius? Did he revolutionise the Mediterranean corn trade? Did he play a decisive role in the establishment of a monetary economy in Egypt? These questions have received contradictory answers. This paper is an endeavour to restate them.

Présentation de deux octadrachmes d'or, qui montrent au droit les portraits géminés d'un tout jeune roi, Antiochos, et d'une reine, dont l'effigie est placée au premier plan. On peut considérer que ce jeune Antiochos est un fils de Séleucos IV, qui disparut le 3 septembre 175, victime d'Héliodore. Après un règne de quelques semaines, il fut peut-être adopté et nommé co-régent par Antiochos IV, puis mis à mort par ce dernier en 170. La reine représentée sur les deux octadrachmes ne (...) peut être que la mère du jeune souverain, Laodice, qu'on peut identifier comme la fille d'Antiochos III et la femme d'Antiochos l'aîné, de Séleucos IV et d'Antiochos IV, ses frères. Commentaire des deux portraits géminés et réflexions sur le monnayage relativement abondant du jeune Antiochos. (shrink)

Dans les traités conclus avec les Étoliens en 189 et avec Antiochos III en 188, les Romains exigent d'être payés en monnaies d'argent d'aussi bonne qualité que la monnaie d'Athènes, universellement connue. La quantité de métal monnayé est également précisée, dans le premier traité en talents euboïques, dans le second en talents de 80 livres romaines, qui sont des unités équivalentes. Les Romains réclament expressément d'être payés, pour tout ou du moins une large part de l'indemnité, non en monnaies d'or (...) mais en monnaies d'argent, car ce sont elles qui constituaient le moyen habituel des échanges. La ratio or/argent prescrite est de 1 : 10, respectant le taux courant à l'époque dans cette partie du monde grec. (shrink)

Publication de 94 monnaies pré-romaines trouvées dans la fouille de Bassit en Syrie. La présence d'un grand nombre d'exemplaires d'une émission de petits bronzes d'Alexandre qui ne peut être attribuée à un atelier connu de la région conduit à suggérer que cette émission a été frappée à Posideion, le port situé au pied du tell de Bassit. Parmi les 94 monnaies se trouve en outre un bronze très rare de Posideion, qui montre au droit le Baal de Tarse, au revers (...) Poséidon, et qui a été frappé soit avant l'arrivée d'Alexandre, soit peu après sa mort. Les autres sont des monnaies d'Athènes, d'Arados, d'Antigone Monophtalmos (?), des Séleucides, des Ptolémées, de Séleucie de Piérie, de Bérytos, d'Alexandre Jannée, de Séleucie du Calycadnos, de Byzance ; quatre pièces n'ont pu être identifiées. (shrink)

Les émissions monétaires en argent des Séleucides en Coelé Syrie et en Phénicie, après la conquête de la province en 200, ne manquent pas de surprendre. Antiochos III n'y frappa pas de monnaies en ce métal. Ses premiers successeurs ouvrirent un atelier à Antioche-Aké-Ptolémaïs, mais les tétradrachmes de poids attique, aux types séleucides habituels, qu'ils y produisirent ne circulèrent pas dans la province, comme en témoignent les trésors. Pendant la lre moitié du 11e siècle, le numéraire lagide continua d'être utilisé. (...) À partir de 150, Alexandre Bala et les rois suivants frappèrent dans plusieurs ateliers un monnayage d'aspect inattendu : des espèces au portrait et au nom du roi séleucide, mais de poids lagide et montrant au revers l'aigle ptolémaïque sur un foudre. Cette étude cherche à expliquer les raisons d'un tel comportement, qui eut pour effet de laisser monétairement la Coelé Syrie et la Phénicie à l'écart des autres provinces du royaume. (shrink)

Un groupe de tétradrachmes et de drachmes d'Antiochos VIII Êpiphane pose un problème de classement, car le visage du roi est différent de ses autres portraits et le type de revers (Tyché debout tenant une corne d'abondance et une barre de gouvernail) est nouveau dans la numismatique séleucide. On a montré que ces monnaies n'avaient pas été émises à Tripolis, comme on l'avait cru parfois, mais à Antioche, et qu'elles avaient été frappées en 128, trois années avant la date considérée (...) jusqu'à présent comme celle de l'accession d'Antiochos VIII à la royauté. Cette brève émission aurait lieu dans les semaines qui précédèrent l'usurpation d'Alexandre II Zabinas. (shrink)

A penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man.

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." These are the first words of Jacques Derrida's lecture on Heidegger. It is again a question of Nazism--of what remains to be thought through of Nazism in general and of Heidegger's Nazism in particular. It is also "politics of spirit" which at the time people thought--they still want to today--to oppose to the inhuman. "Derrida's ruminations should intrigue anyone interested in Post-Structuralism. . . . . This study of Heidegger (...) is a fine example of how Derrida can make readers of philosophical texts notice difficult problems in almost imperceptible details of those texts."--David Hoy, London Review of Books "Will a more important book on Heidegger appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit. . . . Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style."--David Farrell Krell, Research in Phenomenology "The analysis of Heidegger is brilliant, provocative, elusive."--Peter C. Hodgson, Religious Studies Review. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Breaking EarthAlexis Rider (bio) and Paul A. Harris (bio)“He takes all that, the strata and the magma and the people and the power, in his imaginary hands. Everything. He holds it. He is not alone. The earth is with him. Then he breaks it.”― N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth SeasonBreaking Earth, a collection of visual and written essays brought together for this special issue of SubStance, is a disruptive (...) engagement with concepts and terms that have become touchstones for the geologic/planetary turn in the inhumanities. The project took initial inspiration in conversations the co-editors had about N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, in which geologic and human power interweave in complex webs among bodies born of chiasmic crossings of Anthro-progeny and Geo-orogeny. Conceived as a companion almanac to Jemisin’s trilogy—though references to that work are intentionally oblique—the volume pursues new ways of reading, and being with, the geos of this planet. In doing so, Breaking Earth seeks to reframe and deepen the discussions, both historical and philosophical, around the relationship between geology and humanity.The notion of the Anthropocene has, for several decades, monopolized said discussions. Since its articulation in the early 2000s, the concept has been equal parts galvanizing and problematic in thinking with the Earth (Crutzen). Proposed by an atmospheric chemist, incorporated (with caveats) into the geologic deep time of the planet by geologists, and taken up with vigor by humanists, social scientists, and artists, the Anthropocene has, for better or worse, broken significant new ground in Earth-oriented thought.The term’s core proposals—that humans are a geologic force and we have entered a wholly new period of Earth history—has compelled scholars to engage with a geologic tradition of mapping and classifying the history of said forces along a temporal scale. This tradition—exemplified in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC) below (Figure 1)—relies on the translation of messiness and difference into abstracted orderly categories of strata and type. Of course, no geologist would claim that the ICC is a direct representation of the materiality of the rocky Earth we live on, so full of faults, fissures, and unconformities. But as writers, [End Page 3] artists, and activists have made clear, the repositioning of humans-as-strata is far riskier than imposing abstract order on a cliff face: it dangerously flattens out the messiness of human history and difference—obfuscating the uneven histories of extraction and oppression to which the mining of geophysical energies and resources is so clearly bound. The Anthropocene has therefore helped reveal the immense pitfalls of conflating a species with the geologic, and made clear the need for humanists—both within the academy and beyond—to develop a language and method for thinking about the changing Earth. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC), International Commission on Stratigraphy, 2023, www.stratigraphy.org.At the same time, the very act of attempting to identify the Anthropocene within stratigraphic nomenclature has usefully challenged old and brittle binaries. Contemporary rhetoric around how to conceive of change—backed often by disciplinary boundary-keeping—exemplifies such divisions. Take, for example, the grammatical distinction between political, social forces and physical, environmental forcings (Hulme). These seemingly inane suffixes recast agency and allow the natural and social worlds to exist in two separate spheres (albeit ones that overlap via extraction) where human action is more wholly filled with intent. Breaking this distinction via a reconceptualization of geologic agency underpins [End Page 4] what scholars, including Pratik Chakrabarti and Kathryn Yusoff, have been articulating so clearly: rocks have politics. To unpack this carefully and fully, however, requires moving beyond the collapse of anthropos into geos: there is too much texture, history, and action lost in such a sweeping and simple formulation.This collection takes these problematics of the Anthropocene as self-evident: it critically engages with the chronostratigraphic logic that implicitly upholds a view of time, history, and knowledge which operationalizes the extractive carbon capital economies fueled by colonialism and slavery. This assertion bears emphasizing, given the announcement from the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) in the summer of 2023 that the origin of... (shrink)

Significant efforts have been made to define ethical responsibilities for professionals engaged in nanotechnology innovation. Rosalyn Berne delineated three ethical dimensions of nanotechnological innovation: non-negotiable concerns, negotiable socio-cultural claims, and tacitly ingrained norms. Braden Allenby demarcated three levels of responsibility: the individual, professional societies (e.g. engineering codes), and the macro-ethical. This article will explore how these definitions of responsibility map onto practitioners’ understanding of their responsibilities and the responsibilities of others using the nanotechnology innovation community of the greater Phoenix area, (...) which includes academic researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, insurers, attorneys, buyers, and media. To do this we develop a three-by-three matrix that combines Berne’s three dimensions and Allenby’s three levels. We then categorize the ethical responsibilities expressed by forty-five practitioners in semi-structured interviews using these published dimensions and levels. Two questions guide the research: (i) what responsibilities do actors express as theirs and/or assign to other actors and; (ii) can those responsibilities be mapped to the presented ethical frameworks? We found that most of the responsibilities outlined by our respondents concentrate at the professional society + non-negotiable and professional + negotiable intersections. The study moves from a philosophical exploration of ethics to an empirical analysis, exploring strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the existing nanotechnology innovation network. This opens the door for new practitioners to be introduced in an effort to address responsibilities that are not currently recognized. (shrink)

Authors and printers together created the New Book of Nature—the printed literature of science—in early modern Europe. Careful attention has been given in recent years to the development of literary and rhetorical techniques in science. This article proposes that these developments were linked to printing technology and the typographic culture that produced the early printed book of science. We focus on several cases in which the roles of author and printer-publisher were joined and thereby highlight connections between knowledge production and (...) reproduction during the Scientific Revolution. Examples include Regiomontanus, Tycho Brake, Galileo, William Leybourn, Joseph Moxon, and the collective practices and privileges of the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

"The four essays in this volume constitute Derrida's most explicit and sustained reflection on the art work as pictorial artifact, a reflection partly by way of philosophical aesthetics (Kant, Heidegger), partly by way of a commentary on art works and art scholarship (Van Gogh, Adami, Titus-Carmel). The illustrations are excellent, and the translators, who clearly see their work as both a rendering and a transformation, add yet another dimension to this richly layered composition. Indispensable to collections emphasizing art criticism and (...) aesthetics."--Alexander Gelley, Library Journal. (shrink)