Adopting modal logic the doctrine of the primacy of Christ is defined and defended in relation to the Thomistic – Scotistic debates over the primary and efficient causes of the incarnation. This leads to a defence of the Scotistic thesis and a reserved affirmation for the Scotistic hypothesis that there would have been an incarnation irrespective of the fall. This hypothesis is tested by reference to the work of four recent theologians, Thomas Weinandy O.F.M. cap., Karl Barth, J¨urgen Moltmann, and (...) Thomas Torrance. Finally, a sketch describ-ng another possible-world incarnation that builds upon the Scotistic hypothesis is provided. (shrink)

Part I. The architectonic nature of Torrance's scientific Christian dogmatics : essays on method. Who is Thomas Forsyth Torrance? -- Scientific theology : an theological science -- Natural theology : and a theology of nature -- Realist theology : and theological realism -- Part II. Select themes within Torrance's theological oeuvre : essays on content. Mystical theology : reading Torrance as a mystical theologian sui generis -- Integrative theology : God, world, humanity -- Christocentric theology : the fallen humanity of (...) the Son of God -- Postscript: Torrance for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

International documents on ethical conduct in clinical research have in common the principle that potential harms to research participants must be proportional to anticipated benefits. The anticipated benefits that can justify human research consist of direct benefits to the research participant, and societal benefits, also called social value. In first-in-human research, no direct benefits are expected and the benefit component of the risks-benefit assessment thus merely exists in social value. The concept social value is ambiguous by nature and is used (...) in numerous ways in the research ethics literature. Because social value justifies involving human participants, especially in early human trials, this is problematic. (shrink)

Let Rhoda Speak Again: Identity, Uncertainty, and Authority in Virginia Woolf's The Waves Performing a rereading of Virginia Woolf's 1931 experimental modernist masterpiece of The Waves, in this article I focus on the elusive and conflicted character of Rhoda, whose significance has been either overlooked or marginalized in the available criticism of the narrative. By pointing out a number of problems in the existing scholarship devoted to Rhoda, I propose to define her as a transgressive figure of uncertainty through which (...) Woolf develops a critique of the unitary self. My point of departure for the following essay is Toril Moi's perspective on Woolf's oeuvre as openly feminist and deconstructive. Consequently, I begin with Moi's emphasis on Woolf's commitment to the problematization of the Western male humanism's underlying concept of the unitary self. Drawing from a number of critical and philosophical perspectives, I turn to Kim L. Worthington's idea of subjectivity as a sustained process of interpersonal narrativization in order to offer a more nuanced account of Rhoda's identity as compound and implicated in the dynamics of inter-subjective processes. I also consider Rhoda's much criticized rejection of identity vis-à-vis Woolf's strategy of impersonality, and, contrasting it with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concepts of the flesh and anonymous existence, I contend that Rhoda renounces the unitary selfhood, which corroborates Moi's critique of Woolf. Through a close analysis of Rhoda's position versus the other characters, as well as by examining how Rhoda's ego boundaries are delineated in the narrative, I demonstrate that Woolf's conflicted heroine emerges as an astute critic of gendered reality, since she is the one who most acutely feels the dualistic nature of selfhood and it is chiefly through her that Woolf points to the need to overcome this dualism. Shannon Sullivan's feminist revision of the Merleau-Pontian perspective on the anonymity and the body as well as the Deweyan notion of transactionality further helps to elucidate the ways in which Rhoda's experimental and subversive discourse engages in a polemic with the Cartesian conceptualization of identity presupposed on the dualism of mind and body simultaneously inquiring about a possibility of a non-dualistic and non-unitary conception of subjectivity. As a consequence, Rhoda gains authority and agency through uncertainty which prompts her to adopt an uncompromisingly and insistently questioning stance. Finally, I suggest reconsidering Rhoda's suicide as a metaphorical act of ‘distancing,’ as discussed by Zygmunt Bauman, via Adorno, in his 2006 Liquid Fear, another context for approaching Rhoda's uncertainty. (shrink)

Teodicea e relazione. La teologia come garanzia di giustizia nella dialettica tra ordine e libero arbitrio. Teodicy and relationship. The theology as guarantee of justice in the dialectics between order and free will.

"Quod habet principium sed caret fine": this idea of the perpetual is expresssed in both the schools and courts of the twelfth-century renaissance. The philosophers conceive the perpetual as intermediate between time and eternity; according to masters of the school of Chartres, moreover, the world itself is perpetual. For the troubadour poets, the perpetual functions rhetorically. The moralist Marcabru treats the personified abstraction as perpetual, continuous in identity yet subject to change, thus achieving a satiric duality of vision. The love (...) poet Bernart de Ventadorn develops a "poetics of perpetuity", using the very tensions and instabilities of fin'amors to fashions ideal and endless courtly worlds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 3-10 [Access article in PDF] Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? Ernesto Laclau Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000. In a recent interview 1 Jacques Rancière opposes his notion of "people" (peuple) 2 to the category of "multitude" as presented by the authors of Empire. As is well known, Rancière differentiates between police and politics, the first being the logic of counting (...) and assigning the population to differential places, and the second the subversion of that differentiating logic through the constitution of an egalitarian discourse which puts into question established identities. "The people" is the specific subject of politics, and this term presupposes a sharp division in the social body which cannot be led back to any kind of immanent unity. Empire, on the contrary, makes immanence its central category and the ultimate ground of the multitude's unity.The main lines of Rancière's critique provide a good starting point for what we have to say about the book. The immanentism of Hardt and Negri would be linked, according to Rancière, to their Nietzschean/Deleuzian ethics of affirmation, which does away with any reactive or negative dimension. Empire would belong, in that respect, to the whole tradition of modern political philosophy, which is profoundly metapolitical: "the kernel of metapolitics is to lead back the precarious artifices of the political scene to the truth of an immanent power which organizes beings in a community and identifies the true community with the grasped and sensible operation of this truth" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 96]. From Hardt and Negri's rejection of any inherent negativity in political subjects, it follows that the power inherent in the multitude has to be a disruptive power, "lodged in all states of domination as its ultimate content, a content destined to destroy all barriers. 'Multitudes' have to be a content whose continent is Empire" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 97]. Disruptive forces operating through a purely immanent movement are what Marxist theory called "productive forces," and there would be, according to Rancière, a strict homology between the place of productive forces and that in which multitudes, as described in Empire, act. Rancière points out that productive forces should not necessarily be understood in any narrow productivist sense: there has been a constant widening of the concept from the strict economism of classical Marxism, to the recent attempts to introduce in it the ensemble of scientific and intellectual abilities, passing through the Leninist attempt to supplement via political intervention a role that productive forces refused to fulfill.I think that Rancière has rightly stressed what I see as the main source of several weaknesses of Empire, including a central one: that within its theoretical framework politics become unthinkable. So I will start from a discussion of its notion of immanence and move later to various other theoretical and political aspects of the book. [End Page 3]Let us start with the authors' discussion of the origins of European modernity. While the usual insistence is on the secularization process, that process would be, "in our view... only a symptom of the primary event of modernity: the affirmation of the powers of this world, the discovery of the plane of immanence. 'Omne ens habet aliquod esse proprium'—every entity has a singular essence. Duns Scotus' affirmation subverts the medieval conception of being as an object of analogical, and thus dualistic predication—a being with one foot in this world and one in a transcendent realm" [Empire 71]. Duns Scotus's insistence on the singularity of being would have initiated an assertion of immanence that the authors describe as a process whose representative names would have been Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Bovillus—other names quoted are Bacon and Occam—and whose point of arrival is Spinoza. "By the time we arrive at Spinoza, in fact, the horizon of immanence and the horizon of the democratic political order coincide completely. The plane of immanence is the one on which the powers of singularity are realized and the one on which the truth of the new... (shrink)

Le contrôle de constitutionnalité, dont la magistrature parlementaire de l’Ancien Régime revendiquait le plein droit, n’était pas fondé uniquement sur les lois fondamentales du royaume, mais sur l’ensemble des principes (« les maximes ») tirés de la « Tradition ». Cette dernière était composée en premier lieu par le droit divin et le droit naturel, c’est-à-dire par des systèmes juridiques qui nécessitaient, tous les deux, une interprétation juridictionnelle ‘sapientiale’. Cette activité interprétative était ‘révélatrice’ d’un corpus de valeurs métaphysiques à laquelle (...) seule la Scientia Juris des magistrats pouvait puiser. Mais dans la sphère de la Tradition juridique rentraient aussi le « dépôt légal », c’est-à-dire l’ensemble de toutes les lois, même des lois ainsi dites « ordinaires », c’est-à-dire celles qui avaient été produites par la simple manifestation de volonté souveraine d’un roi prédécesseur « car tel avait été son plaisir » (moderne formulation du brocarde de droit romain : « quidquid principi placuit legis habet vigorem »). Ainsi la juridiction parlementaire donnait lieu à un jugement de constitutionnalité qui était normalement exercé de manière très flexible par le corps de la magistrature, dépendant des circonstances et des intérêts politiques momentanés des situations juridiques qu’elle voulait protéger. La hiérarchie des normes était ainsi un formidable instrument de protection de cet ordre juridique dont les legum doctores se sentaient les tuteurs. Elle était, donc, directement liée au gouvernement politique des juges. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anonymus Defensorium Ockham Ms. Romae, bibl. Angelica 1017 ff. 21r-36r Conspectus siglorum: = addendum censeo [....] = delendum censeo«..» = litterae illegibiles factae sive propter codicis corruptionem deperditae [[..]] = scriptor delevit Y.../ = in margine sive supra lineam inserta (?) = lectio incerta t...-t = corrupta esse videntur I22rl = incipit pagina 22 recto codicis«cCapitulum 15. De novem praedicamentis denominativis> Praedicamenta (adn. in mg.: Capitulo 15) alia a (...) substantia sunt quaedam denominationes substantiae. Denominatur enim substantia a qualitate 'qualis', a quantitate 'quanta', a relatione 'relata', \ab/ actione 'agens', et sic de singulis. Unde sicut conceptus ordinati in praedicamento substantiae sunt univoci, habentes univocam praedicationem de substantia prima, ita conceptus ordinati in praedicamentis accidentalibus sunt conceptus denominativi respectu substantiae, habentes praedicationem denominativam de ipsa—licet possunt esse univoci in suo ordine, et de suis inferioribus univoce praedicari. Est autem (adn. in mg.: Quaestio bona quarta) hic investigandum, utrum secundum multitudinem denominationum de substantia sit multitudo realitatum; ut, sicut sunt denominationes secundum novem genera distinctae, ita res et realitates novem generum distinctae. Quae est utrum novem denominantia substantiam sint dispositiones distinctae realiter a substantia, aut sint 111 Franciscan Studies (54) 1994-1997 112ANONYMUS dispositiones distinctae tantum ratione, sicut Commentator1 innuit. (adn. in ima pag.: Utrum secundum multitudinem denominationum de substantia sit multitudo realitatum, id est utrum novem praedicamenta distinctas habent realitates.) Et ista dubitatio de praedicamentis denominativis consimilis est dubitationi superius2 factae de praedicatis univocis et de correspondentia praedicamentorum et realitatum. Et videtur hie conformiter dicendum sicut de praedictis, scilicet quod multitudo rerum non est secundum multitudinem coneeptuum quiditativorum. Et hoc manifestum est, sumentibus nobis suppositiones has: Primo (adn. in mg.: Prima suppositio) quod substantia habet entitatem propriam. Ex illo sequitur evidenter intentum, nam si praedicamenta denominantia substantiam distinguerentur ab ea realiter, circumscriptis illis realitatibus, nulla remaneret realitas substantiae propria. Si enim substantia materialis haberet [[aliunde figuram puta a qualitate]] aliunde extensionem, puta a quantitate, aliunde figuram, puta a qualitate, aliunde positionem, et ita de alus, istis circumscriptis, quaero quid remaneret pro entitate substantiae? Non apparet quod aliquid, nisi fingas totam realitatem substantiae materialis posse habere esse punctuale et in puncto salvari, quod non capit imaginario. Quia de ratione substantiae materialis et corporeae, quae distinguitur contra immaterialem et incorpoream, est quod habeat partem extra partem.3 Et ita videtur quod substantia materialis erit seipsa quanta, et seipsa terminata, et per consequens seipsa figurata. Seipsa, inquam, et per se, perseitate excludente rem aliam. Secunda suppositio (adn. in mg.: Secunda suppositio) est quod non est contradictio realitatem unam esse, realitate ab ea distincta non existente. Patet, quia non est contradictio nisi affirmetur et negetur idem de eodem,4 implicite vel explicite. Et ista suppositio 1Cf. Averroës In Metaph. V com. 14 (1562) 148EF. 2Cf. supra cap. 11 'De univocis'; cf. cap. 12 (f. 24v): Et manifestum est, quoniam non oportet multitudinem esse in conceptibus, sicut nec multitudo in conceptibus sequitur multitudinem eorum quae sunt in vocibus, necessario sumentibus nobis suppositiones has. 3Cf. Guillelmus de Ockham Summa logicae I c. 44 (OPh I 137): quantitas continua permanens nihil aliud est nisi res una habens partem situaliter distantem a parte. 4Cf. Aristot, De interp. 9, 18a29-30: In his ergo quae sunt et facta sunt necesse est affirmationem vel negationem veram vel falsam esse; Anal. post. 1,11 77a30; Tópica VI,6 143bl6: Nam de omni vel affirmatio vel negatio vera est; Metaph. IV,9 1005bl9- THE DEFENSORIUM OCKHAM1 1 3 concludit similiter intentum. Nam quia contradictio est corpus de genere substantiae (id est substantiam materialem) esse, et non esse quantum (id est non habere partem extra partem); ideo quantitas non est alia res a corpore. Item quia contradictio est magnitudinem esse, et ipsam non esse terminatam et figuratam; ideo figura non est alia res a corpore sive magnitudine. Item quia contradictio est totum esse, et non esse maius parvus distinguerentur specie cum sint plures partes materiae in magno quam in parvo. Solet etiam dici quod magnum et parvum non variant speciem. Istae viae (adn. in mg.: Quod quantitas continua non sit res distincta) non concludunt de quantitate continua, quia non repugnaret sibi unitas; nec ex parte sui, quin scilicet possit habere unitatem formae accidentalis convenientem, nec ex parte subiecti, quin scilicet posset habere subiectum unum. Sed sufficienter videtur convinci quod... (shrink)

In the opening section of Ovid's Ars Amatoria 3 the poet, in an attempt to gain favour with his female addressees, lists a number of legends where it is men who are the deceivers. In this list he includes Aeneas, et famam pietatis habet, tamen hospes et ensem I praebuit et causam mortis, Elissa, tuae . The terms in which Aeneas' guilt is cast are striking. Aeneas is criticized not for his lover's faithlessness, but for his shattering of the rules (...) of hospitium. At the heart of hospitium, in as much as it is friendship between strangers, lay the ideals of duty, loyalty, reciprocity, and the exchange of services, pietas includes, in this context, a reference to the guest's sense of, or actual fulfilment of, the duty to pay a proper return on the hospitality received. Aeneas had a reputation for doing his duty as a hospes, i.e. as someone who was conscientious about his duty to make an appropriate return. But, according to Ovid, the return which he actually made was diametrically opposed to a proper return, and consisted of a sword and a reason for Dido to kill herself with it. Ovid's decision to frame Aeneas' guilt in terms of hospitium reflects and emphasis adopted both in his own earlier epistle from Dido to Aeneas , and in the Aeneid itself. The erotic relationship between Dido and Aeneas in Book 4 of the Aeneid evolves out of the hospitium relationship established between them in Book 1. When Aeneas leaves Dido he asserts that their relationship is that of host and guest rather than of husband and wife, and that he has acted and will act well in this hospitium relationship . 9). Dido, for her part, even after she has been forced to drop the argument that she and Aeneas are married , continues to attack Aeneas and the Trojans as bad or faithless hospites , and ends by renouncing hospitium with them. (shrink)

La phénoménologie contemporaine a développé une anthropologie dans laquelle la dimension corporelle de l'homme reprend une signification trop oubliée par le rationalisme. Ce renouveau nous invite à une confrontation avec la pensée anthropologique du thomisme. Malgré certaines ressemblances frappantes entre l'„esprit incarné” de la phénoménologie et l'„âme forme du corps” thomiste, de profondes divergences semblent exclure tout rapprochement des deux conceptions. Alors que la première se cantonne dans le phénoménal, la deuxième s'installe de plein pied dans une perspective ontologique. Ce (...) qui d'ailleurs, se double d'une autre divergence fondamentale : alors que l'esprit incarné de la phénoménologie est essentiellement un esprit au monde, celui du thomisme est caractérisé par une transcendance par rapport au monde tout aussi essentielle. On voit à quel point la signification du corps dans la synthèse anthropologique est remise en question dans une philosophie thomiste qui cultive le dialogue avec la pensée contemporaine. On s'attache d'abord à montrer qu'une phénoménologie bien comprise, en tant que fidélité inconditionnelle à notre expérience la plus authentique, n'est pas du fait même rébarbative aux perspectives ontologiques. Au contraire, notre expérience, même la plus primitive et fondamentale, est une rencontre avec la réalité, et possède dès l'origine une densité ontologique. Si la réalité nous apparaît toujours comme un monde plein de significations pour nous, ceci ne peut jamais vouloir dire que ces significations sont créées de toutes pièces, et que la réalité se réduirait à un être pour nous. Bien au contraire, nous ne pouvons vivre dans un monde ayant des significations pour nous, que pour autant que ces significations sont portées par une réalité consistante en elle-même. L'être-au-monde n'abolit en rien l'être du monde. Ainsi une anthropologie phénoménologique n'est nullement condamnée d'avance à être a-ontologique, et une confrontation entre les vues anthropologiques de la phénoménologie et du thomisme n'est pas ipso facto vouée à l'échec. De même, l'accent mis par la phénoménologie sur l'être-au-monde, ne doit pas nous empêcher de voir que cet être-au-monde n'est, en fin de compte, possible qu'à un esprit qui est auprès de soi. (Le Bei-der-Welt-Sein est conditionné par le Bei-Sich-Sein). L'esprit incarné, en d'autres mots, ne contredit pas nécessairement l'esprit tout court. Ces préliminaires étant acquis, on se tourne vers le problème auquel cet article veut s'attacher spécialement : quel est le sens de la corporéité dans un être qui est caractérisée par la spiritualité ? L'opposition entre le corps et l'esprit n'est certes pas un pur mythe. D'autre part l'esprit humain, en tant que tel, semble essentiellement lié à sa dimension corporelle. Il y a là une ambiguité dans la condition humaine qui demande à être éclaircie. Mais ambiguité n'est pas absurdité, pourvu qu'on ne la prenne pas pour une explication dernière. Elle doit donc elle-même être expliquée. Mais comment expliquer qu'un esprit, qui est essentiellement transcendance par rapport à la matière, soit tout aussi essentiellement uni à un corps matériel ? Cette question n'est insoluble qu'apparemment. Un examen plus serré nous montre que transcendance ne signifie nullement exclusion. Tout en étant transcendant au corps, l'esprit peut assumer le corporel comme complément et enrichissement de son être spirituel. Ceci n'est pensable que pour autant que l'esprit n'est pas une simple résultante du conditionnement corporel, mais, au contraire, possède une autonomie de principe, qui n'est que le fondement ontologique de la transcendance manifestée dans ses activités. S. Thomas a exprimé ce statut unique de l'être humain dans des formules lapidaires, telles que : Anima est quae habet esse - suum esse communicat materiae. On s'attache à montrer le bien-fondé de ces formules dans notre expérience humaine concrète. L'esprit en s'incarnant assume tout ce qui est impliqué par le conditionnement corporel - à la fois enrichissement et handicap - sans pour cela perdre sa transcendance. Le corps, tout en étant vraiment le corps de cet esprit, du fait même de sa corporéité, est inséré dans les séries d'influences corporelles, impliquant ainsi aliénation. Paradoxalement, par ce qui lui est propre - le corps - l'esprit subit - ou plutôt assume - la loi de l'aliénation, inscrite dans chaque être matériel. Toutefois, ces servitudes corporelles ne sauraient abolir la transcendance et l'autonomie de l'esprit, ces dernières n'étant pas tant une simple donnée, qui est une tâche à accomplir. Or c'est précisément à travers le donné corporel que l'esprit, dans ses actes autodéterminatifs, c'est-à-dire libres affirme sa transcendance. Même les implications les plus négatives de la corporéité - la maladie et la mort - l'esprit peut les assumer en leur donnant aussi valeur de transcendance, c'est-à-dire valeur positive. Mais surtout, à travers le corps, l'esprit humain a la possibilité d'insérer toute la réalité matérielle dans sa tâche d'auto-affirmation, et ainsi de s'enrichir de toutes les valeurs matérielles en les humanisant. Cette vue optimiste soulignant la signification positive du corps pour l'esprit n'est-elle pas cruellement contredite par le fait brutal de la mort ? L'article s'attache à montrer que tel n'est pas le cas. En effet, si nous prenons au sérieux ce qui a été dit, sur la transcendance de l'esprit, il est impensable que l'esprit périrait dans le processus essentiellement biologique de la mort. Mais n'est-il pas également impensable que l'esprit séparé de son corps ait une signification quelconque ? Ce serait indubitablement le cas si l'esprit épuisait toute sa signification dans l'accomplissement de ses tâches corporelles. Or, il a été montré que, même dans ses activités corporelles, l'esprit n'est jamais englouti par le matériel, mais dépasse et transcende ce dernier. L'être au monde ne lui est possible qu'en tant qu'il est auprès de soi-même. Donc - absolument parlant - la mondanité n'est pas condition de l'autopossession et de l'autoaffirmation de l'esprit. Cela a donc un sens d'affirmer cette autopossession en dehors de toute mondanité. C'est exactement ce que dit la doctrine - philosophique - de l'immortalité de l'âme humaine. Il va sans dire que les perspectives ouvertes - dans un contexte religieux - par le christianisme, confirment et complètent ces affirmations philosophiques. Mais déjà au niveau de la réflexion philosophique, l'affirmation d'une auto-possession indestructible de l'esprit non seulement a un sens, mais elle s'impose comme impliquée dans l'être-esprit comme tel. Ainsi la mort, tout en restant la très réelle diminution d'être, que nous ressentons et abhorrons, est en même temps, et sans qu'il y ait contradiction, révélation de la plusvalue, de la transcendance définitive de l'esprit. (shrink)

In The City of God, XI, 10, St Augustine claims that the divine nature is simple because ‘it is what it has’ (quod habet hoc est). We may take this as a slogan for the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS), a doctrine which finds its way into orthodox medieval Christian theological speculation. Like the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, the DDS has seemed obvious and pious to many, and incoherent, misguided, and repugnant to others. Unlike the doctrine of God's timeless (...) eternality, the DDS has received very little critical attention. The DDS did not originate with Augustine, but I am not primarily concerned with its pedigree. Nor am I concerned to ask how the doctrine interacts with trinitarian speculation. I will have my hands full as it is. In Section I of this paper I shall provide a rough characterization of the DDS, indicate its complexity, and focus on a particular aspect of the doctrine which will exercise us in the remainder of the paper, namely, the thesis that the divine attributes are all identical with each other and with God. In section n I shall discuss Alvin Plantinga's recent objections to Aquinas' version of the DDS. I shall then offer a more detailed presentation of what I take to be Aquinas' version (section III), and recast it in terms of a theory of attributes which is significantly different from Plantinga's (section IV). Although the recasting of the doctrine will enable me to rebut Plantinga's objections (section v), it by no means solves all the problems of the DDS. In section vi I shall discuss the chief lingering problem facing a defender of the DDS. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Commandment against the Law Writing and Divine Justice in Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”Tracy McNulty (bio)Pierre Legendre has shown that the Romano-canonical legal traditions that form the foundations of Western jurisprudence “are founded in a discourse which denies the essential quality of the relation of the body to writing” [“Masters of Law” 110]. It emerges historically as a repudiation of Jewish legalism and Talmud law, where the rite (...) of circumcision encodes the subject’s entry into law as an “allegiance to the absolute Writing,” or the “relationship between the human subject and the logical place of the Other” [110–11; see also “les juifs”]. In this shift, one understanding of writing is displaced by another: the material inscription of the letter, as an incommunicable limit or cut, is supplanted by the fantasy of what Legendre calls a “living writing,” a writing “in the heart” that promotes an ideal of perfect communication in which nothing is lost, in which meaning is lodged in an absolute Other who guarantees all knowledge. In his words, “we belong to a culture in which a mystically alienated human body stands in the place of the absolute book. The state has emerged from this structure.... Its basic characteristics can be set out by means of a fundamental Romano-pontifical maxim: the Emperor carries all the archives in his breast (omnia scrinia habet in pectore suo)” [“Masters of Law” 109].The ultimate theological source of this Roman maxim is Paul’s polemic against the Jewish law in the Epistle to the Romans. Paul’s polemic is structured by a distinction between two orders of law: the “law of God” and the “law of sin.” The first is associated with the intelligible “spirit” of the law, which is “written in the heart,” the second with the prescriptive “letter” of the Jewish law, which compromises or corrupts the first by binding it to a particular representation and consigning it to written form. Paul’s solution is to bypass the law, to bypass representation, and perhaps even language itself. The prescriptive “letter” of the Jewish law must be sublated by the law of the spirit, such that “we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” [Romans 7: 6]. Christ, as the living embodiment of the law of God, upholds the spirit of the law by “fulfilling”––and so rendering obsolete–its written form.The doctrine of Christ as the “living law” sustains what Legendre describes as a “banalisation of writing” [“Masters of Law” 111], a disregard for its material inscription that holds the letter to be nothing more than a placeholder, a flawed or incomplete representation of a meaning or truth that is itself beyond words. At the same time, it makes possible the legal and political fantasy of a living writing, located in a single body understood as the site of interpretive authority. The extraction of a meaning or truth from the intractable letter becomes the ultimate aim of the legal order and the most lofty task of its sovereign interpreter, uniquely charged with animating the dead letter. This notion permeates what Peter Goodrich describes as “the most standard protocols of legal reading,” according to [End Page 34] which “it is not the letter but the spirit that determines the meaning of the law”:The text is composed of dead letters (litera mortua); the rule is no more than a “mute judge,” a sleeping form, requiring the interposition, anima legis, of jurist or judge.... [T]he meaning of the law is internal to its living body, viva vox iuris or lex loquens, its image, interpreter, or legislator. In classical terms it is spelled out by reference to something beyond words: “to know the law is not to know the words of the law, but its force and power.” In a renaissance formulation we are similarly told that “no words, forms, niceties, or propriety of language is of any regard in the Civil Law, in comparison to truth, faithfulness and integrity. For verba menti, non verbis servire debet; words, are made as instruments to serve and express the mind, and not to command it.”[229–30]1... (shrink)

This inquiry starts from two passages in book 1 of Cicero's de Re Publica, both concerned with the failings of democracy as a political form. The first occurs in Scipio Aemilianus' opening criticism of the three unmixed constitutions. The weakness of democracy is that cum omnia per populum geruntur quamvis iustum atque moderatum, tamen ipsa aequabilitas est iniqua, cum habet nullos gradus dignitatis.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 3-10 [Access article in PDF] Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? Ernesto Laclau Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000. In a recent interview 1 Jacques Rancière opposes his notion of "people" (peuple) 2 to the category of "multitude" as presented by the authors of Empire. As is well known, Rancière differentiates between police and politics, the first being the logic of counting (...) and assigning the population to differential places, and the second the subversion of that differentiating logic through the constitution of an egalitarian discourse which puts into question established identities. "The people" is the specific subject of politics, and this term presupposes a sharp division in the social body which cannot be led back to any kind of immanent unity. Empire, on the contrary, makes immanence its central category and the ultimate ground of the multitude's unity.The main lines of Rancière's critique provide a good starting point for what we have to say about the book. The immanentism of Hardt and Negri would be linked, according to Rancière, to their Nietzschean/Deleuzian ethics of affirmation, which does away with any reactive or negative dimension. Empire would belong, in that respect, to the whole tradition of modern political philosophy, which is profoundly metapolitical: "the kernel of metapolitics is to lead back the precarious artifices of the political scene to the truth of an immanent power which organizes beings in a community and identifies the true community with the grasped and sensible operation of this truth" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 96]. From Hardt and Negri's rejection of any inherent negativity in political subjects, it follows that the power inherent in the multitude has to be a disruptive power, "lodged in all states of domination as its ultimate content, a content destined to destroy all barriers. 'Multitudes' have to be a content whose continent is Empire" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 97]. Disruptive forces operating through a purely immanent movement are what Marxist theory called "productive forces," and there would be, according to Rancière, a strict homology between the place of productive forces and that in which multitudes, as described in Empire, act. Rancière points out that productive forces should not necessarily be understood in any narrow productivist sense: there has been a constant widening of the concept from the strict economism of classical Marxism, to the recent attempts to introduce in it the ensemble of scientific and intellectual abilities, passing through the Leninist attempt to supplement via political intervention a role that productive forces refused to fulfill.I think that Rancière has rightly stressed what I see as the main source of several weaknesses of Empire, including a central one: that within its theoretical framework politics become unthinkable. So I will start from a discussion of its notion of immanence and move later to various other theoretical and political aspects of the book. [End Page 3]Let us start with the authors' discussion of the origins of European modernity. While the usual insistence is on the secularization process, that process would be, "in our view... only a symptom of the primary event of modernity: the affirmation of the powers of this world, the discovery of the plane of immanence. 'Omne ens habet aliquod esse proprium'—every entity has a singular essence. Duns Scotus' affirmation subverts the medieval conception of being as an object of analogical, and thus dualistic predication—a being with one foot in this world and one in a transcendent realm" [Empire 71]. Duns Scotus's insistence on the singularity of being would have initiated an assertion of immanence that the authors describe as a process whose representative names would have been Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Bovillus—other names quoted are Bacon and Occam—and whose point of arrival is Spinoza. "By the time we arrive at Spinoza, in fact, the horizon of immanence and the horizon of the democratic political order coincide completely. The plane of immanence is the one on which the powers of singularity are realized and the one on which the truth of the new... (shrink)

The imperativist strand of positivism derives law from an actual person or set of persons wielding a monopoly of force. The rule-based positivism of H.L.A. Hart has more sublty identified a matter-of-fact rule of recognition in place of such a sovereign one or many. But sovereignty is not a matter-of-fact of any kind; rather it is partly the product of what I call qua arguments. I reconstruct the reasoning, in the extradition case of Augusto Pinochet in the British House of (...) Lords, providing a focus for an account of the limits of legal positivism in the application of the principle par in parem non habet imperium. Sovereign power is interpreted through reasoning that is at its margin more moral than technically legal. (shrink)

Aulus Gellius records an epigram of the Roman consul Q. Lutatius Catulus :Aufugit mi animus; credo, ut solet, ad Theotimumdeuenit. sic est, perfugium illud habet.quid si non interdixem, ne illunc fugitiuummitteret ad se intro, sed magis eiceret?ibimu' quaesitum. uerum ne ipsi teneamurformido. quid ago? da, Venu', consilium.

So a frenzied matron cries out to Phoebus as she rushes through an appalled Rome. In CQ 34 , 454f. I pointed out that the words primos in ortus could not here bear their normal sense ‘to the far east’ , which in view of the next line would be geographically absurd, and, distraught as the lady was, even so highly improbable. I did, however, then think R. J. Getty right in taking the expression primos ortus as simply = ‘the (...) east’, and adding ‘the epithet primos appears to be otiose’. But I now feel very doubtful about the epithet being viewed as otiose in order that the words may denote Egypt; quite different are the passages noted in OLD primus 6 ‘belonging to the rising sun, eastern’, as Stat. Silv. 1.4.73 ‘occidiias primasque domos’ in the cited Sen. Oed. 116 ‘miles… ausus Eois equitare campis / figere et mundo tua signa primo’ the literal meaning is no doubt ‘on the world's first edge’ , but its development into ‘eastern’ is readily seen. Egypt, however, as viewed by Rome, is but the bare beginning of the east, and that is what primos must indicate above : see OLD primus 10 b ‘the nearest part of, the entrance, threshold, or sim., of, noting e.g. Ov. Fast. 1.717 ‘horreat Aeneadas et primus et ultimus orbis’, Cic. Fam. 3.6.2. ‘te in prima prouincia uelle esse, ut quam primum decederes’. In a characteristic departure from their stock meaning Lucan's words primos in ortus must then mean ‘to the threshold of the east’, i.e. the delta of the Nile, as explained in the next line : contrast 7.360 primo gentes oriente = ‘the nations of the far east’ . For Egypt viewed as the beginning of the east, cf. Mela 1.9 ‘Asiae prima pars Aegyptus’, Plin. Nat. 5.47 ‘[Africae] adhaeret Asia, quam patere a Canopico ostio [Nili] ad Ponti ostium Timosthenes…tradidit’, Mart. Cap. 6.675 ‘Aegyptus… Asiae caput, 3 quae una ab ostio Canopi ad ostium Ponti habet… milia passuum’; cf. the close association of Egypt with the east in Virg. Aen. 8.687 ‘Aegyptum uiresque Orientis’. For the varied use of the word primus should be noted too Luc. 9.413f. ‘nee… plus litora Nili / quam Scythicus Tanais primis a Gadibus absunt’, ‘from Gades in the far west’ , ‘Gades the first place in the west’ , i.e. the threshold of the Mediterranean. (shrink)

Magna Carta is one of the most important illustrations of the exceptionalism of English common law. Within a completely feudal framework it gave the clearest possible articulation to the concept of the rule of law and at the same time it also showed that there were certain basic rights which every freeman enjoyed without any specific conferment by the king. From English perspective, continental European law after the process of the reception of Roman law was commonly regarded to be apart (...) and different from the English legal tradition, as well as being perceived to pose a continual threat. The English Parliament constantly turned down royal attempts to emulate the continental reception of Roman law by characterizing it as something entirely foreign to English law. Roman law was supposed to promote an authoritarian and absolutist vision of the relationship between rule and subjection and this was expressed in the famous phrases 'princeps legibus solutus' and 'quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem'. Roman law was also anti-feudal, because one of its main principles that all power originated from one central source was the antithesis of the distribution of power over multiple centers, which was a crucial element of the feudal society. Many English historians have held the view that the English law is democratic, whereas the continental tradition is undemocratic and authoritarian, and this is why the Roman law succeeded on the Continent and failed in England. (shrink)

In a chapter illustrating outrageous words and criminal deeds, Valerius Maximus, the Tiberian editor of exempla, includes in his list of foreign examples reference to an impious son, Mithridates, who fought with his father over who should rule : Mitridates autem multo sceleratius, qui non cum fratre de paterno regno, sed cum ipso patre bellum de dominatione gessit. in quo qui aut homines ullos adiutores inuenerit aut deos inuocare ausus sit, † pare admiratione habet †.

Delia is being carefully watched and the door is locked to keep her in and her lover out . It is hardly reasonable to suppose that she has in these circumstances been left in possession of the key; it is presumably in the custody of the ianitor. According to Ovid, what girls in this situation did was to have a duplicate key fabricated for use when occasion offered. The Delphin Ed. note ‘Par. pro fixo habet fcdso’ may, of course, record (...) what is merely a correction. Falso may, on the other hand, have arisen from a gloss on a reading ficto in a manuscript prior to those extant, which could easily have degenerated to fixo. This reading would sufficiently improve the sense of the passage to merit consideration, for lines 17 ff., while couched in general terms, clearly refer to the situation in which Tibullus and Delia are placed and describe the kind of behaviour by which they are to merit Venus' aid. (shrink)

San Tommaso d'Aquino ha trattato della legge in generale e della legge naturale in particolare in numerosi scritti, ma soprattutto nella Summa theologiae. Egli ha posto in evidenza il carattere razionale della legge: se la legge esprime un ordine dell'essere, essa non puo non essere l'espressione di un'intelligenza: „rationis est enim ordinare ad finem''. Secondo lui la legge e un comando della ragione ordinato al bene comune, promulgato da chi e incaricato di una comunita: „Quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune, (...) ab eo qui curam communitatis habet promulgata''. Questa definizione della legge si realizza, analogicamente, nei diversi tipi di legge. Nella sua definizione l'Aquinate da grande rilievo a due caratteri fondamentali della legge: la razionalita e l'universalitä. La legge e opera della ragione. Infatti la legge e una norma direttiva dell'agire umano in ordine al fine dell'uomo. Bisogna conoscere il fine e il rapporto dei mezzi al fine, in modo da scegliere i piu adatti e stabilire il miglior piano di esecuzione: e questo e compito proprio della ragione. La legge deve avere di mira il bene comune e per questo deve possedere carattere universale. II bene comune e il bene di una comunita di persone ed e quindi relative alla natura della comunita, a cui si riferisce. (shrink)

San Tommaso d'Aquino ha trattato della legge in generale e della legge naturale in particolare in numerosi scritti, ma soprattutto nella Summa theologiae. Egli ha posto in evidenza il carattere razionale della legge: se la legge esprime un ordine dell'essere, essa non puo non essere l'espressione di un'intelligenza: „rationis est enim ordinare ad finem''. Secondo lui la legge e un comando della ragione ordinato al bene comune, promulgato da chi e incaricato di una comunita: „Quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune, (...) ab eo qui curam communitatis habet promulgata''. Questa definizione della legge si realizza, analogicamente, nei diversi tipi di legge. Nella sua definizione l'Aquinate da grande rilievo a due caratteri fondamentali della legge: la razionalita e l'universalitä. La legge e opera della ragione. Infatti la legge e una norma direttiva dell'agire umano in ordine al fine dell'uomo. Bisogna conoscere il fine e il rapporto dei mezzi al fine, in modo da scegliere i piu adatti e stabilire il miglior piano di esecuzione: e questo e compito proprio della ragione. La legge deve avere di mira il bene comune e per questo deve possedere carattere universale. II bene comune e il bene di una comunita di persone ed e quindi relative alla natura della comunita, a cui si riferisce. (shrink)

quamobrem aggredere, quaesumus, et sume ad hanc rem tempus, quae est a nostris hominibus adhuc aut ignorata aut relicta. nam post annales pontificum maximorum, quibus nihil potest esse iucundius, si aut ad Fabium aut ad eum qui tibi semper in ore est, Catonem, aut ad Pisonem aut ad Fannium aut ad Vennonium uenias, quamquam ex his alius alio plus habet uirium, tamen quid tam exile quam isti omnes?3iucundiusω: iucundiusDavies: ieiuniusUrsinus: nudiusRob. Steph.The manuscript readingiucundiushas had a few defenders, but nearly all (...) editors have chosen to emend, and of the several emendations proposed, the favourite has been Orsini'sieiunius, adopted recently in Jonathan Powell's Oxford Classical Text, in Andrew Dyck's magisterial commentary, and in the new edition of the fragments of the Roman historians. Although the emendation can now be considered canonical, it is nevertheless worthwhile to restate and augment the arguments for retaining the manuscript reading. (shrink)

The way in which early followers of St. Thomas Aquinas interpreted or misinterpreted his metaphysical doctrines and works still needs much exploration, so a text edition and editor’s commentary of this kind is a most welcomed project, especially since Conrad of Prussia has possibly left us the earliest commentary on Aquinas’ De ente et essentia. The editing task is a precarious work, however, since Conrad’s commentary survives in only one known manuscript, located in the monastery library at Admont, Austria. The (...) editors’ printed result thus has a number of flaws, but without a copy of the codex it is impossible to say which derive from the manuscript and which from the editors. Without a text a reviewer cannot legitimately correct, but can only suggest alternatives to evident mistakes. In the first lectio there is a very humorous flaw. Conrad is trying to prove that little mistakes can sometimes lead to big ones. The edited text illustrates: "omnis canis creditur, celeste sydus est canis, ergo celeste sidus creditur. Interum: quidquid creditur, habet pedes; celeste sydus, ut dictum est, creditur; ergo habet pedes. Ecce quot inconvenientia sequuntur ex uno modico errore." Creditur makes no sense: "Every dog is believed."? Currit does make sense: "Every dog runs." Unwittingly the editors prove the point the author wanted to make. By misreading or failing to correct the fundamental word currit so frequently it grew into a big error. It grew into an even bigger one later because Professor Bobik’s commentary on this text is an explanation based on this faulty text. (shrink)